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What Ends the Game?

October 25, 2026 · Troy M. Pearsall · 3 min read

A family office that plans in generations usually asks of a company whether it is any good. A second question tells you more about how the company will be run: what ends the game of the person holding it?

Two kinds of game. The philosopher James P. Carse drew the line in a 1986 book, Finite and Infinite Games. A finite game is played for the purpose of winning, and it ends when someone has won. An infinite game is played for the purpose of continuing the play.[1][2][3] Carse was not writing about business. But a company is a place where both games get played, and which one depends on something rarely said out loud: what ends it.

The funds have an end date, by design. Private equity funds are typically limited partnerships with a fixed term of ten years, often with extensions.[5] A Canadian law firm describes the same shape for private equity and venture funds: ten years, with the general partner able to add one or more one-year extensions.[4] Venture funds are described as maturing in ten to twelve years, with a few years of extension possible.[6] There is nothing wrong with that. A fund promises its investors their money back, and that promise needs a date. But a date is what makes the holder's game finite, and the companies it backs inherit a clock they did not choose. That reading is mine; the sources describe the terms, not their effect.

Sears is the sharp case. In 2005, Eddie Lampert, who ran the hedge fund ESL Investments, took control of Sears through Kmart.[7][8] A year after the merger the Associated Press described him as the billionaire chairman of the combined company.[9] By early 2017 his personal assets were estimated at about $2 billion, primarily in ESL.[8] In October 2018 Sears Holdings filed for Chapter 11, and Lampert stepped down as chief executive, remaining chairman.[10] A holder whose wealth sits in a fund and not in the company can do well while the company does badly.

The families were playing the other game. Wawa's roots go back to 1803, when David C. Wood started an iron furnace in New Jersey; the Wood family's investments later evolved into the dairy and the convenience stores, according to the Hagley Museum.[11] The first Wawa Food Market opened in 1964, and the Wood family still holds the land around its headquarters and dairy farm.[12] 84 Lumber was incorporated in 1956 by Joe Hardy, who named his daughter Maggie his heir apparent in 1991; she became president in the early 1990s (one account says 1993, another 1992).[13][14] Neither business stayed the same. What stayed was a family's hand on it across generations.

Commitment is not enough. Kodak is the caution. Its leaders were not outsiders extracting value; they were career people whose futures were bound to the company, and Kodak filed for Chapter 11 in January 2012.[15][16] In an earlier piece on corporate durability, the point was that the commitment pointed at the health of the business Kodak already had, not at the company's survival past it.[17] That is a finite game too: win the business you are in. It can be won for years, and it ends. So the useful question is not whether the holder is committed. It is committed to what, and until when.

A family office is built for the long game. The Securities and Exchange Commission describes family offices as entities established by wealthy families to manage their wealth and provide other services to family members, and its rule counts as family members the lineal descendants of a common ancestor up to ten generations removed from the youngest generation.[18] Another source describes the goal as growing and transferring wealth across generations.[19] That is a different clock from a fund's ten years. It is also why the holder's clock matters so much to you: when you invest alongside a holder whose game ends sooner than yours, your interests can diverge at the moment the company most needs patience.

Three questions worth adding to a diligence conversation.

  1. What ends the game of the person or fund holding this company: a fund's life, an exit, a founder's tenure, a generation?
  2. Does that clock line up with ours, and where do the two diverge?
  3. What does the company's structure reward, and does it reward continuing or winning?

None of these replaces the technical review of what the company has built. They sit beside it. A technology can be sound and still be held by someone whose game ends before the technology matters.

This is the author's account and is not investment advice.

Sources

  1. James P. Carse, Finite and Infinite Games: A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility (New York: Free Press, 1986), chapter 1, "There Are at Least Two Kinds of Games" (read as text). Bibliographic record: Library of Congress control number 86-14304.
  2. Kirkus Reviews, review of Finite and Infinite Games, issue of August 15, 1986 (read as text): https://kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/a/james-p-carse/finite-and-infinite-games
  3. Wikipedia, "Finite and Infinite Games" (read as text; secondary): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finite_and_Infinite_Games
  4. MLT Aikins LLP (Canadian law firm), "An overview of private equity or venture capital fund timelines" (read as text; describes Canadian funds): https://www.mltaikins.com/insights/an-overview-of-private-equity-or-venture-capital-fund-timelines
  5. Wikipedia, "Private equity fund" (read as text; secondary): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_equity_fund
  6. Wikipedia, "Venture capital" (read as text; secondary): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venture_capital
  7. Wikipedia, "Sears" (read as text; secondary): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sears
  8. Wikipedia, "Eddie Lampert" (read as text; secondary): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eddie_Lampert
  9. The Associated Press, "Sears-Kmart strategy still murky a year later," March 17, 2006, via NBC News (read as text): https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna11878582
  10. Home Furnishings News, "Sears Holdings files Chapter 11; Lampert steps down as CEO," October 15, 2018 (read as text): https://www.hfndigital.com/industry-news/sears-holdings-files-chapter-11
  11. Hagley Museum and Library, "Research: Iron, Cotton, Cows and Wawa Coffee," June 16, 2016, drawing on Howard Stoeckel, The Wawa Way (2014) (read as text): https://hagley.org/node/799
  12. Wikipedia, "Wawa (company)" (read as text; secondary): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wawa_(company)
  13. Funding Universe, "84 Lumber Company History" (read as text): https://www.fundinguniverse.com/company-histories/84-lumber-company-history/
  14. Wikipedia, "84 Lumber" (read as text; secondary; gives 1992): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/84_Lumber
  15. Engadget, "Kodak files Chapter 11 bankruptcy, expects to complete restructuring by 2013," January 19, 2012 (read as text): https://www.engadget.com/2012-01-19-kodak-chapter-11-bankruptcy.html
  16. Wikipedia, "Kodak" (read as text; secondary): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kodak
  17. DoAyni, "IBM Just Showed Off a Chip That Runs Two Instruction Sets at Once. The Company Is 115 Years Old. Most Companies That Old Are Dead.": https://doayni.com/analysis/ibm-hot-chips-corporate-durability-control-tether
  18. U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, "Family Offices," Investment Advisers Act Release No. IA-3220 (final rule, 2011) (read as text): https://www.sec.gov/rules/final/2011/ia-3220.pdf
  19. Wikipedia, "Family office" (read as text; secondary): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_office

The framing and the reading of how a fund's term shapes the companies it backs are the author's own. No client's name or figures are used.

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