The Origin Story of a Compounder ($80m and Counting)

You know, that's something that, from just a life standpoint and a family building standpoint, we kind of had to say, okay, how do we, how do we reorient how we're spending our time to make sure that we can do this for a long time. But you know, I think it is a, it's a really exciting thing to be building for sure.

One of the companies that I worked at for a long time in my previous career, they sold to a, a basically private equity buyer A little bit after I left and started co founded Hickory and generally I kept in great touch with a lot of folks at that company. They, they actually had on average a pretty good experience with the first buyer. But then that was a group that had a timeline.

It's worked out well where now actually a lot of the, a lot of the top engineers who I worked with in the past are working with us now because they've gotten to a point where they were on their own, they were ready to do their next thing, but it was very Instructive for me because it, it makes us think about, you know, if, if we would sell to someone, we're not really selling to them for the next…

And so it's not, it's not will they take care of our employees for the long term, it's will they take care of our employees, but if they sell to someone else who we would have absolutely no control over, then what does that look like for them? So, you know, I think it just has, it's been instructive for us thinking about who we partner with and thinking kind of not just what is the next step, but…

The point about lifestyle and making your professional lives compatible with a lifestyle that you want is what I was hearing there, that if you're doing a traditional roll up where there is the, you know, the speed of deployment of the capital and the speed of, of then exiting the whole project really matters versus something where it's a longer term that, that just gives you kind of breathing…

And that then bleeds into your personal lives and makes this whole career, or at least this whole acquisition path, I should say, of the two flavors, you know, where you're rolling up in a traditional style versus when you're building something over the long term as you guys, more sustainable, more measured.

Yeah. You know, I'd say for me personally, you know, and I think this is true for any kind of startup or really intense thing that you're trying to achieve. You, you might have a period where you sacrifice a lot. And I think we all certainly did that.

And I know for me personally, you know, sometimes that was skipping some, some friends overseas weddings or skipping family events and, and really just working a lot. And, and for me that was something that at some point I had to say, you know, it's one thing to make those sacrifices for a couple of years, but if you're making those sacrifices for 5, 10, 15 years, then what is the point?

And I don't know if it was the shift from, I'd say it's the shift from roll up to long term in the sense that we all said. And it was something that I'd say, Zachary and John and I really had a lot of conversations about was can we keep doing this for, for a much longer time? And, and what does it need to look like in order to do that?

And so for me it's, you know, I have a, I have A daughter now, and, you know, so even before she was born, but. But kind of making the time for that. Kind of making the time for.

For certain family events that, you know, I, you know, I. I had a. Just on the more personal side, my mother passed away when she was 63, and I was relatively young, and, you know, you kind of. Sorry. I'll take a sec.