Finding companies like Appen Limited (APX) early, page-7

Similarly, I found Appen from Motley Fool at $3-ish.

Also found Altium (ALU) at $4.72 but sold out at $4.90 thinking I was a hotshot trader waiting for the dip to come. Dip never came. I bought back at $20 and never looked back.

There are several “this is like XXX but...” kind of companies that I’ve found through Motley Fool. Like a poster above said, you’d need to do your own research, they can give you some good ideas but at the end of the day nobody is more responsible for your winners and losers than yourself.

Also there is higher risk looking for these companies as a lot of them now follow a “build it and they will come” model, which sometimes risk being a great idea but at the wrong time / wrong economic cycle. You’ve got much higher risk companies in this small cap space. For instance if you wanted to find Appen when it was $1 you’d be looking at a $100m market cap company. Very few investors plonk money into a company with such a small market cap, that’s getting into high risk territory which may not suit many investors with weaker risk appetite.

A few ideas that I’ve taken a liking to but not necessarily invested in are SKO (travel industry, similar space as CTD, WEB, etc), LVT (hopefully an Atlassian in the making), DXN (data centre, similar space as NXT). Just one glance at these and you’ll probably find lots of flaws with these companies, though they show potential.

Thats the toughest part, picking companies who will be able to get through that tough first several years of their life as a company. Some will burn cash so bad you’ll feel a hole in your pocket. Some will simply never get off the ground like RNT (good concept, but failing to monetise Plus incumbent REA has simply too strong of a moat).

Motley Fool is a good space to start though for idea generation, like several have suggested. You’ll HotCopper sheep hating on MF a lot, but that’s their loss. If you know how to sort out the wheat from the chaff, you’ll find that they are pretty useful.