Hello there! 👋

Thank you for stopping by!

My name is Bertrand Seguin, and I’m the founder of App Economy Insights LLC.

You may have come across my tweets or my 100+ articles about investing that have reached millions of readers.

I run one of the most popular premium investing groups on Seeking Alpha called App Economy Portfolio, where I share my portfolio and my trades in real-time (what I’m buying, selling, and why).

I’m in the top ~1% of financial bloggers on the internet, according to TipRanks.

What is How They Make Money?

Businesses are complex, and you’re busy.

I’ve started sharing business breakdowns on Twitter to help my followers understand how companies make money, their margin profile, and cost structure.

These posts have been very popular, and I receive requests for new ones every day.

In the video below, Jason Calacanis and Molly Wood look at one of my charts and explain why they are great for digesting an earnings report.

While Twitter is a great place to share visuals, I soon realized readers didn’t necessarily understand if they were looking at a good business or what to focus on.

To alleviate this and provide more insights along with the visuals, I decided a free newsletter would be the best medium.

Every quarter, I research dozens of companies. They don’t always make the cut in my portfolio but are worth discussing to separate the wheat from the chaff. So this newsletter will greatly complement my work on Seeking Alpha.

As best put by Peter Lynch:

The person that turns over the most rocks wins the game.

How They Make Money is a free business-focused newsletter for the curious investor and visual thinker. My goal is to share visual and data-based insights about:

  • 💰 Investing.

  • 📱 Technology.

  • 📊 Company earnings.

I subscribe to many newsletters and hate it when I have to scroll endlessly to find some gold. I want to respect your time by providing concise and straightforward insights.

Subscribe for free to get access to the newsletter and website. Never miss an update.

You won’t have to worry about missing anything. Every new edition of the newsletter goes directly to your inbox.

Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Why subscribe?

The visuals I share with the community require a lot of love, data prep, mapping, coding, and design work. It’s a full-time job.

I spend hours gathering all the insights so you can digest them in seconds.

I receive requests every day to cover new businesses.

My goal is to expand the universe of companies featured. I’ll eventually need to expand the team at App Economy Insights to provide more timely visuals.

As a free subscriber, you will directly support my work by expanding our community.

If you decide to become a paid subscriber, you can directly impact the content that will be provided on How They Make Money over time by helping me expand the team.

What to expect?

To receive free content packed with visuals and insights, you don’t need to do anything other than subscribe.

Free subscribers get:

  • ✍️ 1 visual breakdown report per week (Fridays).

  • 📚 Full access to a 3-month archive of articles

You can also choose to become a paid subscriber for extra features.

Paid subscribers get:

  • ✍️ 2 visual breakdown reports per week (Tuesdays & Fridays).

  • 📚 Full access to our entire library of articles

  • 📊 Monthly high-resolution rollups with earnings visuals.

  • 🔎 Monthly industry breakdowns covering business models of leading players, their financial performance, and the key industry trend.

Our audience

About me

I was born in France and moved to San Francisco in 2012 when I was 27.

My educational background is in management and finance:

  • Master of Science in Management (Grenoble Ecole de Management).

  • Mastère Spécialisé Entrepreneurs (HEC Paris).

My career is what makes my profile unique in the investing world.

I was previously:

  • 3 years as a financial auditor at PriceWaterhouseCoopers.

  • 12 years as a senior finance executive at Bandai Namco, a leading Japanese video game publisher (~$14B market cap). They invented Pac-Man in the 1980s and released the biggest video game of 2022 called Elden Ring. You’ll see my name is in the credits if you manage to finish the game!

I had to explain complex things to C-level executives with little time and a low attention span. That’s why I strive for simplicity and to-the-point communication.

Feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn. Don’t be a stranger!

My investment philosophy

Being optimistic is a superpower.

I’m a business-focused investor with a long time horizon.

I invest in a business with the intention of holding it for many years. I rarely ever sell. Instead, I stop adding to positions that turn against me.

I hold many stocks (70+). I start with small positions and let the portfolio concentrate over time without rebalancing. I invest through dollar-cost-averaging every month, adding fresh savings to the stock market across low-cost ETFs and individual stocks.

My modus operandi is:

  • Buy great businesses diligently.

  • Hold on to them tenaciously.

What makes a business great, you ask?

I hope we can figure it out as we break down their performance together!

Disclaimer: All App Economy Insights contributions on the web are personal opinions only and do not constitute investment advice. I am not registered as an investment adviser. Investors should always do their own due diligence and fact-check all research before making investment decisions. Liability of all investment decisions resides with the individual investor.

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Weekly business breakdowns delivered by a Silicon Valley senior finance executive. Join investors, visual thinkers, and data-driven professionals. Become a smarter decision-maker in minutes.

People

• App Economy investor • French in Silicon Valley • Gaming industry veteran • Contributor on Seeking Alpha • Previously @PwC and @BandaiNamcoUS