Yeah. So the idea from the beginning was actually to create an investment vehicle. Mhmm. Consulting has always been a deal flow engine. Yeah. So the, you know, premise behind archetype. Right? So we'd, you know, just finished that ecommerce journey, was sitting on some capital, Philly is a small market. There's some capital to your name and you're getting hit up by funds, wealth managers, different folks who want to spend your money on your behalf, and many of them do a great a great job. Right?
Welcome to The Investor, a podcast where I, Joel Palafinkel, your host, dives deep into the minds of the world's most influential institutional investors. In each episode, we sit down with an investor to hear about their journeys and how global markets are driving capital allocation. So join us on this journey as we explore these insights. All right, I am live today with a new friend of mine from the Northeast area, the Tri State area, I would say. I'm here with Chetan Bhaga.
He is the CEO at Archetype. Archetype is a growth equity fund building the future of health insurance innovation. The health insurance industry collects about a trillion in annual premiums. So excited to go deep on that but then also talk about the bigger platform that he's built. So Chetan founded Archetype in 2009 with a vision of creating a unique consulting and investment platform focused on the workplace health and performance industry.
Previously, he worked as a management consultant for ZS Associates and Maritime Partners and founded and exited a successful e commerce business. So really excited to go deep on this Chetan and learn more about you. So welcome to the show. Thanks for coming and thanks for giving us your time. My pleasure. Thanks for having me. It's exciting.
Yeah, so we got people in the community that are listening, people that are looking to learn how to break into Wall Street, break into asset management, we have a lot of people that are looking to learn how to start their own asset management fund. I think there's a lot of helpful nuggets that we'll cover. But before we do all of that, let's hear more about who Chetan is.
Tell me a little more about your early childhood, maybe a little bit about your family and maybe what you thought you would do early in school in your formative years and then talk to us about college and maybe your career in corporate America or as an entrepreneur, and then we could just riff off of that. Okay, sounds good. Well, I was born and raised in the Philadelphia area. Both of my parents are immigrants.
I came to The States from India in the seventies, and both of them ended up running their own businesses. My father was a fast food franchisee, chemical engineer by training, and eventually became an Arby's franchisee. So I have a sweet spot for a good beef and cheddar. My mother was an apparel entrepreneur. So with my uncles, they had run a chain of clothing stores in the Greater Philadelphia area, which they eventually sold off. And they parlayed that into real estate over the years.
So I had the privilege of growing up around business conversations, around building things, around what works, what didn't work, Perhaps a little atypical for a grader to be chatting with his father about the regional manager structures that he had set up for restaurants. But I always sort of took to that, really enjoyed it, and got to hear the good, the bad, and the ugly growing up. So that was a lot of fun. And then was me and my sister. So I have a sister who's four years younger.
We both were privy to the same conversations. I wouldn't say it was completely nature because she didn't end up going into business. But I think when I made the decision eventually to start up some things of my own, had a good sort of backdrop network experiences, conversations to lean on. I went to college in New York. I went to Columbia for undergrad, studied political science, enjoyed it, had fun. Mean, it wasn't really studying political science with any particular design.
I just enjoyed studying it and was able to go into management consulting out of school. So growing up, I wanted to be a doctor. I joke often saying that like any good Indian boy, I wanted to be a doctor at some point. I wasn't forced by family, just sort of had an inclination to go into health care and quickly realized that being a physician wasn't going to scratch that itch. But doing management consulting in health care was where I started.
Right. So I had entrepreneurial ambition, wanted to go somewhere where I'd have a steep learning curve and wanted to do it in the health care space. So started at a firm called ZS Associates. Really enjoyed that. Learned a lot.
I'm in New York today for meetings, whereas I'm usually in Philadelphia, but was in New York City for that bit of my career as well and really enjoyed working with pharma, biotech, some med device firms to figure out how they were bringing products to market, optimizing their sales forces, looking at marketing mix, a range of different interesting problems that were driven by prescription data.
So that was kind of the phase of the career before in 2009 was when I moved to Philadelphia to buy an e commerce logistics company that was essentially a tenant of a broader real estate portfolio that my family was tied to.
So it was the sort of view on how to diligence deals and try to find a different platform to find things, because essentially I could look at rent rolls and see what companies had need for capital just by looking at some of the distress in the portfolio and was able to find a company that was really interesting. So that was kind of the start. I know I went through a lot there. It's good. Hopefully that covers the bits of what you were looking Yeah, no, absolutely. Can you still hear me okay?
I can hear you great. Great. So something that's a little provocative, I would say, is just kind of the concept of education. So me ask you this, do you think it really takes like twelve years to be a professional? If you're already looking at financials and talking about business in the grade, and the reason why it hits home to me is because I have an eight year old. What I thought was really cool was my son had this game that was given to him.
I think his school had these apps or something like that but I was really impressed with this digital game that they gave him and it's like a pizzeria. Not only are you serving customers, but you're setting the price of the pizza and it tells you at the end if you're profitable. So I started getting into it and I was like, oh man, your pizzas are too cheap So you're losing money. So you need to raise the prices.
And then if you raise the prices of the pizza, the customers are like, oh, that's too expensive. So I just thought it was really good. And I was teaching him about profit and his cost. So I feel like there should be more games like that or just ways to gamify things. But I feel like it's just made me think for a long time because I own an education business. Do you really need twelve years to be a professional or can you learn the critical things that you need to get a job?
You need to learn how to balance a checkbook. You need to learn how to communicate with people. You need to learn how to build a relationship. You don't learn any of that stuff in school. You could learn all that stuff when you started your consulting job in terms of like, hey, maybe I should add value to this person and see how I can help them. My experience, I feel like there's so many skills that are still lacking in the education system. This is not to bash New York City public schools.
My kids essentially are having a really good experience, but just wanted to see your reaction to that and just your thoughts around just kind of business education. And like when, you know, like an appropriate time to learn it. I mean, you learned it when you said you were like in grade. Right? Yeah. Well, you know, it's a interesting question. I'll I'll specifically start with the business education side of it. So, you know, this is two thousand eight, nine.
We're in the throes of the recession. I'm living in New York City. You know, work's going well. You know, the nature of the consulting that I was doing had switched from growth orientation to now companies were downsizing and, you know, what are you doing around the restructuring and how are you resource optimizing? What do outsourcing initiatives look like?
And, you know, I had a choice at that point or at least a binary that I had set up for myself was, do I want to go to business school or do I want to jump into business? And, you know, you kind of run the calculations like how much is it going to cost for me to purchase this business? How much am I going to be paying for this education? And, you know, what do I think is gonna come on the other side of that?
And I think there's a you know, for many people, there are a host of extraordinary reasons to go and get an MBA. For me and, this is a personal question and a personal equation, drove my decisioning around it. I thought the practical experience would have been much better. You know, in terms of education before that, right, if we're talking about college and the like, to say because, you know, the it's a counterfactual argument. I like, I enjoyed college, learned a lot.
Do I use anything from political science in my career today? No. Now, you know, is everyone sort of backfilled a narrative as to why it works? Like, yes, I use the critical thinking and reasoning skills to put together arguments. And at some point it was people would say, well, you know, political science is great because it taught you how to write. And you don't need those skills in the same way because you have AI that can do a lot of that for you.
So I'm grateful for some of the critical thinking skills and some of the more sort of social and leadership opportunities that I got. But I do believe that had I had the opportunity to have conversations and to have mentorship from people who were able to, to jump in and start their careers in different ways, I might've looked at it differently. I might've started something up a little differently.
Yeah. You know, the, that source of it, I think at a bare minimum, there's a lot more opportunity to create mentorship. So, you know, kids, young adults, at whatever stage you're in, you have a better sense of what your options will be and what those can do for you. So that that that's exciting. I think it's something, though, that you just need to provide, you know, good guidance for people on. And, you know, just at that point, I didn't even know that those things were options.
Was just like, okay, college, school, consider a graduate degree. Or many people are like, you have to go do the graduate degree. Again, immigrant parents, they're like, you kind of got to get that graduate degree. It's important. And that was a discussion where I was like, no, I don't think that that's for me. And I think that now you can have some of those choices earlier on, which I think in the end will be a good thing.
You just need to have good mentorship and good data and good options so people can make better decisions. One thing I really like about your background too is just the ability that you've had to just go out and launch something. So the e commerce business, can you just touch on how you came up with the idea, how you launched it, maybe got some feedback that validated there was product market fit.
Then any learnings from the exit of exiting that business and maybe what you take into maybe acquiring businesses in the future. Yeah. So from a starting point in terms of getting into the business, right? I mean, again, this was looking at rent rolls, seeing where, you know, there was distress where people weren't able to pay, and then you'd have conversations and say, well, how can we help you? Right? So was a broader family real estate portfolio from that perspective.
Mhmm. And then you can jump into the business and see what makes it work, what doesn't. I had no background in that beforehand, so I really had to learn a lot of that on the fly. Yeah. And, you know, not the most efficient way to to go about it. In some respects, you know, I think had I, you know, set up a better resource bench up front, you know, I could have saved myself some pain on that, but it also didn't take too long. Right?
It was, you know, six months into it where I had a group of advisers and folks that I was working with that could guide me in sort of whatever deficiency I had, whether it be on the financing side, whether it be on the technology side, just surrounding ourselves with people that could learn from. And then, you know, there were definitely a lot of things during that time I learned about how So were you selling, like, people's furniture? Like, if they're moving out and they're No. No. It was it.
It was a reseller. It was an Amazon reseller. Got it. So, you know, that that company was buying books. Mhmm. As Hertz. So essentially used an over overstock from publishers and then selling them online. And then we created a new procurement vehicle for that business, which was essentially working with universities, getting books and other goods on donation, and then sort of parsing them out into a range of different online marketplaces.
And in parallel, we built a software platform that would look at pricing for all the different elements. It was essentially something that we could sell to other marketplace sellers. So essentially took a struggling e commerce business that was buying books from publishers and reselling them online, built a differentiated procurement engine, and then built some software around pricing. Right? You had two sides of the business, both of which had separate outcomes and exits attached to that.
It was a lot of fun. Learned a lot. And I think the biggest thing that I took from that was really just how to build structure, motivate teams. I haven't done anything in that space since, But, you know, how to build technology, how to, you know, work with team members who are working on vastly different things. Right? You know, if you have a Mhmm.
An employee who's working in a team member who's working in a warehouse versus a team member who's working in, you know, a software development environment, just, you know, different motivations, different day to day work. Just you learn a lot by going through something like that. And I I missed health care during that time. So it was fun to, on the tail end of that, come back and start archetype in its current form.
Yeah, so talk to me through what was going on in your head when you were coming up with the concept of archetype. It sounds like you started with a consulting business. So whatever you're allowed to share, would love to learn how you landed your client and just for the audience to be helpful to know what types of consulting services you guys offer. Yeah, so the idea from the beginning was actually to create an investment vehicle. Consulting has always been a deal flow engine.
So the premise behind archetype, right, so we just finished that ecommerce journey, was sitting on some capital and Philly's a small market, right? There's some capital to your name and you're getting hit up by funds, wealth managers, different folks who want to spend your money on your behalf. And many of them do a great job. Right? But I was just sitting at that point and I was like, well, I want to redeploy capital. And this is 2012 going into '13.
And at that point, everyone was sort of I worked at Facebook for six months, and I just started up this idea that's the Groupon of this. Right? That That was the sort of stuff that wasn't I remember that. At that point, and just none of that was particularly appealing. You know, I had bought a business that, you know, while it needed rehabilitation, it had cash flow.
So, you know, I wanted to invest in things that had cash flow, had, good venture style upside, but have more sort of a PE style yield where you wouldn't have so many companies that would bottom out. And that risk profile was very appealing to me. I liked the idea of building a capital efficient system. And again, I wasn't using that vocabulary at that point. For me, it was just I made some money. I want to deploy this in a way that I can get access to deals that not everyone is going after.
I can get something that's a little bit more proprietary. So I decided that why don't I align myself with the customers or the companies that I'd like to invest in? So it was really just how do I find a better path? You know, to a certain extent, was, well, you know, I can be more capital efficient, get paid while I hunt for this.
Was very interested in looking at health insurance, right, as it was building out this company, had a really great experience working with our insurance brokers, was really impressed with the way that they were able to engage with a carrier and build some pretty custom solutions for a small business. So I started talking to them and said, hey, I think I could help on your procurement. I think I could look at the vendor systems that you're using at the moment.
Could probably help you negotiate better contracts, maybe even do some technology work attached to it to make sure that it's better integrated with your systems. And along the way, like, I'll get exposed to those companies and, you know, I could invest in some of them. Mhmm. I said, sure. That sounds interesting. Why don't you come in and do that? And they're like, how much do wanna get paid? I was like, me 20,000 a month. Right?
Yeah. So it was just a couple conversations that went pretty quickly. And, you know, I reached out to some former colleagues and said, hey. Like, do you wanna come try this out? Like, here's what we're thinking. You know, work with companies whose client bases or whose vendor bases you want to invest in. And you build that partnership, get access to an investment, and we'll make that alongside it. So just did that for a while.
So the vendors would be some software companies, possibly payment processors, billing companies that are servicing those clients. But I think also the unique opportunity is to essentially be like the Accenture for healthcare essentially. Is that kind of like your bigger vision to kind of like put strategic people in those seats to kind of help those companies? Then also you can provide services to and also invest or acquire the technology providers that are helping them achieve that.
Is that kind of where you're thinking to take the consulting arm? I think the advisory side, it's very different than a typical consultancy. Typical consultancies, you're gonna bill high, bonus high. And they're just trying to sell hours. And they've got people on the bench that are like, looking, don't have a project. So they're kind of waiting. So they're just literally just trying to sell hours. So my partner Ian at archetype jokes, he was at a management consultancy called The Hay Group.
He was part of their global leadership team, helped architect their sale to Korn Ferry. And he'd always joked that, you know, in professional services, particularly in consulting, you know, bonus time is like a scene from Game of Thrones. Right? Sure. And it's like important. People are very passionate. And obviously, you know, the joke there is that it looks violent. But anyhow, that's a joke. And I'd agree the economic model for most consulting firms is like that.
Billing rates are structured a certain way. Profitability is structured a certain way. For us, the idea was that you come in and consult for companies, do it fixed fee, fixed timeframe, and be very transparent that you're looking for partnership and access to vendor networks. And, you know, essentially share that you're trading margin for access in there, and they also get the ability to invest in deals that sprout from that. And that, you know, was very consistent for us.
Every single one of our consulting deals started an opportunity to invest. And the folks who we were doing consulting work for, they obviously like the vendors, had already voted for them with their dollars as a vendor. So as we went to go make an investment, they wanted to participate alongside us. But these were sort of angel style investments, right? Yeah. Individually writing small checks into these deals. But that built a nice track record off of it.
And come 2019, we were a 10 ish person team and we were doing some outsourced software development work with a couple of shops in India to help support the investments that we were making, right? Just giving them access to better technology and acceleration on that front.
Well, there's just so much opportunity now to just replace a lot of the workflows with AI or some type of agents and stuff like that to cut out probably, I don't know the numbers, you know better than me, but you could probably reduce tens of thousands of dollars in overhead from automations. It's extraordinary, right?
And the type of work that, for example, if you have a company that wants to learn about ICRAS, individual contribution, health reimbursement arrangements, which is a unique insurance structure that essentially bundles up individual plans into a group chassis. As you can imagine, if you go out to the exchange and you have hundreds of individuals who are getting these plans, coordinating that into a single chassis can be difficult.
There's technology and workflow out there that allow people to do that, and it's a newer type of insurance arrangement. Now, previously, imagine this was five years back and someone wanted to learn about how this new modality would be deployed if a carrier wanted to figure that out, it would take some time. But now how quickly can we access a cadre of insurance brokers, leaders from all the major firms across the country? Right. Arkansas has built that network.
So that's been a big part of what we're doing is building advisory networks within health insurance brokerages. But then you can take those conversations, load them into a single mart. You can take the research from all the trusted voices in the space, whether it be investment bankers or research organizations, put that into the same spot. And you can also put in your own data surrounding that.
And all of a sudden you have structured conversational intelligence from 30 market leaders and all of the research in the same spot. Then you can start querying it, iterating, asking those questions that would have taken forever before. I know. And this process you could do in sixty days and you could do it with a lot less people, too. So it's been very energizing and empowering to try to leverage that in meaningful ways. It's decreasing our cycle time significantly.
Yeah, no, I mean, what I really love is just businesses that complement each other. Especially if you're, I mean, thinking about private equity, you're kind of thinking like a roll up and just kind of implementing a roll up strategy. But I love how funds and investment managers are starting to do that as well. A couple examples, there was an agency, a media agency that I knew that just did consulting for equity.
So they would just charge a retainer plus the retainer was a reduced, affordable price and there was a carve out for some equity. So I've seen that happen and then they what's really creative was the equity was actually in the form of distributions instead of kind of like phantom paper equity or paper gains. So they're able to structure where they get cash flow coming in as distributions in the form of equity. That was one.
Know one of our graduates from our fund accelerator is a fintech fund, but they went out and launched an agency. Then they essentially just charge retainer services for possibly their own portfolio companies, but then other portfolio companies can receive those services, get to a certain ARR and then possibly be qualified to possibly be an investable company. What else have I seen? And then one thing I want to get your opinion on, I went to a healthcare dinner.
I thought about you because there was a healthcare dinner that I got invited to. It was put together by a healthcare venture studio. This person worked at Union Square Ventures for some time and was just doing incubations. So he was trying to get a bunch of LPs and GPs together and there's a couple institutions there and it was really cool because we did an activity. They asked us about our opinions on just valuations in the healthcare space.
My table, when I was talking to those people, one thing they said was General Catalyst bought part of a hospital system. And then you probably read in the news, Tribe Capital pretty much set up a roll up structure. So there's a blurred line now between growth equity and private equity and buyout.
And I think that's going to continue to happen where these mega funds are bolting on consulting businesses and essentially buyout on the tail end of their growth equity activities of their growth equity funds. I know I said a lot about just new structures and how franchises are building their practice. Just wondering if you have any reactions to what I said or any comments. Yeah. I mean, note the same observations. Right?
I think the types of structures that people are bringing in, you know, the nature of it, in our opinion, really centers around capital efficiency. Mhmm. Right? So at a at a basic level, capital is a commodity. So how are you able to differentiate yourselves over time to create sustainable returns? Right? The way that we've looked at it is that we at the center of it, we're two GPs, analyst, associate, director. It's a five person team that's deploying capital. Right?
We're typically doing three to five deals a year, dollars 7,000,000 plus in equity per deal that's going out. So that's our structure. That's where we sit currently. That's going to scale up over time. Maybe two and a half, three times the amount of equity that we'll be doing in this strategy. But, you know, we play in a very specific sliver of the market, which, you know, has competition.
So at each level, when you talk about sourcing, you talk about growth, and then you talk about exits, You want to make sure that you have a way to do that in a capital efficient manner, both to attract the companies at the right valuation and then also to exit them at the right valuations. Right. And you want the entry point to be lower. You want the exit point to be higher. for us, the consulting side of the house is deal sourcing as it was in the beginning. Right?
That has been consistent throughout. We want access to companies. And now in the investments that we're making, we are the institutional capital in every deal. These are bootstrapped founder led businesses, you know, that our last two deals were a little north of 7,000,000 in revenue and, you know, a mil plus in EBIT and had great extensibility within our networks to be able to grow. So, you know, we get in at a significant discount to market, right? We target at least a 50% discount.
We get that by a trusted introduction to start. We keep that by the fact that we've built a advisor and LP base that can help distribute those companies. Right? So you want to bring in brokers. You want to bring insurance brokers. You want to bring in folks who have been on the carrier side or are on the or who are on the carrier side. You want to do the same thing with sort of the intermediary companies in there as well.
So you get in through the consulting, you can help accelerate through your own technology development shop. So firms have shared services hubs. You know, if you want to and you see a lot of firms are building similar stuff in there to create capital efficiency for their own portfolio to increase their returns. So I think that eventually, you know, for firms like us, you'll end up seeing demand from upmarket firms to want to partner.
And, you know, in many cases, you're seeing platforms being bought up and ingested. Right? So in Philadelphia, there's a group called Touchdown Ventures. They were working and they still are working with corporates mostly, right? Corporates. Yep. So you've heard of the Touchdown Ventures. Know them. They got acquired by a larger wealth management platform to create efficiencies within that portfolio.
So it's a you I believe you'll see more and more of that in the market because, you know, larger pools of capital are gonna want to build in differentiation. And for platforms that have taken time to build that out, I think they'll be acquired and there'll be some unique partnership opportunities there. No, I totally agree. And when we talk about partnerships, I think a big thing is also building communities.
So sounds like you've just built an amazing flywheel and a big hot topic that a lot of the emerging fund managers bring up with me specifically is like how do you build a community of number one co investors, potential LPs. I think building the platform around you is definitely helpful. And then I feel like one thing that I've noticed is there's communities that you have that you don't even realize. So like, you know, there there's actually a group in DC.
They're part of the Singh community and it's I forgot the guy's name but he's like, look, know, I manage the wealth of like a bunch of Yeah, monk prick. prick. Monkeys. Yeah, that's what it is. So he was talking to him and I thought that was great. But then I went to Jersey to see one of my cousins and he's not even in the investment space. But he's like, look, I talked to a bunch of my friends. They're all these highly paid IT professionals.
And we talked about doing like some real estate together. And he's like collectively after just talking to this small group, we realized we have like $10,000,000 I was like, man, you should go out and like launch a fund. But like they don't have the education around like what a fund is, how to structure it. Obviously you need enablement and community around that.
So what some of the learnings that you had alongside just kind of the network that you have in terms of building an engaged community around you? Any tips that you have would be helpful for the community. Yeah. I mean, I would actually draw attention to some of the good habits that you have. So we met for the time and within the conversation, you're asking me, how can I be helpful to you? And you're trying to think of the other person and how you can support them in achieving their own goals.
And I think, naturally, when you take that stance in entering a conversation, you know, you you could bring on an adviser and have very distinct needs for what you require in your business. I need to raise capital. I need to find deals. I need to go out and advise the companies that I'm invested in on how to grow or solve a specific problem that they have. But I think the the art of building out those networks is finding the places where that particular type of work gives your adviser energy.
Tunai was introduced to an individual who was a GP at a larger relative to Us private equity platform. They've built 10,200,000,000 under management over the past quarter century. And this individual rolled off of the platform and is now looking for advisory opportunities, is deploying some of their own capital into the marketplace.
And, you know, we're talking to this person about what we're building, but the stance that we take, like the stance that you took Joel in our conversation was, well, how could we help you? What would give you energy? What are the things that would be supportive for what you're looking for? And then find the intersection of that. Well, this individual has been in the fundraising game for such a long period of time. He's looking to come in and mentor folks within a team.
And by the way, yes, they're going to have introductions to family offices or whomever else you want to connect with. That'll come naturally, but give them the mentorship opportunities.
They have so much that they have to offer to the portfolio companies and to your broader ecosystem, but you need to that energy and optimizing for what gives folks in your community that energy, being incessant and making sure that you're taking care of the people in that community, the rest of it will pay back just fine, right? Because you're telling your story, you're sharing what you need, people are going to want to be helpful.
But you take care of the community the individuals within that, ask them what's going to help them. And it'll go. And again, our conversation, there was, I think, three things that you took away and came back and helped before we did anything. Right? And that's an extraordinary habit mean, one that we look to model ourselves as well. Thank you so much for the kind words. Yeah, I think for me, a lot of the people that I try to surround myself with, people just naturally want to help each other.
And I think if you're of that compounds over time. But I just enjoy doing it. It's great if I can help people. I forgot who it was. I think it was Benjamin Franklin. There's some type of thing it's called like the Benjamin Franklin effect where people actually like you more if you ask them for help. So if you ask me a favor, according to the Benjamin Franklin effect, you like them because you feel like you're contributing somehow. So it's just a weird concept, but I actually believe in it.
I'm able to do something and somebody got some benefit of it, then I'm happy. I think it's really if you do it more so importantly if you don't expect anything in return. You just kind of enjoy either being a super connector or just providing some benefit to society. We got about eight minutes left, a couple more quick questions. What's the DNA of an ideal analyst or principal?
If you're looking to kind of bring somebody on, this is also a hot topic with fund managers that are trying to expand their team. Number one, attract talent but then retain high quality talent. What's been working for you in terms of, hey, know what, I can't do everything, although I want to. So I need someone to kind of like help with sourcing, screening. So what are some of the things that you think is a DNA of a good, maybe mid level or maybe even going on to the partner track investor?
Yeah. So, you know, for us, one thing that we've been very concerted about is making sure that deal flow is something that's inherent to the engine and not something that requires the principle on their networks. Mhmm. So because we have, you know, this specialized consulting team and, you know, IP networks that drive consistent flow on the consulting side, that's what creates deal flow.
So we're not needing to go out by design and, you know, bring in partners who are gonna bring in the deal flow from that perspective. For us, it's about, you know, folks who have the experience in the growth into monetization side of things. Mhmm. You know, I think there's certain muscle that's built around that. Right? You know, who can see the transaction early on, who can Mhmm.
You know, start engaging in the habits and in those conversations where, you know, I'm talking today to the company that's gonna buy us five years from now. And, you know, people say, number one rule of private equity, just do what you say you're gonna do. Right? So you start talking about your plans, and when you deliver on them Mhmm. People take note, and, you know, that will bring bring the opportunity for exit.
So for us, it's, you know, folks who are able to execute at that principle level and move things along. I think, you know, when you're looking at the, you know, sort of mid levels, sort of, you know, modestly experienced hires, I think intellectual curiosity is a big thing for us. Right? Like, people want to understand why things work, how they're able to drive things through because, you know, what we do collectively as an industry is hard. Right?
When you're trying to go in, grow businesses, I mean, there are so many different failure points. And if you don't have that curiosity, you know, when you hit walls, you're, you know, more likely to get discouraged because you're not gonna wanna understand, well, why didn't this work? And, you know, how can I figure out to, you know, do this in a better way? I think having that innate curiosity really drives the the strongest investors in my opinion. Yeah. No. I totally agree.
And then on the flip side, so I I would say, yeah, the if you can fuel it with the platform that you have, that helps. But I would assume you probably need an associate to or maybe heading to principal level to screen those deals, maybe take them to investment committee and then possibly also negotiate those terms and make sure that to your point, the valuation that makes sense for you, but not too crazy to scare them away as well.
So you're kind of competing with other private equity franchises. It's kind of some of that business development and negotiation and then just kind of screening them four or five layers deeper. I mean, obviously, you can use ChatGPT now to write a memo. Right? But but kinda, you know, thinking with the EQ mind and, you know, building that relationship with those founders, I'm assuming. Right? I think that the EQ side of it definitely hits it on the nose there. Right?
Like, you have to be able to build a relationship with the founders that you're getting engaged with and, you know, create an aligned view and path to growth. And I think the the thing that we look to avoid is, you know, the quote, unquote negotiation. Right? It's like, let's build plans together. Sure. We can work on align our interests.
Mhmm. You know, generally speaking, you know, and this is something that, you know, we've seen modeled well for, you know, a large fund of funds that just made an investment into us, and we're, you know, negotiating on the term side. And the individual in charge came to us and just said, look, we're we're gonna give you what you want. Right? And generally speaking, the things that we're looking for aren't gonna be any skin off of your back. So let's just try to work under that vantage point.
So I think it's just about understanding what the other people want. Yes, in some places, they're going have to meet in the middle and do the proverbial compromise. But having that EQ to make sure that, you know, you understand what the goals of the counterparty are and you're able to help them feel like you're partnering to achieve those goals and unlock them, that they're better off with you is the name of the game here and vice versa. Yeah. I totally agree.
What are some learnings that you've had in terms of leadership, terms of kind of building a team and getting people to rally around your mission. That's also a hot topic. It's come up a few times. We've had some managers hire professional coaches to build culture.
So in your mind, I love the brand, I love just the whole vertically integrated approach, how can you guys, or I guess what advice would you give in terms of senior GPs are growing, developing themselves, and trying to build a mission and a culture around them? Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, the whole having a a coach thing is critical. Right? And I think, you know, what is the ecosystem of folks that you want to to build around each other?
So, you know, like, anyone at GP level will sit and have conversations about, you know, where is the unambiguous individual growth that we want to see in each other this year? How can we help each other as partners be able to achieve that? Who do we need around us to be able to open up that knowledge? Right? Whether it be someone who, you know, has some of those reps and has done that before or someone who has some very specific knowledge that you don't have.
And then in some places, right, having that coaching relationship, whether that explicitly be in a coach or in a therapist or whatever people are needing to be able to address their opportunities or challenges, you just set that up. Absolutely. Well, know we got one minute left, we're at the buzzer here. One piece of advice, maybe from a mentor, a family member, maybe just looking back at your career.
If you were to sum it up, any one piece of nugget of wisdom that you got for us before we wrap up here? Yeah. I mean, anything worth building is hard. Right? Focus on the things that you enjoy and do them with fortitude, integrity, conviction. I think it's that simple. Right? You just gotta really love what you do. And if you're not aligned with that, it's just not gonna work. And then if you do love it, then you have to you have to put in the work. You have to put in the grind. I totally agree.
I totally live by that. I mean, I love what I do every day, and I'm pretty sure you do too. Chetan, thank you for making time for me. I know you're super busy, so really means a lot. I'll see you in New York or Philly at some point. Yeah, I look forward to it. Thanks for the time and thanks for having me on your show. All right, take care. Take care.