Patrick O'Shaughnessy

Please enjoy my great conversation with Brad Jacobs.

So Brad, it's hard to know where to begin this conversation because you have built so many interesting businesses across so many different industries.

So maybe the uniting thread is what are you looking for when searching for the next opportunity?

Because there's definitely through lines to what you've done, but there's also, you've made pretty big jumps.

I think maybe you'll make another jump and maybe you'll never stop.

What is it that you're looking for in an industry or a market or an area as you're sussing out what to do next?

In a word, scalability.

Basically come down to scalability.

So if that's the metric, why aren't there 10 of you?

Why is there only one distinct story like yours that somebody in a serial fashion sort of goes and builds companies with some similar ingredients in the recipe in different industries?

It's strange that there's not other people that have had a similar story like yours.

One of the things you said is the ability to do great accretive acquisitions, buy at a lower multiple than your stock trades at maybe.

I think of Henry Singleton or some of the great stories through history.

What are the markers of industries that have that feature?

Do they tend to be very mature industries?

Do they tend to have anything else that you would look for that would cause those low multiples to exist, hyperfragmentation or something else?

Can you tell me the story of the earliest acquisition that you did that stands out in memory as one that taught you a lot of lessons?

Can we talk about the positive and negative patterns that have emerged in the people?

I assume you're talking about both the seller, whoever it is that is representing the seller or the seller themselves and their teams.

What are the things that you've gravitated towards and away from as you've done more and more acquisitions?