The First Steps to a Family Holdco

One, the fact that it was kind of specialist in a really interesting market. And what was interesting is it was a, it was a growing market which, growing at double digits, which in the search space is rather uncommon, that you have sort of good growth dynamics in the underlying market unless you're paying again, a very substantial multiple for Some software or tech business or something like that.

And we thought that the growth was also supported by good sort of macro tailwinds. And that specifically is then data infrastructure build out in Europe where one on the one hand you have obviously sort of whatever demand is driven by AI and whatever might come there or autonomous vehicles.

And then as we sort of got to know the business and the team, the rest also sort of fell in place. And what was very important for us in particular also with this kind of business was we felt we had a really good rapport with the, the sellers and you know, we, we could really tell they cared about their legacy and the business that they had built. They really cared about their employees that we…

And we really had a sense that there was a clear commitment after the sale and that relationship and that view was really important for us to be able to get to conviction and Linh will then talk a little about structuring and how we brought that in. But we spent a lot of time with them during due diligence. We did a full day strategy session with them, management meeting.

And so we spent a lot of time getting to know them and, and building a personal relationship to get a sense of, you know, how will this continue post sale. And then for us sort of from a platform perspective again what we cared for and were looking for was this element of sort of value creation and growth and transformation of what we could do with the business longer term.

And we saw good things to do there that we felt we were in a good place to do. So sort of professionalizing the back office, putting in place a. A proper marketing and sales engine and sort of then growing and de risking the business through more diversification.

So we felt like there was, there was a good, good thesis there that we could grab a hold of and we had a good rapport with, with, with the sellers. It all kind of fell in place and again wasn't on our radar before. So it wasn't like we were out there looking for businesses that would somehow fit into some kind of AI or anything theme.

It was really kind of the happenstance of taking a look at a teaser from a broker that we hadn't really engaged much with before.

Leo, you said how the double digit growth rates. That's it's rare to see a search business in a market with that sort of tailwind or you're going to pay for it, you're going to pay something more for it than a searcher could probably pencil. So presumably this business was not, didn't have such overweight valuation. What do you think was the story there?

Again, I think it's more about the types of businesses that you typically end up looking at. So if you're where you would see growth is typically a software business, let's say. Right.

And then if you're talking to somebody who's selling a software business, they will have already spoken to 20 people that think they should be getting 10 times for that business because it's a software business, you know, because you have all the nice structures with recurring revenue, et cetera. So it's just the ingoing expectation is different.