Contrarian Capital founder Codie Sanchez on leveraging media for deal flow and talent

Contrarian Capital founder Codie Sanchez on leveraging media for deal flow and talent

Codie Sanchez spent 15 years in traditional finance — asset management, private equity, venture capital, running a division of First Trust to a billion dollars in AUM across Latin America — before deciding she would rather own businesses than advise on them. She started with laundromats, used seller financing before anyone in banking was talking about it, and built a vertical integration from laundromat to wash-and-fold to the software powering both. She sold when a PE firm offered an obscene multiple. She would have held forever. Today Contrarian Thinking is the holding company and media engine behind two investment vehicles: Main Street Holding Company (profitable buyouts in home services and professional services, $3-50M revenue) and Contrarian Thinking Capital (a venture fund on its second vintage, ranked number one on AngelList for its 2022 class investing in vertical SMB SaaS). She does around 30 deals a year and sees deal flow at the volume of a top-tier venture firm. In this episode, she breaks down the full model: how the media business drives negative-cost deal flow and is now beating Goldman and KKR for talent, the five-bucket hire-in matrix she uses for every acquisition and every hire, the five mistakes first-time buyers make in the first 100 days, and why she thinks audience is the fourth type of leverage that Naval forgot to name. She also gives a step-by-step answer to how she would buy a cashflowing business in 90 days starting from zero — the Venmo method included. Takeaways: Media as infrastructure isn't a brand play — it costs millions per year to run and functions as a deal sourcing engine, a talent magnet, and a trust shortcut with sellers before the first call The hire-in matrix is a five-bucket scoring framework Codie uses identically for acquisitions and new hires: known talent, experienced talent, sector and scale fit, problem style, and role explicitly — everything gets scored before the meeting, not after The Venmo method: stack rank your own expenses, remove anything too large to buy, and approach the owner of whatever's left — it's how Codie bought four businesses early on Working capital is the most underestimated cost in small business acquisitions: it's how otherwise good deals die in the first 90 days 50/50 partnerships are where dreams go to die — every deal needs one person in charge and defined buyout rights The long-term vision is to double the US small business acquisition rate and cut the 90% failure rate down toward the franchise industry average of 18-20% Chapters: 00:00 — From sovereign wealth funds to laundromats: why Codie left traditional finance and what the first deals actually looked like 06:07 — The two vehicles: how Contrarian Thinking Capital (venture, SMB tech) and Main Street Holding Company (profitable buyouts) fit together 16:11 — The advisory model: why she wanted to bring McKinsey-level services to businesses that can't afford McKinsey — and how 14,000 companies gave her the data to do it 22:38 — The hire-in matrix: Codie's five-bucket framework for scoring people and businesses, and how AI now runs it in real time during calls 28:21 — Why opaque markets are an advantage: the Venmo method, BizScout, and how she thinks about deal sourcing without public financials 33:31 — The FINRA-licensed finance exec posting about laundromats: the bet on audience as the fourth type of leverage, and why the biggest PE firms only came around a year ago 39:08 — What media actually delivers: deal flow at a16z volume, immediate seller trust, and talent that's beating Goldman and KKR 44:07 — The five mistakes first-time buyers make, the J-curve every buyer needs to model, and why learning the language of deal making matters even if you never buy a business

The #1 in US PE investor deal flow: Acquisition.com's CEO Sharran on their media-led HoldCo

Sharran Srivatsaa left Goldman Sachs after a client told him: to make what I made on this exit, you'd have to close that deal 100 times. He reverse mortgaged his house, bought a 28-agent real estate brokerage in Beverly Hills, and grew it 10x to over $3 billion in five years before selling to Douglas Elliman. He then took Real from a $200 million valuation to $1.2 billion in 30 months. Now he's president and incoming CEO of Acquisition.com [http://Acquisition.com] alongside Alex and Leila Hormozi, building what he calls the Disney of business: a house of brands on top of a permanent capital flywheel. In this episode, Sharran breaks down how Acquisition.com [http://Acquisition.com] actually works — the three lenses (operating companies, SMB tech bets, asset-backed real estate), the HoldCo/OpCo structure, and why media as infrastructure creates negative customer acquisition costs in several of their businesses. He also gets into the deal flow reality (500 qualified inbounds in 48 hours from four social posts), how AI has cut their analyst headcount by 90%, and three investment themes they're actively pursuing: multimodal delivery, SMB required services, and service-as-software. A rare inside look at a model most people in private equity haven't figured out how to copy. Takeaways: Permanent equity changes the math: when you remove the exit pressure and combine it with near-zero CAC from media infrastructure, gross margins and talent access look completely different from traditional PE The Disney analogy is structural, not aspirational: Alex generates money models, Leila owns media infrastructure, Sharran builds the growth infrastructure that makes both work at scale Acquisition.com [http://Acquisition.com] gets more inbound deal flow than the entire US private equity industry combined — and they now use AI to do the filtering work that used to require a full analyst team Service-as-software is the next bet: taking professional expertise (lawyers, insurance brokers, consultants) and scaling it through software instead of headcount The negotiation to join Acquisition.com [http://Acquisition.com] was three bullet points in an email — the more important document was the one that spelled out how the friendship would be protected Chapters: 00:00 — From Goldman to operator: the client dinner that changed Sharran's career, and the reverse mortgage his wife didn't know about 06:07 — How Teles Properties grew 10x: why sales-led growth beats product-led growth at scale 11:58 — Permanent equity, not private equity: how Acquisition.com [http://Acquisition.com]'s model actually works and why the Disney analogy is more than a metaphor 25:38 — Building growth infrastructure: the HoldCo/OpCo structure, three investment lenses, and how ACQRE ($300M in multifamily) fits in 33:31 — Media as infrastructure: why negative CAC is real, and what it means for talent, margins, and deal access 39:08 — 500 inbounds in 48 hours: how four social posts generated a full MBA on a fintech thesis in one week 44:07 — AI inside Acquisition.com [http://Acquisition.com]: analyst headcount down 90%, interactive deal dashboards on demand, and the push to make the whole team AI-first 47:01 — Three sectors they're betting on: multimodal delivery, SMB required services, and service-as-software

From deal-by-deal to exit: Cyril Aboujaoude on building a €100M European mid-market platform at 25

In 2020, Cyril Aboujaoude and his two co-founders were in their mid-twenties, scattered across France, the Middle East, and Tahiti, watching VC valuations detach from any logic. They decided the real opportunity was the opposite: cashflow-positive, niche European manufacturers with succession problems and no obvious buyer. They signed their first term sheet in the spare bedroom of Cyril's parents' apartment. Five years later, Tioopo has €100M in AUM, eight portfolio companies, two real estate developments, over 500 employees, and its first exit — OG Medical, a four-company rollup in surgical implant manufacturing that returned a 30%+ gross IRR, with 70% of value created through EBITDA growth. In this episode, Cyril walks through the full journey: how the deal-by-deal model worked with two families backing them before growing to 80, the economics of the early deals, and the thesis that connects leather goods, hypercars, and orthopedic surgery supplies (it's about know-how, not sector). He gets specific on the deals: CDV, found because a co-founder was helping someone move boxes next to a leather shop; Technic, the only manufacturer in the world doing what it does for hypercar interiors, growing 40% in year one; Vectain, adding crash simulation to build a full engineering-to-manufacturing stack. He also covers the deal that went wrong — losing their biggest customer, who acquired their competitor instead — and why the business is now debt-free and paying its first dividend because of how they responded. Takeaways: The founding thesis in 2020 was a direct reaction to the VC bubble: real cashflow, real barriers to entry, healthy multiples — and it proved right when the VC tide went out Every single deal has its own origin story: the first came from a co-founder helping someone move boxes next to a leather shop; Technic came from a banker who moved to corporate finance and remembered to call; none came from a formal process The one-line investment thesis: high know-how, producing a high-end product in low volumes, sold directly to businesses — by definition customer-concentrated and niche within a larger industry Losing 33% of revenue overnight because your biggest customer acquired your competitor is survivable — if you stress-tested it before buying and the business was built right Chapters: 00:00 — The biggest myth about buying SMEs, and what Cyril had to unlearn in five years 06:07 — How Tioopo started: three co-founders in three countries during lockdown, a name from a Tahitian surf wave, and the first term sheet signed in a spare bedroom 13:03 — From deal-by-deal to TP1: how 2 families became 80, and why they chose to get their own CSSF registration rather than rent one 16:28 — The investment thesis: what glass manufacturing, luxury leather goods, automotive, and surgical implants actually have in common 22:38 — AI at the fund level: CRM as the brain that doesn't forget, and why they stopped enforcing tool adoption 29:41 — CDV, the first deal: a leather goods manufacturer found through a sneaker shop, quadrupled in three years, and a factory built from scratch 39:08 — OG Medical: the rollup thesis, 70/30 split between EBITDA growth and multiple expansion, and what made the exit process work 47:44 — Technic and Vectain: hypercar interiors, 40% growth in year one, and building a full engineering-to-manufacturing stack 56:42 — Operations-first investing: two days a month minimum per company, one operating partner on-site four days a week, and the limit of the model 1:02:45 — Walking in at 25: how Tioopo navigated the credibility gap with sellers twice their age 1:07:44 — Rapid fire: max debt at 2.5x EBITDA, losing a customer who became a competitor, and why Poland looks like France did 20 years ago