My Top 3 companies to own shares of for the next 10 years

Hi everyone,

as the investing year is coming to a quite turbulent close based on Corona scares, expected higher interest rates in the US and a general market mostly driven by fear, I nontheless wanted to share my top 3 companies to hold for the next 10 years with you.

It gets said again and again, but it can never be stated enough: The major advantage a private investor (you and me) have over professionals is time. We do not need to deliver quartely reports. We can buy great companies and let them run.

My investment philosophy is closely aligned with The Motley Fool approach and I search for companies that profit from megatrends, provide a new, innovative and easy to use solution utilizing the newest technology has to offer. It is also imperative that management has a solid standing with employees and customers are happy.

Please keep in mind that I already own shares of these companies and this can not be considered financial advice. Please do your own financial due dilligence before making an investment decision to have a solid understanding what you are getting into.

So to not make you wait any longer, these are the three companies I´m the most optimistic about in the coming 10 years:

---

---

1. Upstart Holdings - Upstart Holdings Overview

You might have asked yourself already how banks actually make credit decisions if you apply for a loan or have already come into contact with your local systems.

Credit worthiness models are in methodology and technoligy more often then not horribly outdated and rely on fragmented and often times manually curated data in combination with macro economic factors that give things like your age, your gender, your state of residence, your nationality and all this discriminating differentiators a value. This results in a lot of people, who would be able to pay of their debt in reality, not receiving any credit. This is a lose-lose situation for the bank in lost revenue and the customer in lost opportunity.

Thats where Upstart comes in. Upstart has built a cutting edge artifical intelligence system that not only improves on the speed of decision in the credit approval process, but also promises a higher % of approved loans with a lower % of loan defaults which is a win-win for customers and banks.

Thats a offer gaining a lot of traction with customers as you can see in the numbers:
Revenue has more than quadrupled in the past three years, with full-year 2020 numbers rising 42% from the previous year. Upstart's platform handled more than 300 million loans last year, with annual growth in volume averaging 62% since 2017. The share price rose accordingly until the recent scares started.

There is obviuosly a lot of risk involved in this company with other competitors developing better software, Upstart making mistakes in their AI development. But overall I´m very optimistic for this company as everyone wins if their solution continuues improving and reaching new markets.

---

---

2. The Trade Desk - The Trade Desk Overview

Advertisement is something you come into contact with everyday. On tv, radio, newspaper, billboards, google, social networks... the list is endless.

Advertisement is everywhere and it`s a trillion dollar industry. But how does it get there at the exact minute you are looking?

Thats where in the new world The Trade Desk comes in. This is a programmatic advertising company profiting massively from the shift of advertising spending from traditional channles (TV, Radio, Newspaper) towards the integrated future of old and new channels (Streaming etc.).

Its software cannot only dig through masses of data to select optimal channels of advertising, but it can also identify changing dynamics and adapt ad-campaigns on the fly. So instead of advertising sport shoes to everyone made the mistake of looking for sport shoes on google with activated cockies (who has not made this mistake at least once?), advertisers can give extra attention to someone who also visits sports websites and bloggs about running events, thereby focusing even more on identifying people who might really be buying in the end.

With such a huge market in adverstising spend worldwide and advertising being such a huge part of our daily lives I can´t envision an long term development that would not result in a massive value increase for this company.

---

---

3. Shopify - Shopify Overview

E-Commerce is probaly the Megatrend that is already the biggest part of our daily lives depending on where you live. And Shopify provides big and small merchants with the opportunity to be part of the online shopping experience with setting up their Onlineshop. Shopify is acurately described as a important part of the hidden E-Commerce infrastructure.

The company has a fantastic historic sales and profit development and it just keeps growing if you look at their numbers on the link above. One might expect a company with this historic growth to slow at one point in time. But this point is definitely not yet. Shopify's recent quarterly report once more showed this. Revenue was up 46% year over year to $1.1 billion, with gross merchandise volume (this is the total amount of sales on the company's platform) up 35% to almost $42 billion.

Shopify as a company is in my opinion just one of these companies that can´t help themselves but keep winning. Like Apple or Alphabet or Amazon.

---

Thanks for reading and please feel free to let me know if you have a diffrent opinion or want to add something to my write up. 👍