Kevin Tawil

Jim and I, we knew it was a potentially good transaction and good company, but we didn't have a lot of experience looking at companies.

I don't think we realized how good it was.

This, while small, yes, was showing meteoric growth, had recurring revenue, was profitable, low capital intensity and simple operations.

It's like you hit the jackpot.

And our investors got that right away.

They took as much as they could.

Like I said, I think we sold out in less than 24 hours and we had to end up carving people back.

And importantly, me and other investors wanted Irv to be part of that transaction.

He was not in the search.

So we went to all our investors who had the right and all were very much willing to pare back their ownership stake to allow Irv to come in.

Because Irv was not only going to come in as an investor, he was going to sit on our board.

And here we are 28 years later, and Irv is still our stalwart on the Asurian board.

We did a lot of things right over time, but clearly we were really lucky.

I mean, to find this company that was leveraging growth in the wireless industry because they sold their product through wireless carriers.

And it was, I think there may have been at the time in 1995, maybe 10 million wireless subscribers in the US, which was gonna go to 300 million.

That was really lucky.

The dynamics of play were important and difficult to, I think, replicate.

The CEO of the company had a small stake in it, and his father owned the majority of it.

So he was basically living under the thumb of his father.

And he had been running it for a few years, not too, too long, but was ready to stop working for his dad.