Justin Ishbia

In order to own something, you have to be able to teach it to somebody else.

And so this system is set up in a way to allow early career energy, young professionals.

I believe private equity world is a hustle game.

And the system is set up a way to have talented people who want the ball earlier in their career to have the chance to grow and have a big role in a deal.

And the system allows for that.

And so that's why our systems are star.

No one person makes this place go.

And we have to say more stars into our system, the brighter the system burns.

So it wasn't just me.

My partner, Ryan Kelly, my partner, Mike Cooper, and John Hannigan, the four of us from day one, we were young.

I was 31.

They were 29, 28, and 27.

So we were kids.

We were essentially associate levels.

Where I came from is, no, originally, Ryan and I, Ryan was at Water Street, and I was at Valor Equity Partners.

And what we would do all the time is we would...

see a deal, it's like three or four of you, but on an attractive sector, we bring it to our old boss and basically say, here's a roll up in this opportunity in the sector.

And effectively you're heard, you know, in different ways of saying like, interesting, but you're one of my X number of deal guys.

We have to deploy X million dollars per year, whatever it may be.

It doesn't make sense for us to do that.