Compound. Compound. Compound.

“Compound. Compound. Compound.”

A founder in his late 70s gave me that advice ~20 years ago. This week, he sold his company, Restaurant Depot, for $29B.

You may not know the company, or its founder, 94-year-old Nathan “Natie” Kirsh. He isn’t exactly an avid social media user. An episode of Acquired or a chat with Harry Stebbings is overdue at this point.

I remember pitching Natie on becoming an LP in Founder Collective when we first started. He passed saying he didn’t do funds. But his advice, “Compound. Compound. Compound,” has stuck with me.

Here’s what his advice about compounding looked like in practice:

He got his start in his family’s milling business in Potchefstroom, South Africa. Then he crossed into Eswatini and built one from scratch. The lessons were compounded into the capital to buy a distribution company.

The distribution company allowed Natie to pioneer a cash-and-carry model, think Costco without the polish, supplying small restaurants and shops at scale. The success compounded, and it became one of the largest food distribution businesses in southern Africa.

In the 1970s, he took the same playbook to New York and started Jetro, selling bulk groceries to bodega owners. In the 1990s, he acquired Restaurant Depot and began rolling out stores. Lessons and leverage compounded, and eventually, there were 166 of them across the country.

At one point, Warren Buffett tried to buy a stake. They couldn’t agree on terms, though it was a serious nod of respect from one legend of compounding to another.

The fascinating thing about Natie’s story is that technology is almost non-existent in the telling.

There’s real sophistication behind this business, decades of world-class execution, and a long list of smart decisions. Still, every business Natie built would be recognizable to a merchant 3,000 years ago. Buy low. Move goods. Repeat.

His edge was perspective not invention. He bought Restaurant Depot at 63 after four decades of grinding, literally and figuratively. Thirty years later, just after his 94th birthday, he sold it for $29B.

Compounding isn’t easy. The discipline to keep going, especially after decades of success, is rare. Failure forces change, but success typically breeds boredom. Most people want to move on.

Natie kept grinding, from his start as a 20-year-old miller to a nonagenarian billionaire. I’ve carried his three words for nearly twenty years. With luck, I’ll spend the next forty proving I was listening. I hope you do as well.

Compound. Compound. Compound.