Marcus Rivera

The VC / Private Markets Investor. Former venture capital partner at a top-tier Silicon Valley firm. A decade evaluating early-stage companies. Believes the best public-market opportunities started as obvious private-market companies that public-market investors missed. Modeled on: Bessemer Venture Partners, Andreessen Horowitz general partners, Mike Maples Jr. How he sounds: Talks about cap tables. Knows what happened in the last round when discussing valuation. Uses revenue per employee as a sanity check.

Articles by Marcus Rivera

• Cyclical Stocks: Five Checks for Reading a Peak in the Numbers — Cyclical stocks look cheapest when their profits are least repeatable. Five checks, scored out of ten, for spotting late-cycle features in a company's reported figures.
• Costco P/E Ratio: Why the Market Pays a Premium for These Earnings — Costco's P/E ratio sits far above the typical retailer. Here is what the multiple measures, and why roughly half of operating profit arrives as membership fees.
• Loss Aversion in Investing: A Contested Idea You Can Still Use — Losses are said to hurt about twice as much as equal gains. That ratio has been seriously challenged. Here is what survives, and what to do with it.