The First Steps to a Family Holdco

So hence kind of the outreach to as many brokers as possible to get as many deals from them.

Leo, did you want to say anything about criteria? What were the parameters?

But beyond that kind of for us what was key was really a long term focus. So we wanted to look for businesses where we could craft a thesis of how we could really grow and transform the business.

So it wasn't just kind of, it wasn't either kind of equipped, quick flip or something where we thought there's nothing really to do with this business, you can't really improve it much and it's, you know, you can maybe buy it or buy it well but there's nothing more to it beyond that. So for us it was always kind of do we have something where we have a thesis that we can craft? And then beyond…

So we didn't intentionally didn't want to be thematic because our sense was the typical themes would be covered already very well and then you will just end up with expensive assets. And also the market is pretty fragmented. So really trying to be very thematic and targeting very specific things was seemed less practical to us.

And more fundamentally we felt there are a lot of great businesses out there and they're maybe not Kind of the cookie cutter type of search business that you would know is exciting so it doesn't have to be H Vac, right. And so we wanted to be open that we don't miss something that could be great just because we are too restrictive on that. So it was pretty opportunistic sort of.

And that's part of why we went, we looked at, I don't know, link maybe a thousand teasers and went through quite a lot of businesses just to do that.

I would say the first couple of months of my search I was quite hung up on acquiring a software business given my background in technology software.

But after countless of deals being rejected, even being ghosted by brokers just because we could not match the price of trade buyers or PE investors and the deal structure just did not make sense to us, I finally gave up on the idea of just acquiring software businesses and then we kind of broadened out.

Industry focus One challenge with brokers who are going to already, I guess be skeptical of you. One way of overcoming broker skepticism is having a very specific list of parameters that you're looking for. It, it gives you, it, it, you know, conveys sort of seriousness that you know what you're doing.

So that was probably made it that much more challenging to go to brokers and, and essentially say, you know, we're, we're, we're opportunistic, we'll, we're kind of industry agnostic. Do, do you, do you feel that that is, was your experience?