Brad Jacobs - Think Big and Move Fast

**Patrick O'Shaughnessy** (0:00)
Welcome to this Classics episode. Classics are my favorite episodes from the past 10 years, published once a month. These are end-of-one conversations with end-of-one people. Brad Jacobs' simple principle of think big, move fast is one I think about often. He is a true force of nature, and I hope you enjoy this episode.
Hello and welcome, everyone. I'm Patrick O'Shaughnessy, and this is Invest Like the Best. This show is an open-ended exploration of markets, ideas, stories and strategies that will help you better invest both your time and your money. If you enjoy these conversations and want to go deeper, check out Colossus Review, our quarterly publication with in-depth profiles of the people shaping business and investing. You can find Colossus Review along with all of our podcasts at joincolossus.com. Here's a puzzle. What do OpenAI, Cursor, Perplexity, Vercell, Plaid and hundreds of other winning companies all have in common? The answer is that they're powered by today's sponsor, WorkOS. If you're building software for enterprises, you probably felt the pain of integrating SSO, SCIM, RBAC, Audit Logs and other features required by big customers. WorkOS turns those deal blockers into drop-in APIs with a modern developer platform built specifically for B2B SaaS. Whether you're a seed stage startup trying to land your first enterprise customer or a unicorn expanding globally, WorkOS is the fastest path to becoming enterprise ready and unlock growth. It's essentially Stripe for enterprise features. Visit workos.com to get started or just hit up their Slack support. Yes, they have real engineers in there who will answer your questions fast. WorkOS allows you to build like the best with delightful APIs, comprehensive docs and smooth developer experience. Go to workos.com to make your app enterprise ready today.

**SPEAKER_2** (1:39)
Patrick O'Shaughnessy is the CEO of PositiveSum. All opinions expressed by Patrick and podcast guests are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the opinion of PositiveSum. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions. Clients of PositiveSum may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this podcast. To learn more, visit PSUMVC.

**Patrick O'Shaughnessy** (2:08)
My guest today is Brad Jacobs. Brad's resume is remarkable. He's founded seven companies, all of which are billion-dollar or multi-billion-dollar businesses. He's done 500 M&A transactions and raised $30 billion of debt and equity capital. Currently, he's the executive chairman of XPO, a commercial trucking company that he started in 2011 and has grown into one of the largest logistics businesses in the world. He's also written a book that will be out in January titled, How to Make a Few Billion Dollars. What a title. Brad's energy is infectious and our conversation unpacks his strategies for M&A, his propensity for speed, and methods for earning team buy-in. Please enjoy my great conversation with Brad Jacobs.
So Brad, it's hard to know where to begin this conversation because you have built so many interesting businesses across so many different industries. So maybe the uniting thread is what are you looking for when searching for the next opportunity? Because there's definitely through lines to what you've done, but there's also, you've made pretty big jumps. I think maybe you'll make another jump and maybe you'll never stop. What is it that you're looking for in an industry or a market or an area as you're sussing out what to do next?

**Brad Jacobs** (3:20)
In a word, scalability. So the only way I know to create huge value is to create a company that five and ten years after you started is much, much larger. And the easiest way to do that is through M&A. Of course, you have to have organic growth as well. But I look for an industry where it's large enough. If I want to create a company that's tens of billions of dollars in revenue, then I have to do an industry that's hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue. If I want to consolidate an industry, there has to be things to buy. There have to be things to buy on accretive terms. There have to be things that we can buy at lower multiples than what we're going to trade at. I look for industries where there's synergy as you get bigger, there's economies of scale, there's benefits of size, that as you buy things and get bigger, you just don't get bigger, you get better. You spread your S&A out more, you get better technology, you get a better sales force, you get better training.
So the advantage of the size, you have a better cost basis, you please the customer better, you have more density, more advantages of being a national network or maybe even a global network. Basically come down to scalability.