Sandy Page, welcome to Acquiring Minds. It's great to be here. Well, it's funny because I often will listen to you on my morning row and now here you are in person. You We actually do exist. I can actually see you. Yeah, there's a There's a face behind that voice. Sandy, great to have you because this is going to be quite a spec- spectacular story. Last year, you exited a business that you'd bought using the traditional search fund model. The growth and exit of your search fund is one of the great outcomes in search in recent memory and probably ever. Now, despite that, it was actually difficult for you to raise money initially for the search fund. You were unconventional in a few ways, so you had to kind of overcome not fitting the profile. We'll get into that a little bit. But, we're going to hear the entire saga and story um start to finish. Sandy, but as always, let's let's begin with some backstory. Who are you? Where does this all begin? So, I'm just a guy who grew up in Maine, the youngest of four boys. Um And Brunswick, Maine was where we grew up and I went through sort of K through nine there and uh my older brothers, you know, all were sort of local and went off to college and I was quite a bit younger than my my next brother up, uh sort of the oops baby, if you will, but so I had a little more time kind of at home alone with my parents. My father was the CEO of a local bank. Um his father had been CEO of the family-run um woolen manufacturing company. So, there was sort of a a story and narrative, if you will, of of um running businesses, although none of my brothers sort of went in that direction, but it it stuck in my head as something I wanted to do. Um went to college in Vermont at Middlebury College and um then returned to Maine and did a range of different things, but starting with with uh working in politics. I worked for now Senator Angus King, um but at the time he was just a no-name running for governor uh in the state of Maine and he ended up winning and that was kind of the beginning of if you will, an entrepreneurial journey um taking some chances and working with really really high-quality people who um are just good human beings and I've been lucky to do that sort of all the way along. Mhm. And then, so how did this dabbling in politics get you into entrepreneurship proper? I don't know that the doubt He Well, the candidate, Governor King at the time, Senator King now, had been an entrepreneur himself and had been very successful later in life as an entrepreneur after having been a sort of a lawyer up up through. And so, he and I spent a year and a half together, as you do in those campaigns. I was his driver uh and his personal assistant and uh and so, we became good friends and close and and remained that way. And you know, I watched him take a risk while he had his kids in college um that changed the trajectory of his life and an entrepreneurial risk. And um so, I certainly watched watched a man and heard the story of a man doing that, but I I almost think more importantly, what I learned from him up close and personal was a lot about management and and communication. Just how you how you can speak and convey a message and uh um uh in a way the process of of raising votes is not unlike raising money. Uh it's important that people like and trust you. And um so, I I So, some of those seeds were planted for me at a at a rather early age watching a, you know, a magician do it. He was He was remarkable and continues to be. Well, it it it The observation about communication is one I've thought about before because we look at politicians, not uh saying anything about your colleague and friend, but we look at politicians and we say to ourselves, there's a lot of repetition and you and we all say to ourselves, you know, why why can't we have higher quality quality politicians? And then, you hear from new CEOs about how difficult communication, getting a message traveling through the layers of an organization is. And what they learn, often the hard way, is repetition, repetition, repetition. I mean, if if you're not sick of hearing yourself, if you don't think that your employees are making fun of you behind your back for saying the same thing too many times, you haven't reached the level of repetition you need to. If um you know, and and then simplicity and then just keeping the message super clear. So, I guess the politicians know what they're doing when it comes to when it comes to when it comes to communication. The good ones do, that's for sure. Yeah. Yep. Well, you end up at business school, which is I as I recall, your first exposure to search and search funds. So, let's let's go from there. Right. I was a I was a perfect setup for business school as a medieval history major in college and a and a classics minor. Um went off and and got some experience and then an an MBA at Babson. And in between the first and second years, like many people, I did uh an internship and in this case, I did it with a gentleman who was based in London who was one of the early early adopters. This We're talking about This is going to date me for your for your team for your for your viewers, but this was in 2002 when I got out of business school. So, um he was an early adopter of searches and search funds and early investor one of what we affectionately called the original search fund mafia. And many of them are still out there, although unfortunately, he's not. And he encouraged me to go do it right out of Babson, you know, just just as soon as you graduate, go buy a business and we'll invest in you and I thought it was the dumbest thing I'd ever heard. Like I'd never managed to be an owl. I'd never managed a person. I don't think I had any direct reports at that point. And the prospect that somebody would give me money if somebody would sell me their business on in that circumstance just seemed absurd. Recognizing this was pretty early, too, in search. There probably were 10 or 15 searches going on annually at at that stage. So, there wasn't there wasn't any coursework or really very much I could look to to give me support. So, I said, "Thank you very much. I'd love the idea. I do think I'm more of a corporate entrepreneur than an actual sort of creation zero to one entrepreneur, but I'm going to go get some experience." Important to note, too, that I was and you know, as I was coming out of B-school, I you know, had a 2-year-old son and a pregnant wife and the prospect of of um doing what you have to do to do search back then on my own with in that circumstance was just I wasn't willing to take that chance. Seemed like hubris. Yeah. Went off, got some experience, five or six years, returned to search, got ready to do it. Um I may have drafted the PPM and at that point, my wife ran into a some health real health issue and um we put a pause on it. Said, "Now is not the time to go take a big risk like that. Let's um let's get this under control." And I buckled back down to to get some more operating experience, which I did. And it was and I did other things that I'm really happy to have done and and did build my operating resume. And and Sandy, by operating resume, you mean you're working in corporate, essentially corporate jobs. Corporate corporate jobs, beginning to be a general manager, really, of lots of different kinds of industries, um lots of different kinds of roles, some finance, some sales, some some pure operations, raising some money. So, I sort of touched on all of those things. Yep. And um I felt good about it. Again, you know, the bug was in me. I returned to it again. Um my my wife got well. We moved out to California. Uh returned to it again and uh just as I was raising getting ready to raise, um she her cancer actually returned. And so, we put a pause on it and unfortunately, I ended up We and me and my children and I ended up losing her to cancer. And so, that that that sort of from my perspective put a you know, put an end to probably what I what I thought was going to be a search journey, but as I put my life back together post um losing my first wife, I stumbled into a new relationship and a few years later was married again to a woman uh who was a former CEO and an MBA and and was really tired of hearing me whine about search. And um and no kidding, I think she actually did say, "Sandy, it's time to, you you know, or get off that pot. And you're 48. Um you're not going to do this when you're 51, so either go do it or stop complaining about it." And and we were able to because she was working full-time and we had at that time together four teenagers in high school. So, it wasn't really the kind of situation where you would just go, you know, with a high deductible health plan or something and take your chances. Um so, she we were able to move on to her health insurance and I went out to raise a fund. Great. So, let me stop you there, Sandy. I got some follow-up questions here. Yeah. How many children did you have with your first wife? Two. Two. Okay. Well, I can only imagine what that was like. Um rewinding further now to this gentleman in who was in the original search fund mafia, a couple search fund Do you want to share his name? Maurice Pinto. Maurice Pinto. And so, for people who know their search fund history, is that a name they'll recognize? Uh I think the folks in in London at LBS may recognize him, but again, you'd have to go back 20 years to to see when he was really an active and terribly active and an advocate. But yeah, the the original search crew, the the Bill Eagans of the world, the some of those guys all certainly remember him as as very involved. Mhm. Okay. And we hear search fund mafia, but I've never actually pressed somebody for the definition of that or who is in this the this shadowy mafia. What what does it mean exactly? Who who are these characters and why are they why are they so such a cloistered kind of group? Yeah, they're not at all cloistered and it it's it's a name I think we give them just because it's a chance to poke them. You know, it actually to the contrary the search fund mafia is the group that that puts out this data every two years search fund performance and it's actually the opposite of being cloistered. It's here we are here we're publishing our returns and have been doing so for for many many years. And I don't think there's another sector or a slice of private equity that's quite as transparent and honest about its returns and as as the search fund crew is. So certainly it's it's the era of Grossback guys going back to the early HBS days and and the Stanford GSB days when that was 95% of who the searchers where the searchers came from. Sort of cherry picked out of those two schools and and many of them are still active. Many of those early invested dollars are still you know, obviously the the Assyrian dollars are still fueling and have fueled searches you know, across the US and and now internationally too for two decades. Thank you for that. Maybe I should do a an episode just on on the kind of the full history and the and the big names going all the way back to the 80s. Be kind of interesting. Yeah. And then Sandy so so when when Maurice first said go do a you should go do a search fund and you so you so you you were kind of ambivalent first of all risk wise you had a two year old I think you said at home wasn't the right time. Also it was such an immature space. It seemed crazy hubris was the word you used. But at the same time you did kind of like the idea of some version of entrepreneurship that was not zero to one. So I guess you you were drawn to it but not the right time. But clearly then over the intervening what 10 15 years you became enamored of it. Is that is that kind of the right progression? What changed that made you like it more and more and more or was it just was it just kind of one of those bees in your bonnet and eventually you just got to do the thing and the longer it goes the more it the more it you know, there's an itch to scratch. Yeah, I think it's the latter. It was a bee in my bonnet and I kept I mean it by in fact it's a good segue like how how did I raise a fund as a 48 year old guy? I think I was the oldest guy out there trying to raise and the answer I think the people the few people who eventually did invest in me and believe me I tried everybody. All the other people said no. I think part of what they saw was somebody with a fair amount of management experience and general manager legs who just kept coming back to search. You know, I I I kept trying and bouncing back and you know, one of the things we all look for now as an investor I look for some sign of resilience. Some really you know, deep seated sign that you've gotten through some hard stuff and cuz this is going to be hard. And um and I think they may have seen that in my story. Um I had been knocked down a few times and gotten back up and each time I kept returning to search trying to find a time to make it work. Mhm. And so you know, I guess that's that's the short answer. It's also true just from a sort of personal story line. I I really felt I didn't have any I'm not particularly imaginative. I'm not a real zero zero to one entrepreneur. I don't think creating something from scratch would be something I'd be all that good at. But I did at that point in my career I had had 10 or 15 years of of of general manager roles in a bunch of different industries. So it was kind of a perfect setup if you if you allow it to be. You can look at it either way. I had one guy who said no I I thankfully I don't remember who it is cuz I probably would would name them. They said okay, I try to do I try to invest in searches that are really the top decile you know, of the of the people who are out there and available. Seems to me at 48 if you were top decile I think he used the word if you were worth a you'd have made $10 million by now. Wow. And Wow. Um You know, talk about having to get back up and be have show some resilience there's there's sort of a time and so that wasn't a fit for me, but but it's a fair point. Like you have to have an answer to that. What are you doing at 48 when everybody else doing this is 33 35? And so that's where you tell your story, right? That's where your communication comes in. Totally. And well and I was going to I was going to kind of flip it that we might have just gotten the crass version of the answer. I was going to kind of flip it and say why is why is being 48 raising a traditional search fund this thing that needs to be explained away? Why is that age considered a liability instead of this incredible asset? You have more experience. One of the things that we hear time and again about these challenges of search is that you know, all these young bucks and buckets have no experience and they're you know, it's like you said that's where the hubris comes in, right? It's like who do you think you are to go be a CEO of a company with with with all you got is your MBA and a you know, a couple years is doing X or Y. Meanwhile you had 15 years of experience. So so and I so I I guess that I guess the answer would be well you know, if you're 48 and you're not already wildly successful or or wealthy in some conventional sense in business you know, it means that you're you know, you're not a good jockey. I think it comes down to a couple things. There is a perception which which is not wrong that there's a level of grind and um kind of nuts and bolts of involved in a in a proper search that an older guy later in his or her career doesn't want to doesn't want to do. Like there's no HR department to call. There is no finance department to tell tell to run that spreadsheet and there's nobody to call to ask how your CR CRM setup is going or whether your website is ready. Those are things you got to do and it's kind of boring and ugly and working interns is is not any fun necessarily and finding them and getting them to work for pizza or minimum wage you know, isn't isn't glamorous and a lot of folks who are in their who are very successful and in their late 40s that may be viewed as a pretty nasty step back. Yeah. And I think that's that's real. I do remember feeling like why am I setting up a website here when there's 75 other searchers doing the same damn thing? Like isn't there just one place I can go to have this done and and there are now they're called incubators, right? Or accelerators. They'll do a lot of that for you. Some of the larger funds will will help set that stuff up for you. It didn't exist so much and it certainly the accelerators and incubators were not proximate to where I was where I was going to be based. It's important to point out that my my struggles in raising the search weren't just about my age. Okay. I was also as I said I had four teenagers at home. I was doing a geographic search. I was simply not going to pick up and go anywhere in the US. I tried to make a case that Northern California is a pretty big economic unit. And it is. It's you know, the state of California alone is bigger than India by itself and um but people don't like geographic searches for some for roughly half the search investment community I would say that crosses you off the list. And finally I went to Babson which is a fantastic place, but it didn't it wasn't the GSB and it wasn't and it wasn't Harvard. And and it there were others that that are perfectly and very good too, but put those things together and it was sort of like three checks in the wrong box right out of the gate and that's what made it a little bit more of a struggle. So it took me pretty close to nine months to raise. Um and I was working for six of those nine months full-time. But managed to finally get it closed in the fall of what would have been 2017. I think I closed did a cash call on December 15th of 2017. And I think most of those folks were skeptical. They there were a lot of half units in my search and there weren't a lot of people saying hey give me two or three units. Um a lot of people saying hey I'll just I'll just try that guy and see what what comes up. So that was December 15th and on February 5th six weeks later eight seven weeks later we had an LOI for the business we ended up acquiring. So I was kind of the oldest guy and I did one of the quickest searches. Which um either means I said yes to the first thing I could find or I got really lucky or or both. Which is probably more the case cuz I would have been a honest truth I probably would have been a terrible searcher. Um not because I didn't have energy, but just because I watch how these guys do it now and they just know so much more about how to shake deals out of trees and run email campaigns and all these things I never even heard of. Yeah. Partly partly because I was older. Um Well, they all learn it, Sandy, and you just hadn't had a chance to learn it yet. Thank you. Thank you. That's a nice That's a nice way to put it. I still think I would have been terrible at it. Okay. But I knew that the part I would be good at was the part where the value gets created. Yeah. The you know, the value gets created in a in running and operating something and um and so that's what we did. And we happened to stumble into something that was exactly what I had been doing for the previous decade. Um with with a few of them. me let me stop you there, Sandy, because as I recall from our pre-call, you well, you ultimately bought a business in an industry that that's search investors don't like, that is not very search friendly, which is biotech. But you didn't you didn't go out announcing that you would do that uh because that would have been yet one more box that you didn't check to the investment community. Or did you? No, that's right. In fact, I think if you look through my CIM, you'll find I excluded a few industries, biotech being one of them. I'd come from life sciences and uh I think I may have been so silly as to say um you know, we're There are some things we're never going to buy for five or six times EBITDA if they have EBITDA at all and clearly biotech's one of them. Um and I also So there were So there was going to be no biotech and it was going to be a regional search. And the ultimate acquisition was in a biotech services company uh in San Diego, which is where the headquarters was and and the I live in Northern California. So it wasn't exactly regional. That was maybe one of the harder conversations with my wife was, "Hey, I think we found the business that we should buy." Um I know how to run this thing. That's the good news. If the price is right, it's got a great seller. Some really interesting dynamics to it that make it worth owning. And then you had that sort of pregnant pause and there's like a okay, but what's coming next, right? But the headquarters is in San Diego. Um Now, it had an operating presence within the circle that I had drawn of my geographic search in San Francisco. So I was I was telling myself and my investors and my wife the story that I could move headquarters sort of over time to to San Francisco and that would be that would be fine. We never did that. Um but uh and I got on a Southwest Airlines flight, you know, every every week to go to San Diego. Um which was actually rather easy to do. Uh I could be I could leave my house here in Davis, California uh in the morning and be at my desk in San Diego at 8:00 a.m. Wow. I rarely did that. Um but I could do it at a very low cost on Southwest and have actually a good time to myself. I would sit on the left side of the plane and watch the sun come up over the Sierra. Um so I I became a commuter which I'd always been anyway. I'd been a road warrior for for most of my career and so that part wasn't a big change for me or my family, but but I certainly wasn't, you know, CEO of a locally found, you know, geographic search company and um you know, even had I been you want these companies when you're doing de novo growth, you want to go national as quickly as you can and I would have been away anyway. So I don't think it would have made a big difference, but it you know, you you have to be willing to pivot and break the promises you've made yourself if something smarter or better comes along and we all did that pretty well. Well, uh I want to hear, of course, how you found this business since you weren't doing the traditional sending out thousands of emails. But I I before we get to that, what you haven't told us why you decided on a traditional search versus self-funded. Was it just having the the you wanted your search to be funded? The the actual search? Well, I I guess I I skipped over that. I had done a self-funded search for a year in between jobs uh earlier in my career quite probably five, six, seven years after getting out of business school and it had been a really good experience. I'd gotten two deals to a closing table. I walked away from two closings the night before the transaction was to close um because of diligence findings that sort of showed up at the end and were dumped on the table. And um and those were those were really good learning experiences for me both in terms of what to do and what not to do and it taught me something about the size of of what I could do. I didn't really have any capital to work with and uh I was trying at the time to buy something that I could just buy myself with a little bit of bank or SBA debt. Um and what the things I was seeing where I was located, which at the time was Maine, were were going to be okay, but pretty limiting and certainly wouldn't have have been as interesting as what I've ended up doing. So you know, there just a lot of twists and turns in a life and in a career. Sometimes they they they work out better for you than than uh they would have if you sort of done everything you wanted to at the time and um you just got to roll with it. So did your quote unquote negative experience doing a self-funded search then inform why you wanted to do the traditional It did. Thank you for following up. Yes, I mean, what it taught me two things. One, I I needed a team. Hm. a team of of people who'd closed a deal before. And I needed more capital. Yeah. Um and uh I didn't, you know, even if I'd wanted to do a search deal at the time at 48, uh whatever your net worth is, are you going to commit it all when you got four kids within a few years of college? Uh that probably wasn't a bet I was able to make at that time either. Um and so the the traditional search for me was just a perfect fit. And uh I was able to make a little bit of an income while, you know, while I was doing it and um more importantly, when I got time to look at deals or a deal in particular, there were three or four people I could call and talk to who were going to be investors, who were unbelievably valuable and without whom I could not have closed my deal. There's no doubt about it. It was a bigger deal. It was a little more complicated. It had some hair on it and we just needed the sophistication that came with people who do this, you know, who have a muscle that flexes every day on this space and um I am forever grateful to all of them for their help. Well, there was a a little anecdote that you shared with me in a pre-call, which I I'm going to draw out of you, but first was also part of the reason you wanted to do traditional search because you just um So so you needed more kind of bigger capital going into it because you weren't you didn't want to necessarily risk everything with four kids on their way to college. Uh but was it also because you wanted to shoot bigger and aim for a bigger pie? So uh smaller size of a slice of a bigger pie sort of thinking? Yeah, to some extent. of course what exactly what happened. It It is, although although let's put a pin in that one because the the deal we bought was right in the middle in the midpoint of search acquisition sizes. It ended up being a bigger outcome, but the what we bought was exactly right in the middle of the average. But because I was doing a geographic search, I I knew I was going to do a geographic deal. I wanted to have the flexibility to do something bigger if I came across it. I mean, when you're when you're limiting geographic, you have to sort of broaden other pieces of the filter to allow yourself um the chance to succeed and and I was making the case that I, you know, I This isn't my first rodeo. I've been a GM before. I sort of know what I'm doing. I might be able to come across something great that has a little more hair on it. Maybe it's also a little bigger. Um all those things just called for a traditional model. Um and um you know, I the social I'm a I wouldn't have been all that good holing up in my office and and just being a solo a solo guy. Um I probably would have done a partnered search if I had the chance or I'd had the right partner. Uh I probably would have done a a um an accelerator based or incubator sort of deal if if those had existed nearby. Um now they're virtual and and maybe I would have tried that, but um but you know, the way it turned out, I'm glad I didn't cuz I sort of kept all the goodness for myself, but um you know, you don't get everything you want to. So I'm just doing and go. Thank you for all this um back this kind of leading up to the acquisition. So uh you finally do the raise the money, but just by the skin of your teeth. Even the investors that did put in only put in half Some of them only put in half units. But um you within very short order, you have a business under LOI, uh although it's in the industry that you you promised yourself and your investors you wouldn't look at. So how did how did this business be How did you discover it? I discovered it because I was making some calls to uh former clients, actually, um of mine from my previous job, cold calls. And this one came up because I'd been working with one of my investors, some of the partners at Housatonic Partners had asked for some help from me for what they tried to they're trying to do in health care and we sort of created a list of companies on a whiteboard and this one went on one side because it was too small for them and a few other names that I'd come up with went on the left side that were big enough for them and I chased down the ones on the right and they chased down the ones on the left. And I called this guy uh the seller and he wasn't a seller at the time. It was wasn't a it was a proprietary deal. And we had a chat and he said, "You know, sort of the timing is right. Um happy to have a conversation with you." and and we had a couple very quick conversations and then we met actually at the JP Morgan um conference in the first week of January and uh, very quickly got to terms and um, there was so, that that's kind of part one. Part two is what what I recognized in his business was that it wasn't exactly what I had run. It had an element to it that was much more facilities management. It was much more search-like. It had a source of recurring revenue that was bulletproof, one to two to three-year contracts. Mhm. Um, and those typically don't exist in in the biotech services space. Um, and this had a built-in financing source. We can talk about that proved to be extraordinarily important to our growth, to our equity efficient growth. And um, just a whole bunch of things like that that seemed like there was a lot I could work with even if I while I was closing the deal, by no means did our, for example, our best case look anything like our outcome. Yeah, our outcome was, you know, orders of magnitude better than anything we could have hoped for. Um, but it was largely, you know, we saw potential, we saw a twist to the model that could be and with a little bit of gasoline could could maybe really explode and um, and as much as anything you're you're just trying to get a deal closed get you where you can get in the seat and then go make something happen. Yeah. Yeah, and this was a good fit, so. And and so the and kind of the thinking was it was a good enough fit and had all these search-friendly characteristics that that overcame the fact that it was in this industry you didn't want to touch initially. Yeah, and it wasn't so much I had a problem with the industry. It's just that they didn't that industry, even today, doesn't have a lot of search-like characteristics. You know, we like generally capital light. Well, biotech and anything science-y is typically not capital light. We like recurring revenues. Like I'm talking real recurring revenues, not repeat revenues that we hear people talk about now. People try to recast repeat revenues as recurring. They're two different things. Repeat revenues can be great, but I'm a fairly strict constructionist in terms of the definitions of recurring. It had really good recurring revenues. Um, it had strong EBITDA margins in the in the low to mid 20s um, and a history of growth in the industry and in the company. Um, and uh, those are those are sort of that sounds very searchy, doesn't it? Yeah, um, yeah, exactly. And if you can get your hands on something like that, um, that's the goal. That's the nature of this thing. Nothing needs to be perfect. Um, but uh, but you do sort of need to be true to those kind of magic five things that make search uh, hum, and um, I think it had it was icing on the cake from my investor standpoint that this is something I'd done before. Yeah. And um, as a result, I think we we didn't have a gap. We were oversubscribed from existing cap table and we're able to get it closed. Um, pretty Well, well, that's the other thing is even though it's in this industry that maybe traditionally isn't one that has these nice characteristics, this particular business did. And then the CEO, you, searcher, is somebody who's very experienced in the industry. So, that that certainly is is attractive from the investor's perspective and yours. Um, well, let's tell people what Explora Biolabs did. Say what what what is the business? Yeah, so in the world of of um, life sciences or drug development, specifically, this is the sector called preclinical contract research. So, it was what the industry knows as a preclinical CRO. That can mean even that can mean a wide range of things. In this case, it was what we call in vivo research. In vivo meaning Latin for in life research. Animal research. We're talking about rodent, mouse and rat uh, drug testing. And that's the world I'd come from. I'd worked at the Jackson Laboratory for a decade in some fairly senior roles um, delivering mice for research to the world. And um, we had uh, the Jackson Laboratory's been doing that for 80 years and more than 80 years now. Almost a hundred and we're um, I I had I had, you know, deep experience at that that's one of the most respected institutions in that space and so that was the reason why the seller who had received other calls from searchers and it he'd never returned one. Uh, why he returned my call was I had come like, you know, he he knew my name, he knew where I came from and and that was worth at least returning the call. Um, and so what what Explora did that in the very early years was different than where it ended up, but what what did contract research studies. And along the way, the entrepreneur, the founder, uh, Dr. Richard Lynn, um, whom I today count as a very good friend and is one of the best human beings you could ever come across in the space, had pivoted a little bit and and increasingly started to rent um, what you what is now known as vivarium on demand space. So, if you're trying to create think of it like WeWork, but for contract research in animals. Um, and if that that just didn't exist, frankly. And in areas where there's a lot of of biotech density like San Diego where he started, it made sense for these biotechs to not have to build their own vivariums, but just to go next door and rent a 300 square foot room and do their research there. He would provide the room, the equipment and the labor to do most of the work in a in a one, two or three-year deal. Um, today it seems like not all that innovative an idea. At the time, it was very unusual and he had five or six of those facilities in San Diego and two in San Francisco when we acquired it, so seven, I think, in all. And when we sold it, uh, we were, you know, it was de novo expansion, so we we just sort of punched out new facilities uh, across the US. I think we had 18 operating in a in a in a path to 25 kind of uh, under development, but most of those were pre-sold capacity, so by the time our beginning and end happened and we were we sold on forward earnings against 25 facilities um, because they'd already been filled effectively before they'd been opened and um, that was that was a big part of the business. That piece when we bought it was maybe 30 or 40% of the total revenues. By the time we sold it, it was probably 70 or 80% of the revenues. And um, and just a high quality revenue at that. Yeah. And and so it really is like WeWork because these vivariums on demand, you're outfitting space for this particular need of these uh, drug clinical tests or drug manufacturers doing tests. All right, tripping up on my vocabulary here. And but you are not landlords really or maybe kind of, but you don't own the buildings. You don't own the real estate. You are sub you are you are renting it from the landlord and then you are outfitting it with everything that needed to convert it into a vivarium and then sub leasing that to your clients. Exactly. And and that's what WeWork does. WeWork doesn't own its property as I understand it either. That's right. And so the difference, I mean, I think when WeWork outfits its space, it spends, I'm going to say 200, 250 dollars a square foot in tenant improvements and the capital. To build a vivarium, it can be 7 or 800 dollars a square foot. So, it's very expensive um, infrastructure to build. It's basically a clean room, class 100 clean room when it's done properly. And that has big HVAC um, requirements that need to be you know, backed up and um, the access requirements that are quite different, the floor and wall materials that are quite different, lighting and and equipment that's quite different. And so, it ends up being very expensive space. And if you're a biotech with a series A uh, round raised and you've raised 25, 35, shoot, now people are raising a hundred million dollars, it it it really doesn't make sense to spend, you know, five or ten million dollars if it's even that even that much on tenant improvements. I mean, taking there's an asset mismatch there of of taking expensive private equity or venture and putting it into real estate. Um, those two things just don't match. And and by the way, the smart landlords, the big ones like Alexandria and Biomed, Longfellow, Breakthrough, um, they don't they don't want you sticking a a small vivarium in the middle of one of their floor plans cuz you chances are that you're going to be gone as a biotech in three to five years anyway because most don't succeed. And so, they don't want that thing that the next tenant may or may not need stuck in the middle of their floor plan. So, there was a lot about our model that we were able to um, develop and teach the landlords that in fact, we think of us as an amenity. If we are an amenity to your development or your building, you should put us in your basement, you should finance our our construction and then we will run it and you don't have to mess with the other six or ten floors above us um, by sticking two or three vivariums in terrible places from an engineering perspective or a or a future perspective. And we ended up knowing more about I had to become a real estate expert, a commercial life science real estate expert. We ended up knowing more about the the clients sometimes the tenants than the landlord did. And we often were the first to hear that they that there was a change coming and so, it became this very useful two-sided marketplace. We we would build a facility for sure. We'd sign a long-term lease, 10, 12, 15 years with the landlord. But we would get paid by the client for using the space. We'd also get paid by the landlord in the form of loading our our lease with with tenant improvement capital. And so they were effectively providing, you know, relatively low interest, non-recourse um junior, highly subordinated, off-balance sheet debt um through our leases. And they were bolted onto our leases in a way that you you really couldn't shake it if you wanted to. But it wasn't debt. Um and and and that changed somewhat over time as the GAAP accounting for for leases changed, but it still wasn't debt. Um now, the banks recognize a lease when they see it. And when they saw a lease obligations of our scale by the time we had some substance, they were very afraid to loan to us. Um and so we really needed that landlord channel of capital to be to be humming. And I spent in truth, because I had built a great team right out of the gate, I probably spent 75% of my time managing the real estate pipeline. And managing the relationships at the CEO level with Alexandria and Biomed and all these other life science real estate firms. Um so that we were getting access to the capital we needed in order to grow at the rate that we thought we could. Well, that was a a great summary, Sandy, of how you kind of kicked off this explosive growth. Let's um let's rewind just a bit to when you bought the business. Um how how large was it? How many employees, revenue, uh EBITDA if you can share that? And then I'll have a follow-up question. Sure. I mean, it was I think it was 25 or 30 people. It was roughly $10 million in revenue. It was roughly 25% EBITDA margins. Um in the first in the 12 months prior to acquisition. But it was at an inflection point at the point we bought it. There were some facilities that had just opened and they were filling pretty rapidly. So uh we saw really rapid month-over-month um um gains. In fact, I think for the first for the years that we owned it, I think I I'm comfortable saying this. We had month-over-month consecutive month revenue gains every month except for April and May of 2020 when COVID hit. Um by June of that year, we were back to where we were in March. And the the rate of growth continued on. And so um while we bought something, you know, at traditional search fund multiples, um 2 and 1/2 million of EBITDA roughly, we were very quickly, you know, out of the game. And we were very quickly kind of on to something that we felt like if we just continued to step on the gas here, we we would be creating a lot of value. Uh and, you know, we were. We started at 2 and 1/2 million. And and what we sold was basically 18 million of EBITDA um on a forward multiple of And if you if you buy at six, six and a half, and you sell at 17x, um 17 * 18 is a is a bigger number. The the ultimate selling price was $295 million. And And um Did you hear that, audience? $295 million. So as I said So as I said at the top, one of the the great search outcomes ever. Uh sorry, Sandy, just had to just had to make sure that people people's attention is trained on that number. Yeah, it's a big number. And and it also happened um that happened in 3 years and 10 months. So so kind of what has to go right? Everybody's like, "Oh my gosh, what has has to go right?" Well, a lot of things have to go right. And and guess what? Not all of them are in the CEO's control. In fact, likely most aren't. There's a lot of lot of people out there listening who are a hell of a lot smarter than me who work a hell of a lot harder than I do and who aren't going to deliver that kind of results despite the fact that they're better at what they do than I was. There was a lot that had to go right. There were a couple things in particular, one or two that I decisions I made early on that ended up being really just fundamentally crucial to the to the outcome, the most important of which is I it wasn't my first rodeo in hiring a senior team. And I was able to hire the right three, four, five senior leaders really quickly and not have to replace and try again as I learned how to hire senior folk. I I got really lucky, clearly, but but I also had done it before. So I had confidence in my decisions. And the board, importantly, knew they weren't dealing with a first-time CEO. I I was showing them by the way I was performing that I could handle these decisions. And they were testing me, for sure. Um but they, you know, they didn't get in my way. And they What do you mean they were testing you? They were stress testing the decisions. They pushed back and Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They were stress testing the decisions, asking why this is the right guy, offering to interview as well, which you which I took advantage of in some cases. Um and um you know, those you know, original kind of five, they knew they knew who they are, the the the Todd, Brandy, Tiffany, uh Wendell, Charlie's of of the Explorer story, all were there. And there was no turnover there. They they stayed. Um and uh they were the ones who did all the work. You know, they you don't you don't do that kind of I'm here talking to you, but but they're the ones who did all the work, right? Because there's no way one person's responsible for that kind of outcome. Sure. And even giving them all that credit, a whole bunch of other things needed to be going our way. And and a lot of things did. We we were good at what we did, for sure. Um our competition was happened to be a little slower um and a little more corporate and a little more bureaucratic and a little more indecisive. So that was great to run against that kind of competition. Um and then the whole industry was with that much venture capital getting put to work in biotech at the time as it was filling with just tons and tons of crazy money. Uh the only way for them to get started quickly with their preclinical pipeline was to use our space. So Yeah. we were very often filling spaces before they opened. And um pre-selling, you know, we we often wouldn't sign a lease unless we had a anchor for the space. So we were able to kind of de-risk our growth in that way. Well, Sandy, it sounds like a great kind of picks and shovels business. There's this gold rush going on. And and you're not you're not competing in the gold rush. You're you're selling the the tools that are necessary for those who are competing in the gold rush to to do their thing. That's exactly right. And that's a great place to be. I I just it it sounds I hear myself talking whenever I tell this story. And it sounds so simple. But I have to convey kind of the the terror I felt every time I signed a lease. I mean, you're signing these leases that that are fif- 15-year lease that starts at at $90 a square foot and escalates at 3% a year. I mean, you're just not getting out of that long-term contractual obligation. You better have it full. And um you know, those were None of these Not none of these. Some of these were slam dunks, but some of these were these were these was really hard work. And it felt like we were way out on the tip of a spear in a new industry. And many times we were putting a facility where none had existed. And we were creating the demand because people didn't even know they needed this. Uh so it, you know, it it definitely felt like um we were taking a ton of risk. Easy with with retrospect to say we weren't, but Sandy, let let's linger on that for a couple reasons. First of all, um when you say 15-year leases, so you're you're literally I mean, you're you're recognizing that this industry is white hot, that there's venture capital pouring into it. But you also know from your years of experience that no industry, however hot, it won't remain that hot for very long. There's only so much capital that can go into a super hot, super expensive industry. Venture capital wasn't going to continue to pour in for 15 years. I mean, for five years, let alone 15. So It It has stopped. And it did Right. And it stopped shortly thereafter. So But you must have you must have known that that that So so how are you convincing yourself to do Were Were you kind of thinking you'd kick the can a little bit? No, I think that's why the board and and we as a board member, we decided we would force a lot of discipline on us in terms of what leases to sign. And if we didn't have 20 or the rule I we tried to stick to was if we didn't have 30% of the capacity pre-sold for for half the term of a lease. So let me say that again. 30% of the capacity of the facility pre-sold for roughly half the term of the lease. Mhm. If we then only then would I sign the lease. So I would typically negotiate it, get it all queued up, and then sit on it until we had sold pre-sold that capacity. And those were contracts that were take or pay. You know, if somebody signed a a deal with us for five years for three rooms, that's $75,000 a month for five years that they owe us as soon as they move in. It's not like they can step out after one. There's no exits. So, you felt like if you could do that, you had a contract to cover roughly, you know, almost almost the equivalent of the rent dollars over the whole term if you take away some of the escalators. So, we were very disciplined about doing that. There was one case where we where we took a chance and did something sort of on spec uh because we needed to move so quickly, we weren't going to we were actually going to be able to sign the leases faster than we could probably get the clients to sign the contracts. And we did that, uh but it was a very small space. It was 5,000 square foot feet and we had at that point 100,000 square foot space in operation. So, we didn't feel like we were taking that big of a of a risk. And it was South San Francisco. It was lots of reason to think we could keep the space full. Um so, you know, the the way you point out a really good point, which is it in a cyclical bubbly sort of industry, how do you how do you know how far out in front of the market to get? Um I think the truth is we were about as far out as we were comfortable going as far I was comfortable going and we were going to be pulling back um in the subsequent couple years had we not sold it. Um and pulling back meaning we probably wouldn't have expanded at the same rate. And we probably would have gotten into different aspects of the services that can be provided to Vivarium tenants as well and we might have grown through additional means, but Yeah. as I watch what's happened in the last 15 months since we sold, there is a supply and demand imbalance, I think, in in the product that we created and the competitors and our acquirer have are now in the process of rationalizing kind of the the go-forward capacity for this product in the areas of biotech density. And so, I'm glad not to be a part of that. That would have been that would have been really uncomfortable. Yeah. Well, you know, one of the interesting things I'm hearing out of you, Sandy, is that you are on the one hand, you're saying how disciplined you all were, which I I'm not being skeptical of. But on the other hand, you're on the other hand, you're characterizing your moves as tip of the spear, um really a more aggressive, more fast-moving than your competitors. So, so on the other hand, there there's definitely an aspect here of uh having a high risk tolerance even though you're being disciplined. You're threading a needle here. But but but complacent you aren't. I mean, you it seems like and and now this I'm going to tie this back to giving you you and your team some credit for a spectacular exit, it seems like you saw a window of opportunity and you just went balls to the whole wall. And that's often the how fortunes are made. Yeah. I I I don't think that's wrong. Um it's also a little more clear-eyed than it was at the time. Mhm. Cuz you you're in the middle of something moving that fast, year year over year growth of 40%, you know, you're just trying to keep your head above water and you're trying to come up with a strategic plan for the you know, you don't do a five-year strategic plan when you're growing at 40%. You're just trying to make sure you're not going to run out of cash or you're going to you know, you're not going to step on your arrows and be late on on a bunch of projects and um uh so, yes, while we were trying to go as fast as we could to stay ahead in particular of the strategic and make sure we were getting all the best locations, uh we were also terrified I was terrified that that all it takes I mean, think about it. Some of these rent rent bills were $130,000 a month. Yeah. And it doesn't take many months um of an empty facility at $130,000 a month to start really ruining burning some cash. So, um we were watching occupancy, you know, weekly, um almost daily. And um being just we had fantastic data on our business. Um that that just gave us insights that that I think even the current owner probably doesn't have. Um so, I I your comment your comment takes me back as I mentioned earlier, went to Babson, which is rated as like number one in entrepreneurship. And I I remember one of the classes, um and one of the professors was talking about how entrepreneurs are this funny mix of of the most risk-averse people you've ever met. Um they just entrepreneurs hate risk. And so, you have this this sort of inherently risky enterprise being run by somebody who is constantly trying to manage risk. And that's kind of that tension is what makes it interesting to study and um you know, terrifying to do and exhilarating when it goes well. Well, as I as I hear about how what what everything you just said and and um you know, these leases that you're locking yourselves into and you know, one missed month could mean a you know, $150,000 bill you can't pay. You know, it's just it's it's reinforcing the fact that this is basically real estate dynamics. Yeah. And and you know, real estate has has destroyed as many for- fortunes as it's made. And so, you know, this this feels like a class if it hadn't if you hadn't timed it right and if it hadn't gone well, it feels like a classic story of real estate where you're overextended on your real estate obligations, you know, rent demand dries up and then and then just you're just collapse under the weight of your obligations. They call it lease overhang is what they call it in our space. And and I think the the exhibit A for this is obviously WeWork. And and I'm the guy I'm actually the guy who wrote a sim who said this is the WeWork the WeWork of of the mouse research industry because at the time that was a cool thing to say. And about six months later, I wish I hadn't said it, but fortunately we'd closed the deal and I never really said it again. But what I what I did do what I did do is we we went back through all of WeWork's filings and WeWork is really good at a at a number of things. They knew data better than anybody. And so, we learned a ton from how they went about choosing their locations. Mhm. Um we mined their their data analytics. We borrowed as many of their good ideas as we could get our hands on. I spent time talking to one of their CFOs and um it was a lot about what they did that was fantastic. The lease overhang is obviously a real risk and we were determined not to not to not to be in the same position. And a lot of that just has to do with rate of growth. I mean, the the WeWork concept isn't bad. I mean, that's why Regus Regus has chugged along and is is as good and better at it than they are and makes money. It's because they didn't get as far out in front of their skis as WeWork did. Yeah. Um and we were, you know, determined not to be not to be that. Yeah. Uh our clients were doing diff- I think important to note, our clients were doing different things than than WeWork's clients are. WeWork's client, you know, has an alternative and that's to go sit at Starbucks for free and use their internet. They don't get free kombucha, but you know, you can go sit at Starbucks and put your headphones on and get some work done. Uh our clients were locked in a room. We had the key. Their IP was being generated in our rooms and their next round or even milestone in their current round of funding probably relied on the data coming out of the room that they were getting from us. So, um there is a level of stickiness to that relationship and the contract that comes out of that that was very different than WeWork. That that's such an important point, right? WeWork at least at least to like an individual user. I know they saw they signed leases with um longer term folks, but part of the WeWork value prop is for kind of the independent contractor type is flexibility. Um and so, you can you know, month-to-month contracts at WeWork are a thing. Um well, I I I just still trying to um tease out how how a searcher all my searchers can can make $300 million themselves. I did not make that, by the way. That that's that's Uh this searcher did not make $300 million. I promise you. No, no, I I know, but can have a three a $300 exit. Sorry, $295 million. Whatever. The seller rolled some equity. There were investors. Um but there's still there's still a lot of pie to go around there. So, headline number, let's just call it 300 for shorthand. Uh your so so, you get into this So, rewinding now to when you get into this business, it doesn't sound like you had to pay much of a premium in terms of multiple even though this was a growthy business. Why not? Mhm. Well, I I think if you were to ask our seller uh Dr. Lynn that question, he'd probably say we should have now, but um it wasn't worth at the time a premium, to be honest. Um it you know, my argument as a buyer was you have lots of lease overhang, lots of lease obligations that are effectively debt. Um you've got some growth, but your margins are impacted by the growth, so I can't tell you what the true margin steady state margin really is cuz the growth has probably been knocking it down. Um you're really just air quotes here, just a facilities management company if if that's what you're interested in was the Vivarium on demand piece. But there there the the preclinical drug efficacy uh CROs didn't trade don't and still don't at huge multiples. Um particularly the smaller ones. Um because there's often key man risk associated with them. Um and key key person risk associated with them. And they're not uh contractual revenues, right? They're very project-driven. Mhm. Um and um you know, the sources of funding kind of rise and fall with the clients' interest in in particular areas of research. So the they're relatively low barrier to entries. Um the pre-small preclinical in vivo CROs are. Um and uh and we were able to get it at a at a reasonable discount. You could argue it was worth a turn or two more than we paid, but there wouldn't have been any proof to point to that there were companies of this size being sold for a lot more than we bought it for at the time. As you as you as you gain scale and you're able to go from two to five to seven to 10 to 12, the market obviously demand increases. Um but there just aren't a lot of buyers and there weren't then of the smaller ones because it's really hard to know what you got. Mhm. And whether it's sticky. Mhm. Well, okay, second point. Um perfect segue. When you got in there and you saw under the covers what you got, uh you had said, I think I heard you say that it was a there was a mix of services being offered. And the revenue that ended up being the real driver that you poured gasoline on was what? Like did you didn't you say 40 40 50% of the business? So I think that's about right. Yep. So was it a was it an insight on your and your team's part that oh, this is where the real opportunity is? Was that a big strategic decision to say this this is the 50% of the revenue that we want to double down on and not the not the rest? Yeah, I mean it's it's a combination of things. It's I mean just from the crudest perspective, you're listening to demand signals. What are your customers asking for? Yeah. Um what are you selling that goes most quickly? And and you know, by the way, we did that growth largely with one sales person. Wow. Um and and so she's coming in saying I've already sold out the new building, you know, and and just by answering the phone. And as we tell her to tell her to go go sell the other stuff, she's like, I've got to go work hard to sell that stuff. Um so that you know, it doesn't take an MBA or any As I said, I'm not particularly smart, but I do listen and and uh so off I went to find some more space and build some more buildings and get her to go fill them up. And um it's sort of an all hands on deck at that pace. Everybody's involved in selling. The VP of ops, she's involved in selling. The CFO, he's involved Everybody's sort of trying to keep keep things going and and fill the space. But one of the beauties of the of the product at the time we were selling it was the landlords really wanted the facilities in their buildings. And so they were a channel a distribution channel for us. And that's the beauty of of of our real of our model. The two-sided marketplace really was both sides of the marketplace were had demand. And one side, the landlord, was eager to send uh qualified leads our way. And they were often very easy to close. I mean really easy to close. And when you did selling a three a three-year contract, so Yeah. But Sandy, why why is the landlord sending you leads since they've already leased it to you? So their their income is assured. Why do they care whether or not you're I mean they want you to survive, I guess. Is that simple as that? Yeah, they certainly want us to survive, but there's So imagine the hypothetical five-story um life science building. Pretend it's 50,000 square feet in you know, uh if per store. A landlord doesn't want a vivarium on each floor, you know? They just because the vivarium demands for HVAC, for engineering, for electricity, um air flows, all those things and a proximity to the elevator are very unique. And it it influences how the rest of the building gets designed and and adds expense. Much better for the landlord to put us in the basement because then they can go to the tenant who comes and says, "Hey, I want the second floor. I want to put a vivarium in the middle." Landlord goes, "No, no, no, no. Guess what? You could you can just rent some space in the basement from Explora. Let's get your space designed upstairs in a way that's cheaper for you." And tenants would say, "Great. Show me where it should tell me who to call cuz I don't want to come to your building until I have my vivarium problem solved." They would call us. We'd give them their contract. They'd sign it. Then they'd go sign the lease. I mean it was this this truly um virtuous cycle where everything uh just had momentum. And and we were often the we were often getting signals of demand from from clients about where they wanted to be before the landlords even knew somebody was in the market. It was it was wonderful. Right. Right. Yeah, so I guess I'm what I missed what you Well, you'd said earlier that essentially you're you're ammenitizing you're providing this incredible amenity to the building. So the landlord loves that. But I guess I also didn't realize that yeah, so the the vivarium is just one one part of an office area of a tenant's space. So they'll have the offices above. Uh and then they'll just and so there's still more to rent. So I'm I'm thinking that the vivarium is the whole space of a tenant. But no, that's just where they go do, you know, three rooms to do their lab work. And but then they've got the back office or whatever. Well, and the and the landlord, remember who's putting a fair amount of capital into any life science lease in addition to our own, they would put a few hundred dollars into a typical lease. They're very concerned that that that they not have to rip that out three, four, five years later. Um in fact, I think Alexandria even had an internal metric called the the reusability of their TI investment. And somehow they tracked how how long their investment would be able to be monetized. In other words, when this biotech runs out of money and goes belly up because their drug doesn't work, can somebody else step into that space and reuse it as is? Or do they need to rip out a vivarium um and stick it back in? It's it's very similar. The dynamics and some of our investors recognized it's very similar to the data center story 20 years ago of how data centers operated. And everybody used to, you know, you build a new a new office space, you'd put in a 5,000 square foot data center, right? Everybody did that for a stretch of time. Nobody does that anymore. You you just put in a big big fiber optic pipe and you go get it from Amazon or somebody like that. Yeah. It's sort of the same idea. It's a little different because people like to be close to their animals in the animal research space uh for good reason. But um but a lot of the business dynamics were really rather similar. Well, Sandy, I want to wrap up the story uh here and and then just ask you some kind of bigger picture questions. Um so you told us the headline number that that you had this exit you you grew revenue. Excuse me, you grew EBITDA to 18 million from two and a half million when you when you bought it. Um so that's what? You grew it seven times profit. We're talking earnings. And uh and how many people? It was 25 to 20 when you bought it. And then how many people was it when it was at 18 million? Yeah, we did one acquisition. I think by the time we ended it was 125 or 35 people. Um so it's it's on a revenue per employee basis a very strong number because largely because of that sort of inherent rent that's bundled into um the work. There was a a lot of rent buried in our revenue. I put air quotes around around rent because it wasn't a a true rent. It was a management contract service contract, but um yeah, that that was one By the time we sold it, we quadrupled the the the labor. And who did you sell to and and why did that transaction occur? We sold to Charles River Laboratories, which is the largest, you know, I think their market cap is 12 billion dollars today. Um they're people I knew because I had been in the space previously. They were in this particular vivarium on demand space. Um that sort of chasing us. And they'd been in it for some time and had um they had actually I I learned later they had actually looked at Explora prior to us buying it, but felt it was too small and and not worth buying. And they'd just keep an eye on it. Uh and so I, you know, was just barely smart enough to keep the lines of communication with them open throughout the whole operating period. Um because I knew while there were a lot of different prospective buyers, they were certainly going to be on the list of people who might want to own us. And they're an acquisitive company, for sure. Um it was important that we stay out of them, that we end up being a thorn in their side, that we steal their best people, that we steal the best opportunities, that we um that we steal contracts from clients they thought were were um always going to be theirs. And and we were we turned out to be pretty good at that. So they ended up being the buyer. The top line number, which I won't repeat again. I said it enough times and I think it makes you a little uncomfortable every time I say it. Mhm. But there but there is a uh the IRR uh of this acquisition growth and exit um which is of course one certainly investors treated maybe as the most important metric of an investment. Um the IRR of performance of your search what? So uh complete that sentence for me. Yeah, it was really really high. I don't know I don't actually know what the number is. I haven't ever dared look at it, but but because that you ended up with a multi MOIC, a multiple of invested capital that was sort of in the 27, 28 range within, you know, under 4 years, 3 years and 10 months. You end up with a just a sky high um IRR. And then there was there was even a dividend um sort of early on that helped goose that a little bit. So, um yeah, I mean it it ended up being a a number you'd be the MOIC is one you'd be happy with probably over 10 or 15 or 20 years, but it just all sort of by contracting it into less than four drove the IRR through the roof. Now, I I Well well done. It's important again to say it was a equity efficient growth model. And um what I mean by that is we didn't have to keep raising any equity as it is proven by the fact that we paid a dividend um because the growth capital was provided largely by the landlords. Um clients when they signed a contract with us would also front end some of the money. Um they were sitting on a big fundraising round. They would we would ask if they wanted to buy down their rate a little bit by providing us with some upfront money. So, we were often um sitting in a very good cash position um all the way through this period of growth and um but we would not have had that sort of multiple. It wouldn't have taken much actually to have to have driven the cut that multiple in half, that MOIC. If we'd had to provide any of that growth capital from equity, it would have been a quite a different story. Yeah, for sure. And when you did exit why? You had been keeping the uh you had been staying very much on the radar of Charles River, stealing their customers, keeping the lines of communication open. They'd been interested in in the business before you bought it. Um but did when it actually came time to do this deal, did they approach you or did you approach them? They approached us. Um and I had I had had a sense that there was a change a coming, that there was so much life science real estate that was going to hit the market um that the the hockey stick of venture capital into biotech could not continue. Um and that our strategic who had a enormous balance sheet and an actual real credit rating was getting more and more convinced that this was a space they wanted to be in. And and if you put a landlord, any decent landlord in the position of renting 20,000 square feet to Explora or to Charles River, they will take the credit of Charles River 10 out of 10 times, all other things being roughly equal. That's just they they have to do that. They have their own covenants that call for that. And um as the also Charles River would sign a longer term lease than we would. They would provide all of their own capital for the TIs and we were asking the landlords to front it. Um and I just had a sense and and it started to happen where there were some things what we had started, opportunities we had seeded and germinated and developed uh it where we were starting to find ourselves competing against the balance sheet of Charles River. And I just knew that we were going to start losing at a higher rate and we were going to in the best locations get uh get crammed down and we would ended up in second tier locations. We would have had there there could have been a really terrible thing that had would happen to pricing that could be out of our control if Charles River really wanted to do that. They could have afforded to do that. So, the world was sort of closing in in that sense. Having said that, nobody on my cap table wanted to sell. This was the best performing asset in all of their portfolios. Like, why would we sell now? The whole point is like long-term hold and compounding, right? Yeah. Um and so I had to work fairly hard to convince people that now that was the right time. It was made a little easier by the fact that I was by then in my early 50s and um you know, if if we screwed this up and didn't get the next move right, uh I did I wasn't going to be at this for another 10 years to try to you know, get back to that kind of valuation. And um I think if I had been 40 though, I might have actually said, all right, we'll double down and throw leave all our bones on the table and see what we can make of this. Uh so, some of it had to do with the fact that I was a little more risk averse just having been around the block a few times. And um uh I think others were when I when I laid out the strategic situation to my board, they got it. They got it. They understood. Um but you know, you never want your best performing asset to stop performing and if there's a way to avoid it, you you look for it. Who knows if uh you probably can't say what went back and forth, but that call from Charles River to you could have been kind of like something in the movies where it was kind of it's kind of like you will either sell to us or we will destroy or we will destroy you. Cuz they're never said. That was never said, Anthony. I know they're listening right now. That was never said. I definitely felt that though. Yeah. Um I mean they you know, I know how capital allocations work at large companies and that there was capital allocated in that direction one way or another. So, they wouldn't have been uh I don't think they would have been that predatory. That's not in their style. They're good people. Uh and it wouldn't have been good for their own business to have been predatory. But they were going to get into the space, you know, one way or another in a much bigger way than they had been. And and that was going to be mostly at our expense. So, uh there was there was a lot of um kind of rationalization that had to go on around that understanding and sort of socialization of that understanding amongst our board and cap table. And in the end everybody was fine with it, obviously. And then we sort of a point where you start tipping and and nobody wants to sell and then you agree to go sell and everybody's like, okay, how much? How much? And as soon as you get into the process, it's like, when am I going to get my return? Nobody, you know, sort of like they put up they they dig their heels in, dig their heels in and then it's it's okay. And then the and then the greed takes over. Like well once they've opened their minds, yeah, I totally Which is completely rational. I don't blame anybody. I'm shoot, I'm now sitting in their shoes, so I get it. Never happened to me. Yeah. I want to ask you about now being an investor. Um but first I want to um close out this this topic of age. So, we've we've we've talked we've touched on it now multiple times. Um Is there anything more to say about doing this when you did it at 48? Uh and maybe more specifically, there would are definitely going to be plenty of people in their 40s, maybe 50s, maybe older listening to this. So, what I you know, I resist the I resist kind of the the idea that the profile of all my listeners are, you know, 28-year-olds. Especially especially because acquisition entrepreneurship is actually a wonderful path particularly for somebody mid-career, particularly for somebody with executive experience. And you know, you're exhibit A. I mean you one of the things that you you self said was that one of the kind of big strategic decisions that you made that was so meaningful was you came in, you hired a great team, people you knew from years of experience, you knew how to be how to how to recruit them, how to bring them with you, and then how to unleash them and guide them as their leader. And that's all be and and as you said, like the your investors kind of stress tested your decisions, but saw that you were a capable leader uh and trusted your decisions in in a way that they wouldn't have if you'd been a 20-year-old or 27-year-old. So, so you really are exhibit A for the value of doing this as a mid-career person. So, I really want to encourage uh this path for people who are mid-career, a little bit older than than the avatar suggests. Uh so, all that with all that preamble, what would you say to my 40- and 50-year-old listeners? I think if this is particularly if this is something you can prove to me that you've been wanting to do for some period of time, get on it. You know, there's just no better time than now. And and understand that the pressure test you're going to get from the investor is sort of prove to me that it's like you couldn't become a CEO through your current path, so you're going to try to sort of buy your way into it, you know, with my money as an investor. Now, uh I want to know that that there's more to it than that, right? Um you got to I I you got to have a degree of hustle for this to work. You've got to have an appetite for some risk for this to work. Um you've you've also you've earned, if you're good in your mid-40s, the right to try some hard stuff and to try maybe some stuff that's a little hairier or a little uglier or a little more interesting, but boy, you better have a plan going into that, right? You better have a team to do the work cuz you can't do it by yourself. And what I would say to people who are and I and I talk, believe me, anybody over 45 looking at search gets sent to me these days. Just like anybody looking at life science gets sent to me these days. I talk to everybody. Um and you know, I tell I tell everybody the same thing. You like you you've got to go do this. And and one way to find out whether it's for you is to go try to raise a traditional search. If you can talk 12, 15, 20 people into into filling out your cap table, then you got the first step done. That's that's how you can do it. Or just, you know, like maybe more of your listeners, if you've accumulated some degree of of wealth or or even not, um go do it do it some other way. Like if you can't do or don't want to do traditional, do it. Just do it because there is nothing there's no greater wealth creation than sort of small business in America, right? And uh this country is not perfect uh by a long shot, but I think it's still pretty damn good place to to be an entrepreneur and and to prove that capitalism's uh again a very imperfect, but um good way to to build family with family wealth. Mhm. And Sandy, just to to tease out a little bit stuff I just heard you say, if you're say talking to a 40-something or 50-something mid-career person who want who wants to go down this path, um is one of the one of the things that you look for or hope that they have access to a team like you did. So so it would that be one of the things that they should lead with? Look, it's it's me you're investing in, but I know all these people that, you know, for the right acquisition I'd I'd bring with me. Is that part of the pitch? I don't think that's directly the pitch, but it does you know, for example, um if if somebody comes to me and they've been at uh I don't know at at IBM at Intel for 10 years, for example, and you know, then I'm going to want them right out of the gate to look for good search companies that service Intel. Right? Um use the skills you've got and don't don't you know, work for Goodyear for in running supply chain for for the last 5 years and come out and tell me you're going to go buy a SaaS company. I don't Maybe you will, but but you're going to have a much higher hit rate on phone calls returned uh or emails returned by dealing in the supply chain or in the in the world that you've come from. Um I I you know, by necessity the people I end up talking to are people who have uh or mid-level or upper mid-level careers and aren't coming you know, they're not typically coming out of Bain or McKinsey or BCG in their late 40s. Usually um those are folks who have the the consulting folks are coming sort of right out of MBA, uh haven't consulted before or gone back to consult for a few years and decided that they wanted to get into search, but it's usually operators who are mid to late career searchers, I think, and um I hope well, I think it's too soon to tell whether I'm a uh how big an aberration I am. I accept that I was really lucky and I was a an outlier for sure in a lot of ways, but I'd like to think that in 5 or 10 years we can look back and say, yeah, this the search community has broadened and we're I by the way, for the record, hope we broaden it in more than just with respect to age. I hope we broaden it with respect to gender. I hope we broaden it with respect to race uh and ethnicity. I hope we broaden it with respect to industries and find ways to sort of get into new industries as as I did that that are good for everybody uh for the whole ecosystem. And I don't want to belabor this question of self-funded versus traditional, but just because it was a big decision for you. You tried self-funded, then ultimately went went traditional. And I think I just heard you Did Did I just hear you kind of suggest that traditional seems like a more obvious path for somebody who's mid-career? Or just too case by case, not necessarily at all? case by case. Um more with what I was trying to say is it's more important that you do search than that you get traditional versus versus um self-funded right. Um whatever is the one that's going to get you searching most quickly is the one that's right for you. Yeah. And and and fair enough to say also the one that makes that you feel where you'll be the most successful, but but frankly, getting on the getting on the field as quickly as possible and actually searching and talking to sellers uh is is is really the only time you end up buying anything. You don't buy any You don't buy anything thinking about it or Yeah. complaining to your wife on a Friday night. Yeah. So you're you're invoking your your wife's uh Do your business or get off the pot, people. Uh indeed I am. I will uh she Yes, she's she's the reason I'm here today, for sure. Anything else, Sandy, that you would impart uh and especially now that you're an investor, you've just been giving us a window into your own kind of um what you tell uh prospective searchers who call you. Um is there anything more that you want to tell them? Any mistakes you're see people make other than inaction? Um any anything else that I didn't ask? I think I think mainly it's just a really remarkable group. Both the traditional and the self-funded world. Um I'm sure they're out there, but I haven't met any jerks yet. You know, there's just there's a level of transparency and collegiality and collaboration that goes with this section of little slice of private equity that doesn't exist in the rest of private equity. It doesn't exist in venture. It doesn't exist in hedge. It's a really unusual little niche we've all stumbled into and and it's not going away. I mean, as you know, you you built a really successful business here around talking about it and these this transition of the baby boomers who are running their businesses still needs to happen and it's going to happen slowly and there's still hundreds of thousands of businesses that need to be bought and carried forward and um you know, I just I think it's a fortunate place for me to have landed. I'm really glad I I got that burr in my saddle early on and will thank uh Maurice Pinto for having put it there. And um uh I just anybody who's stubborn enough to keep listening to you every morning or or any number of times should should spend half the time listening to you and the other half getting on the phone and calling sellers and going and making it happen. Yes. Well, against my own self-interest, I will I will I will support that advice. Stop listening to podcasts, everybody, and and go out there and take some action. All right, Sandy, if people want to reach out, how do you how do you like for people to do that? Uh LinkedIn is a good way to get to me. Um and I'm pretty responsive that way and um Yeah. LinkedIn. Great. Great. P A My last name is spelled p a i g e. p a i g e And you might have more success searching for Nathaniel Page, which we you you and I talked about. Sandy is what you what you go by. Yeah. Well, Sandy, thank you very much for coming on and sharing this epic tale uh of search and all the interesting wrinkles and and um and how you took a while to get get get cracking, but once you did, boy, uh that was a fast a fast and spectacular success. So if I would have caught up for lost time, I guess. Yes, indeed. Yes, sir. Thanks, Will. I hope you enjoyed that interview. Make sure you subscribe to the Acquiring Minds channel below. We are now publishing twice a week, so tons of new interviews and stories to come. Stories that will help you along your own path to acquiring a business.