Brad Jacobs - Think Big and Move Fast - [Invest Like the Best, REPLAY]
Episode publishedPodcast: Invest Like the Best with Patr...Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Transcript preview
Preview only
2 fun facts about our newest sponsorship partner, Ramp. 1st, they are the fastest growing Fintech company in history, reaching a level of revenue in 5 years that I can't quote exactly, but is eyebrow raising. 2nd, they are backed by more of my favorite past guests, at least 16 of them when I counted, than probably any other company that I'm aware of. A list that includes Ravi Gupta at Sequoia, Josh Kushner at Thrive, Keith Raboy at Founders Fund and Khosla Ventures, Patrick and John Collison, Michael Ovitz, Brad Gershner. The list goes on and on. These facts demand the question, why? Having be
Patrick O'Shaughnessy is the CEO and founding partner of Positive Sum and the CEO of O'Shaughnessy Asset Management. All opinions expressed by Patrick and podcast guests are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the opinion of Positive Sum or O'Shaughnessy Asset Management. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions. Clients of Positive Sum or O'Shaughnessy Asset Management may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this podcast. My
guest today is Brad Jacobs. Brad's resume is remarkable. He's founded 7 companies, all of which are $1,000,000,000 or multibillion dollar businesses. He's done 500 M and A transactions and raised $30,000,000,000 of debt and equity capital. Currently, he's the executive chairman of XPO, a commercial trucking company that he started in 2011 and has grown into one of the largest logistics businesses in the world. He's also written a book that will be out in January titled, How to Make a Few $1,000,000,000. What a title. Brad's energy is infectious and our conversation unpacks his strategies for M
In a word, scalability. So the only way I know to create huge value is to create a company that 5 10 years after you started is much, much larger. And the easiest way to do that is through m and a. Of course, you have to have organic growth as well. But I look for industry where it's large enough. If I wanna create a company that's tens of 1,000,000,000 of dollars in revenue, then I have to do an industry that's 100 of 1,000,000,000 of dollars in revenue. If I wanna consolidate an industry, there has to be things to buy. There has to be things to buy on accretive terms. There has to be things
if that's the metric, why aren't there 10 of you? Why is there only one distinct story like yours that somebody in a serial fashion sort of goes and builds companies with some similar ingredients in the recipe in different industries. It's strange that there's not other people that have had a similar story like yours. There's
plenty of other people who have done m and a and created tons of value doing m and a. I've maybe done a little more m and a than most people, and the teams I've led have done very well in terms of integration and optimization of those acquisitions. But I didn't invent m and a. M and a has been around for a long time.
One of the things you said is the ability to do great accretive acquisitions, buy at a lower multiple than your stock trades at maybe. I think of Henry Singleton or some of the great stories through history. What are the markers of industries that have that feature? Do they tend to be very mature industries? Do they tend to have anything else that you would look for that would cause those low multiples to exist, hyper fragmentation or something else? It's
not that they have to have low multiples, although I tend to go to industries that are single digit multiples, not double digit multiples, maybe low double digit multiples
Keep exploring with a free account.
A free account preserves the short preview. Upgrade to Pro for the full transcript and episode chat.