Gary Kinder the author of Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea, Random House, NY, 1998 essentially wrote 3 stories in one  – the first one a description of turn off the century California when gold was discovered. Then the story of the travels between the ports of New York and San Francisco with a stop through the Panama Canal, together with the reports of what the hurricane was similar to. The next story is the person who discovers methods and ways to search for the gold – an amazing creative engineering mine of Tommy Thompson who has to make discoveries to work in the deep oceans. The last chapters are what happens when gold or valuables are discovered. Who do they belong to and who should see them?

In the world of venture capital, often times there is a need or request to put more money into the venture. One method to look at is: in entrepreneurial ventures you often have tests; you have the pro forma and the actual and invariably something happens in the actual which tests the mettle of the managers. It is how they handle that really determines what the group is made up of.

In the above case, the group had found what they believed was the ship, had evidence of coal (fuel at that time) but needed more money to look through the ship to find the gold. As an investor what do you do? In this case, more money was raised and new engineering or do it yourself equipment was built. However, they were fortunate for although they found a ship, was it the right ship? Another pattern showed up and a decision was to go there first to test the new equipment and to try to show the competition they were in the wrong place. The new pattern seemed right and it turned out to be the ship with the gold and those with shares made their money back with handsome returns.

In 1961 President Kennedy said we will have land a man on the moon. For the next 8 years 400,000 people spent nearly $ 100 billion to do that. It was a great accomplishment. In order to get the gold, Tommy Thompson and his team spent $ 12 million, had a group of 30 people successfully searched the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, perfected their technology, found and imagined a mid-19th century wooded-hulled ship in 8,000 feet of water and recovered her treasures. For Tommy the ship recovery was rally an adventure in thinking, a way of looking at the world. The purpose was to unveil the treasures of the deep ocean, to enhance our understanding of history, to advance marine archaeology to further science or in the words of Star Trek to go where no one has gone before.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, while this was a great adventure, discovering the gold was what motivated the investors. The science, the understanding are a lot easier when there is an economic benefit in relatively easy grasp. We are all motivated by different things which makes us human, having the dividend payments go into the account makes life easier and able to continue to learn new things.

There are more questions than answers, till the next time – to raising questions.