Joey Levin - Building an Anti-Conglomerate

**Patrick O'Shaughnessy** (0:00)
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**SPEAKER_2** (1:52)
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**Patrick O'Shaughnessy** (2:17)
My guest today is IAC CEO, Joey Levin. IAC is a unique business in that it's a holding company which builds world-class digital businesses. Since Barry Diller created IAC, it has produced 11 public companies, including Match Group, Expedia and Live Nation. Today, the business is comprised of category leaders like Angi, Dotdash, Meredith and care.com.
Joey joined IAC in 2003 and became CEO in 2015 We talk about why he tries to avoid centralization between businesses, what he's learned from Barry Diller, how he approaches capital allocation and so much more.
This conversation serves as an excellent reminder that there is no one formula to company building. Everything is idiosyncratic and requires its own best decisions. Please enjoy this great discussion with Joey Levin.
So Joey, I think this conversation has to begin with a high level description of the unique nature of IAC. It's this anti-conglomerate conglomerate. Those familiar with it tend to be obsessed with the model and really into it. But for those that aren't, I think a neat opening question would be how you think about the operating system of the business itself. It's quite distinctive and unique. How would you describe the OS of IAC to a professional investor that isn't familiar with the business yet?

**Joey Levin** (3:32)
We are in the business of building businesses and everything that's part of IAC supports that, and there are others, every business is in the business of building their business and some are in the business of building multiple businesses. The best ones have to be in the business of building multiple businesses.
Two things that are pretty unique about IAC is number one, our time horizon, and number two, the reality that we don't try to keep all of our businesses under one umbrella.
We take our best and most successful businesses and instead of saying what many do, which is let's hold on to that business, we say, okay, it's ready and we give it to our shareholders, which doesn't mean we get rid of it. We give it to our shareholders through a spinoff and then those shareholders get to own it directly and be a part of that business directly and continue or not on their own directly.
And those two differences together are pretty unique in our operating model.
Organizing on a forever timeline is a very different structure than a lot of capital is organized. Most capital is organized with a finite thing. You go in in this period and you come out in that period. And with those incentives, people are organized to do things. What do you do in the in period and what do you do in the out period? For us, there is no out period. Even when we're spinning something off, it's not like we say, okay, well, we got rid of it at just the right point to get rid of it. We're only giving it to ourselves. It has to be doing well. It has to be doing well forever. So organizing on that timeline is unique. And then the ability to say with the leaders of our businesses, you can grow up here in this house and hopefully learn a lot and grow up well in this house. And then at some point, you probably get too big for the house and you want out of the house and maybe we want you out of the house. And that's okay too. And you can have a thriving life outside of the house as families do, as teenagers do, et cetera. It's a very natural thing.