Buyers and Builders

What does it take to acquire companies, build a serial acquisition platform, and never sell?

My guest today is Giuseppe Balzano, founder of Novaterra, an Italian permanent capital holding company acquiring niche industrial businesses with defensible technology and intellectual property.

At just 30, Giuseppe has secured $25 million in equity commitments, pursued two acquisitions, and set out to build an industrial group that could endure for generations.

We discuss why Italy's overlooked industrial champions present an extraordinary opportunity, how to find businesses with near-monopoly positions, the realities of raising permanent capital, and why patience may be the greatest competitive advantage in investing.

We also explore Giuseppe's unconventional journey from venture capital to business ownership, his approach to acquiring and operating companies, and his ambition to build something his children might one day own.

TIMESTAMPS
0:00 Building a company he never wants to sell
3:56 The mentor who shaped his long-term thinking
7:20 Why he left venture capital to build something permanent
9:42 Why Italy's industrial businesses are overlooked
12:29 Solo founders, co-founders, and playing the long game
15:05 How he learns and makes investment decisions
18:29 Inside his first two industrial acquisitions
23:37 The next acquisition: water management
24:25 Growing businesses without chasing growth
29:44 Finding acquisition targets other buyers miss
34:14 How to win the trust of family business owners
40:07 The brutal reality of raising $25 million
44:22 The numbers behind his fundraising process
48:12 Deal structuring: debt, equity, and ownership
50:09 Managing acquisitions without replacing CEOs
57:22 Founder incentives and building an ownership culture
1:02:49 Why finding great people is harder than finding deals
1:05:11 Building a legacy despite the odds
1:10:49 The road to a self-funding industrial compounder

This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions.

What does it actually take to build a world-class roll-up?

After spending a day at the RollUpEurope Serial Acquirers Summit with some of Europe’s most active serial acquirers, we break down the operating playbooks behind groups that have completed hundreds of acquisitions—and the lessons that matter whether you’re pursuing acquisition #1 or #50.

This episode covers how great acquirers choose markets, build proprietary deal flow, win sellers without simply paying the highest price, keep founders engaged after closing, integrate without destroying what made a business special, and eventually turn a collection of companies into an institutional platform.

The examples are remarkable: one group has acquired roughly 680 pharmacies. Evergreen has completed roughly 160 acquisitions. Another platform deliberately stopped acquiring for nearly a year after its first two deals because the founders wanted to understand the operating model before scaling it. Later, they completed an additional 18 acquisitions.

Roll-ups look like finance from a distance. Up close, they are a combination of sales, psychology, operations, hiring, negotiation, capital allocation, culture, and endurance.

TIMESTAMPS
0:00 Inside Europe’s most active roll-up builders
2:36 Find the pain you actually enjoy
6:11 Why the best roll-ups start extremely niche
7:22 Your acquisition pipeline is part of the research
9:23 Seller psychology: why the highest price doesn’t always win
11:58 Don’t scale a roll-up you don’t understand
13:09 M&A is not value creation
15:08 Integration, capital partners & building an institutional platform
18:54 Reputation as an economic asset
20:08 The roll-up flywheel

This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions.

My guests today are Deiya and Dean Pernas, founders of Pernas Research, who have compounded capital at roughly 30% annually over the past nine years.

We explore their private equity-like approach to public markets: understanding businesses from the inside out, judging management teams and capital allocation, and finding inflection points before they show up in the financials.

We also discuss their “motor” investing framework, why trajectory matters more than absolute quality, lessons from poker and bankroll management, and how they think about position sizing, averaging down, and knowing when a thesis is broken.

TIMESTAMPS
0:00 The opportunity in public markets
2:49 From poker and engineering to investing
6:08 Private equity lessons for public investors
11:35 The Motor investing framework
14:40 Finding potential before the numbers
17:02 When to sell
19:20 How to judge great CEOs
23:39 Capital allocation: good and bad
29:59 Trajectory over quality
33:32 Finding inflection points
36:45 Incentives and shareholder alignment
41:48 Poker lessons for portfolio management
45:16 Position sizing, averaging down, and surviving mistakes

This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions.

My guest today is Sam Allsopp, co-founder of Neal Roofing and Waterproofing, a home services company he started with Andrew Neal in 2020 and has since grown from zero to roughly $50 million in annual revenue—all organically.

What makes Sam’s story interesting is that he didn’t come from roofing. Before starting Neal Roofing and Waterproofing, he ran a marketing agency and worked with more than a dozen roofing companies, where he began to see firsthand why some contractors could turn leads into profitable growth while others struggled. That experience eventually became the foundation for Neal Roofing and Waterproofing: build a world-class customer acquisition and sales machine, then pair it with excellent execution and fulfillment.

In this conversation, Sam breaks down how the business changed at every stage—from the first few million in revenue to building management layers, professionalizing the sales organization and eventually creating the systems required to operate at $50 million of scale. We go deep on marketing spend, lead generation, speed-to-lead, booking rates, sales capacity, one-call closes, compensation plans, hiring ahead of growth and the KPIs he watches every day.

We also explore how Neal Roofing and Waterproofing has remained profitable while growing aggressively, why Sam prefers opening new markets from scratch over acquiring competitors, how he thinks about incentives and accountability across the organization and why he believes the underlying playbook can work far beyond roofing.

TIMESTAMPS
0:00 From zero to a $50M roofing company
1:11 The real business: customer acquisition + sales
3:25 $1M → $2.5M → $6M → $14M → $25M → $36M → $50M
8:33 What changes at every stage of growth
15:01 The KPIs Sam tracks to run the business
17:52 Facebook, PPC, LSA & the marketing mix
19:15 Why they contact leads in under a minute
23:15 Building the sales machine & one-call close
27:24 The operating system behind $50M of roofs
33:07 Growing fast while staying profitable
38:48 Hiring, incentives & performance pay
40:34 Why they prefer organic growth over M&A
46:14 How Sam actually learned sales & marketing

This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions.

My guest today is Felix Jander, co-founder of Arsipa, a buy-and-build company focused on occupational health and safety.

Felix and Stefan began exploring the idea during COVID, studying roughly 60 niche industries before choosing a fragmented market with significant room for consolidation.

Arsipa went on to complete more than 40 acquisitions, grow to over 1,100 employees across 60+ locations, and surpass $100 million in annual revenue. In 2024, the company partnered with Warburg Pincus, with Felix remaining invested in the business.

We discuss how they chose their market, built proprietary deal flow, and used highly personalized outreach to generate reply rates as high as 80%. Felix explains why the first acquisition matters so much, how Arsipa financed its early deals, and the operational playbook behind recruiting, finance, pricing, integration and culture.

He also shares the story of splitting with his original co-founder, finding his next partner, and transitioning from operator to investor.

This is a practical conversation about acquisitions, capital allocation and building an institution from a collection of small businesses.

Please enjoy my conversation with Felix Jander.

TIMESTAMPS
0:00 From zero to 40+ acquisitions and $100M+ in revenue
3:33 Why boring businesses beat venture-backed hypergrowth
5:08 How they chose one market from 60 niche industries
7:40 The 1% conversion math behind proprietary deal flow
11:08 Raising the first pool of acquisition capital
18:00 Buying businesses without brokers
20:41 The first acquisition changes everything
23:04 Equity first, debt later
24:58 Turning acquisitions into an operating company
28:13 Losing a co-founder in the middle of fundraising
32:27 Selling to Warburg Pincus and rolling equity
40:08 The roll-up integration and value-creation playbook
44:32 The economics of scaling a roll-up
48:06 What changes after a major private equity investment
51:24 Felix’s advice for aspiring buy-and-build founders
54:18 From operator to investor
56:12 Final lessons from building Arsipa

This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions.