奥兰多·布拉沃如何打造私募股权领域最成功的公司之一

拥有私募股权领域最出色的业绩记录之一。

With one of the best track records in private equity.

科莫·布拉沃管理着1790亿美元的资产。

Como Bravo manages $179,000,000,000 in assets.

科莫·布拉沃以惊人的速度发展壮大。

Como Bravo has grown at a blistering pace.

去年，该公司向投资者返还了超过130亿美元。

Last year, the firm returned over $13,000,000,000 to investors.

2019年2月，奥兰多成为首位波多黎各出生的亿万富翁。

In 02/2019, Orlando became the first Puerto Rico born billionaire.

优秀的私募股权公司确实能跑赢公开市场。我们的业务就是将伟大的创新者转变为伟大的企业。

Private equity firms, the good ones, definitely beat the public markets. We are in the business of turning great innovators into great businesses.

女士们先生们，请欢迎图拉马·布拉沃的奥兰多·布拉沃。

Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Tullamah Bravo's Orlando Bravo.

再见。谢谢你来。你好吗？

See you. Thanks for coming. How are you?

大卫。很高兴见到你。

David. Good to see you.

对于那些不知道的人，让我先提供几个数据点，然后我们就直接进入故事，因为奥兰多有一个...

For those that don't know, let me just do a couple of data points and then we'll just jump into the story because Orlando has an in

等等。我们真的要无视J Cal正在做的那些美德信号吗？好吧。关于什么？你这是在搞什么美德信号？

Wait. Are we are we seriously gonna ignore whatever virtue signaling J Cal is doing Okay. Over What? What's this virtue signal you got going What are

你现在在做什么？

you doing right now?

这不是美德。这是我最好的朋友Tulsi从她办公室给我妻子的官方围巾，我从我妻子那里偷来的。所以我戴着它

This isn't virtuous. This is My bestie, Tulsi, gave me an official scarf from her office for my wife and I stole it from my wife. So I'm wearing it

可能昨天没看到，但杰森昨天被国家情报总监Tulsi Gabbard碾压了。他非常生气。她在谈论俄罗斯骗局。他非常生气。他拿着手机谷歌搜索和Grok尝试获取

and probably didn't see it yesterday, but Jason was run over by the director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, yesterday. He was so tilted. She was walking through the Russia hoax. He was so tilted. He had his phone googling and grokking trying to get

然后然后他

and and he

而他唯一能想到的就是这个，而且真的是用这种语气说的，保罗·马纳福特怎么样？然后没人知道

and all he could come up with is this, and literally in this tone, what about Paul Manafort? And nobody knew what

那是什么意思。是的。没人知道他是谁。包括她自己。

that meant. Yeah. Nobody knows who he is. Including her.

好吧。所以

Okay. So

阿奇马尔多·阿莫尔。但你为什么老要针对杰森？你应该对他好点。他可是你最好的朋友。

Archimald Amore. But what do you gotta beat up on Jason so much? You should be nice to him. He is your bestie.

抱歉。继续。奥兰多有一个非常鼓舞人心的故事，但让我先介绍一下Thoma Bravo的背景。Thoma Bravo成立于2008年2月。所以那是多久？

Sorry. Continue. Orlando has an incredibly inspiring story, but let me just set the backdrop of what Thoma Bravo is. Toma Bravo started in 02/2008. So what is that?

到现在已经17年了，现在管理着略低于200,000,000,000美元的资产，这真是不可思议。但有两个数据让我震惊。六月份，你们基本上通过一系列基金工具筹集了344亿美元，我想了解这怎么可能实现。然后你们现在已经拥有或投资了500家公司，其中许多是我们可能经常互动和需要打交道的大型软件公司。但在深入所有这些细节之前，我认为最鼓舞人心的是，你是波多黎各的孩子，来自波多黎各的一个小镇。

Seventeen years now and now has just a little under 200,000,000,000, which is incredible. But here are the two stats that stunned me. In June, you raised $34,400,000,000 in basically, like, a set of fun vehicles, which is I wanna understand how that is even possible. And then you basically have owned now or 500 companies, and many of the big software companies that, you know, we probably interact with and have to deal with. But before we get into all those details, I think what's inspiring is you are a child of Puerto Rico, a small town in Puerto Rico.

我之前给你发过这条信息，但我还是想让你告诉大家，一个来自真正意义上的偏远地区的家伙——我这么说没有恶意——是怎么走到今天的？这是怎么发生的？你的父母，你的家人，这究竟是怎么做到的？

And I've texted you this before, but I just wanted you to tell everybody, how does a guy and I'm not I'm saying this in a nice way, from literally the middle of nowhere, get here? How does that happen? Your parents, your family, like, how does that happen?

顺便说一句，非常感谢邀请我。而且我不确定，当我们有这个话题的时候，我们该怎么讨论严肃的事情和私募股权，

Well, by the way, thanks so much for having me. And I'm not sure how we're supposed to talk about serious stuff and private equity when when when we have this,

但我会，我会

but I'll I'll

你坚持下来了。

You persevere.

哦，我，我，我来说吧。听着。你问这个问题让我很感动。因为当飓风玛丽亚袭击波多黎各时，对我来说一切都好像停止了，因为我最好的朋友在那里，我的家人在那里，我的表亲们，我整个成长的环境都在那里。我第二天就坐飞机赶过去了。

Oh, I I I got this. Look. That touches my heart that you asked that question. Because when Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico, kind of everything stopped for me because my best friends are there, my family's there, cousins, my my whole upbringing. I got there on a plane the day after.

那你当时在哪里？我在旧金山。

And where were you at the time? I was in San Francisco.

好的。

Okay.

我们收到波多黎各的消息，说一些避难所，特别是靠近我家乡马亚圭斯的一个，只剩下两天的食物和水供应。那里有很多孩子等等，波多黎各政府在服务这些城镇方面遇到了困难。所以我们说，我们会从旧金山出发，给你们带一大批食物和水，我们明天就到。他们真的出现了。当我落地时，我三个好久不见的高中最好的朋友，其中一个问我，哦，现在你都在做这些商业上的事情了。

And we had gotten a message from Puerto Rico saying there's some shelters, particularly one that was really close to my hometown of Mayaguez, that had only two days supply of food and water. And there were all these kids and everything else, and the government of Puerto Rico, they had they had trouble serving these towns. So we said, we'll go from San Francisco and bring you a bunch of food and water, and we'll we'll be there tomorrow. And they actually showed up. When I landed, three of my friends that I hadn't seen in a while, my best high school friends, one of them asked me, oh, now you're doing all this business stuff.

这是怎么发生的？我说，嗯，概率上来说我们中总得有一个走运。在所有人中，总有一个，我是说，这有一定的概率。

How did that happen? And I said, well, the odds are one of us had to get lucky. Out of out of everybody here, one, I mean, that that there's there's some odds to that.

但这是不是你父母给你的那种东西，他们像是说，你必须去，你必须做点什么？还是

But was that something like your parents gave you where they're like, you have to go, you have to do something? Or

是的。现在，在每一个转折点，我告诉你我是怎么走到这里的，我从未创造过任何新东西，但我一直有我妈妈，她是一位古巴移民，对她来说，我就待在那里感觉不对。她总是，你知道，她会把我放在必须经常去圣胡安打网球的位置，网球是一项个人运动。然后如果我打得好，我记得我10岁时在委内瑞拉的加拉加斯打了我的第一个锦标赛，那时我就看到了财富。1982年的委内瑞拉加拉加斯是个相当不错的地方，你在这种高档俱乐部打球，然后如果我打得真的很好，我就能去佛罗里达打球。

Yes. Now, at every turn, I tell you this, how exactly I got here, I've never created anything new, but I always had my mom, who was a Cuban immigrant, and for her, just me staying there, it didn't feel right to her. She was always you know, she would put me in positions where I would always have to be traveling to San Juan to play tennis, the sport of tennis individual. Then if I did well, I remember I played my first tournament when I was 10 years old in Caracas, Venezuela, and I saw wealth back then. Caracas, Venezuela in 1982 was quite a place, and you played in this fancy club, and then you if I do really well, I get to play in Florida.

所以她总是，总是给我那种路线图。我很幸运我没有好到能成为职业选手，我去了所以我就进入了商界。但然后在工作中也是一样，你知道，我有两位最好的导师，我唯一给自己 credit 的是在年轻的时候我真的倾听。我有纪律，我会 kinda 吸收一切。

So she was always, always kinda giving me a road map for that. I was lucky that I wasn't that good to go pro, I went to so so that I went into business. But then the same thing at at work, you know, I had the two best mentors, and the only thing I give myself credit for is at a young age I really listened. I had discipline and I would kinda kinda take it all in.

你也是一位不可思议的导师的受益者。昨天我们听到这些很棒的故事，你知道，Vlad 试图在 Climate Corp 找工作，没能在 Robinhood 开始。你知道，著名的，我在 Facebook 的 HR 负责人介绍了她当时的男朋友 Ben Silberman 给我。我们面试了 Ben。最终没有雇佣他。

You were also the beneficiary of an incredible mentor. And there's these great stories yesterday we heard, you know, Vlad tried to get a job at Climate Corp, couldn't start at Robinhood. You know, famously, my HR lead at Facebook introduced me to her then boyfriend, Ben Silberman. We interviewed Ben. We ended up not hiring him.

他立即创办了 Pinterest。而你从斯坦福毕业时，只得到了一份工作 offer，来自一个基本上只有三个人的公司。你想给我们讲讲那个故事吗？

He immediately started Pinterest. And when you graduated from Stanford, you only got one job offer from, like, a three person firm, basically. Do you wanna tell us about that story?

是的。你知道，在1997年，私募股权还不多。风险投资业务也不大，不会雇佣很多人。现在，我想补充一点。我当时面试了一家当时最大的私募股权公司，公司负责人还花时间见了我。

Yeah. I would you know, at 1997, there was not not much private equity. And the venture business, you didn't hire a lot of people, it was also small. Now, want to add this to the story. I got one interview with one of the largest private equity firms at the time, and the head of the firm spent time with me.

他是个非常非常好的人。但你知道他说了什么吗？那是1997年，他说我们这个行业已经没什么机会了，市场已经被占据了。现在我们的公司规模是他们的好几倍，未来对于少数对私募股权感兴趣的人来说也会发生同样的事。你们会来创办公司，凭借美国精神和创业精神，以及在正确的时间出现在正确的地方——因为我们开始做软件，那时候做软件并且有这么多顺风助力，想不成功都难。所以我没找到工作。

Very, very nice guy. But you know what he said, and this is 1997, there's not much opportunity in our industry anymore, and the industry is taken. Now our firm is multiples bigger than they are, and the same thing will happen in the future for the few of you that may be interested in private equity. You'll come by and create a firm, and the American spirit and entrepreneurialism, and being at the right place at the right time because we started doing software and it's hard not to do well if you started doing software back then and had all this wind behind your back. So I didn't I couldn't get a job.

机会不多。然后卡尔·托马雇佣了我。过程最后挺有意思的，有几家私募股权公司为我开设了做拉丁美洲私募股权的职位。但我拒绝了。我在南方待的时间太长了。

There weren't many. And then Carl Tomah hired me. And at the end of the process, this is interesting, there were a few private equity firms that kind of opened up a position for me to do Latin American private equity. And I'm like, no. I've I've spent too much time in the South.

财富在北方。我，你知道，我想在美国北方做科技。那才是我想要的。卡尔很棒。

The money's in the North. I I, you know, I wanna do US in the North. Out tech. That's what I wanted to do. And Carl was great.

他说，如果你想做科技，那不是我们做的业务，但你可以开始研究，我们会帮助你的。

He said, if you wanna do tech, that's not something we do, but, you know, start looking at it and and we'll we'll help you.

那么，请告诉我们你如今为建立这项业务所做的决策。你们有多少人？如何有效管理2000亿美元？如何募集340亿美元？你跟人们怎么说？我甚至无法理解这个数字。

And so so just tell us about how the decisions you've made now to build this business. How many people do you have? How do you run 200,000,000,000 effectively? How do you raise 30 how do you what do you tell people to raise 34,000,000,000? I don't I don't even I don't even comprehend that.

我觉得你能理解。得了吧。你们做得相当不错。我感谢你的话。不过没关系。

I think you do. Come on. You guys have done pretty well. I appreciate that. But it's okay.

因此，我们非常、非常专注于保持团队规模非常小。Tomah Bravo内部大约有230人。原因是如果团队太大，你就会变得内部聚焦，开始沉迷于内部对话。正如我常说的，交易不在办公室里，公司不在办公室里，收购你公司的买家也不在办公室里。所以你必须要始终对外面向。

So we have we are very, very focused on keeping the team very small. So we have about two thirty people at Tomah Bravo within the organization. The reason is if you have too big of a team, you become internally focused and start dreaming about conversations internally. And as I always say, the deal's not in the office, the company's not in the office, and the buyer of your company's not in the office. So you always have to be outward facing.

第二件事是我获得了巨大的导师指导的好处，我的资深合伙人也一样。我可以告诉你很多关于1998年卡尔·托马斯花时间陪我处理一桩我们即将失败的交易的故事。我当时会想，你为什么花那么多时间在那个CEO和我身上，在他家厨房的桌子上？他是想教我如何销售，想教我如何做交易。

The second thing is I got the benefit, and so did my senior partners, of incredible mentorship. I can tell you so many stories about Carl Tomas spending time with me in 1998 on a deal we were going to lose. And I would be like, why did you spend all that time with the CEO and me on his kitchen table? He wanted to teach me how to sell. He wanted to teach me how to do a deal.

那真是太不可思议了。所以如果我们有太多这样的人，我们就无法接触到下一代领导层。所以这是我们理念的一部分。那么我们如何筹集那笔资金呢？听着，我们的第一笔交易，一直都是一步一步来的。

And that was just incredible. So if we have too many of those, we can't touch the next generation leadership. So that is part of our philosophy. Now how do we raise that money? Look, our first deal, it's always been one step at a time.

我们的第一笔交易是5000万美元。第二笔交易的企业价值是1亿美元。第三笔是Datatel，价值2.5亿美元。直到2010年2月，我们才在硅谷收购了一家公司。那是SonicWall，我们在Intake Private支付了5.5亿美元。

Our first deal was 50,000,000. The second deal was a 100,000,000 enterprise value. The third was Datatel at 250,000,000. We didn't buy a company in Silicon Valley till 02/2010. That was SonicWall that we paid 550,000,000 in Intake Private.

那是我们首次涉足真正的高增长网络安全业务。所以都是一步一个脚印。曾经有一段时间我们无法筹集10亿美元，但现在我们有足够的追随者，你知道，人们可以……

That was our first foray into real cyber in in higher growth businesses. So one little step at a time. There was a time that we couldn't raise a billion dollars, but now we have enough of a following that, you know, What people can what's

的作用

the role

私募股权在美国经济中的作用，你认为呢？它应该扮演什么角色？

of private equity in The US economy, do you think? What is the role that it should play?

我认为它是一个强大的变革推动者。它在某种程度上类似于风险投资，重要的是你所创造的回报，而且你与资本来源有着惊人的一致性。他们给你资金，如果你实现了回报，你就可以继续经营。如果他们给你资金而你未能实现回报，无论我们规模多大，我们都会逐渐失去这些并退出业务。这种一致性至关重要，因为你是企业如此重要的变革推动者。

I think it's a great change agent. It's it's a business in a way similar to venture where what matters is the returns that you put up, And you have incredible alignment with the sources of capital. They give you the money, and if you make the return, you can stay in business. And if they give you the money and you don't make the return, no matter how big we may be, we slowly lose that and and we're out of business. And and that that alignment is so important because you're such a big change agent to companies.

这些软件公司本就不该由同一群人持有三四十年。管理层会疲惫。运营是令人精疲力尽的。担任首席营收官是令人精疲力尽的。它们转手次数越多，你就可能遇到有新想法、新视角的人，也许是一个在当时对公司正确的新视角。

These software companies are not meant to be owned by the same group for thirty or forty years. Management gets tired. It's exhausting to run. It's exhausting to be a CRO. And the more they trade hands, you have somebody with maybe a new idea, maybe a perspective, and maybe a perspective that was right for the company at that time.

而那个买家，比如私募股权，可以假定它会非常具有企业家精神并尝试做一些事情。所以

And that buyer, like private equity, can assume it'd be super entrepreneurial and try to do something So

不过，奥兰多，在此基础上，它显然与投资者利益一致。但也许你能谈谈更广泛的社会、就业方面的 alignment？私募股权的声誉有时有点过于残酷。如果你听说，‘哦，一家私募股权公司买了我最喜欢的品牌’，或者‘我们的初创公司被一家私募股权公司收购了’，那感觉就像是，‘好吧，他们要裁掉一半的人，会有裁员，或者也许这个品牌会背上债务并被彻底拆解出售。’那么，关于这种可能与私募股权相关的公关危机，哪些是公平或不公平的？

Orlando, though, the just building on that, it clearly has alignment with the investors. But maybe you could talk a little bit about the broader alignment with society, jobs, the reputation of PE sometimes is a bit too cutthroat. And if you hear, oh, a PE firm bought my favorite brand or our firm got bought by a our startup got bought by a PE firm, it's like, okay. They're gonna cut half the people and there's gonna be layoffs or maybe this brand is gonna get saddled with debt and absolutely gutted for parts. So what's fair or unfair about that sort of PR crisis maybe there is with PR with with PE?

那在八十年代、九十年代，也许两千年代初是100%公平的。私募股权现在与那完全无关。大约50%的私募股权交易量在科技领域。我们做这个。我们非常专注。

That is 100% fair in the eighties, nineties, and maybe early two thousands. Private equity has nothing to do with that now. About 50% of the private equity deal volume is in technology. We we do that. We're we're very narrow.

我们只做软件。如果你看看过去十二、十三年里，自SaaS在05年变得不可逆转之后我们做过的任何软件交易。是的，你支付的是收入的七到八倍，而为七到八倍收入融资的债务也许只有收入的两倍。所以你向公司投入了五到六倍的股权，30%的债务，70%的股权。如果你不建设和发展那个业务，尤其是如果它规模很大，没有人会从你那里买它。

We only do software. If you look at any software deal we've done in the last twelve, thirteen years after SaaS became irreversible in o five Yeah. You're paying seven to eight times revenue, and the financing on seven to eight times revenue is maybe two turns of revenue. So you're putting in five to six turns of equity in the company, 30% debt, 70% equity. If you're not building and growing that business, especially if it's big, nobody's gonna buy it from you.

过去，对于那些老派的交易，如果你看回报，今天三分之二的回报将来自业务的现金流，即你的收益率，只有一点点来自终值。现在反过来了。大约三分之二或更多是终值增值，而你赚得非常少

It used to be that for those old school deals, if you look at the return, two thirds of the return will come today from the cash flow of the business from your yield, and a little bit in the terminal value. It's flipped. About two thirds or more is terminal value appreciation, and you make very little

所以你是一位成长型投资者。

So you're a growth investor.

关于你的收益率。我们确实是。我们必须这样做，因为你看，我们幸运的是，在我个人犯了很多错误之后，从97年到互联网泡沫破裂。卡尔·托莫当时差点解雇我，这也是事实。他在他七十岁生日时谈到了这件事，并且给了我另一次机会。

On your yield. We really are. We have to to that because look, the the lucky thing we had was after I personally made a lot of mistakes, '97 to the Internet bubble bursting. Carl Tomo was gonna fire me, and this is also true. He he talked about it on his seventieth birthday, and and he gave me another chance.

然后我说，好吧，我不擅长我们当时在做的事情。我要去找现有的管理层，真正成熟的公司，以及软件（在二月）。那时你可以买到比私募股权喜欢的其他所有类别（比如广播、有线电视、户外广告等等）都更便宜的软件经常性收入。所以合伙人们说，当然可以。

And I said, okay, I'm not good at what we were doing then. I'm going to go for existing management, really established companies, and software in February. You could buy recurring revenue in software cheaper than in all the other categories that private equity liked. Think about radio, cable, whatever outdoor advertising, anything. So the partnership said, sure.

让我们试试看。先用小规模的试试。那时你可以买得很便宜。但后来发生的事情是，在2010年2月（金融危机之后），我们大多数做这些交易的竞争对手（当时这些小规模交易的竞争非常激烈）都退出了这个行业，因为现在软件变得超级昂贵。

Let's try it. Let's try it with something small. At that time, you could buy cheap. But what happened is in 02/2010, after the financial crisis, most of our competitors that were doing those deals, and it was heavily competitive then for these smaller transactions, they left the business because now software became super expensive.

所以有一个

So there's a

但是我们说，查马德（Chamad），但后来我们说，哦，与其抱怨因为一切都变了而无法再做我们以前做的事，不如说我们现在有财力去买最好和第一名的公司。所以让我们去找那些能够成长的第一名玩家。

But but we said Chamad, but then we said, oh, instead of complaining that we cannot do what we were doing before because everything changes, now we have the wherewithal to buy the best and the number one. So let's go for the number one player that can grow.

所以你在2010年2月开始做了很多这类SaaS交易。当你和你的合伙人在2025年坐下来时，SaaS是否存在被AI从内部蚕食的风险，或者，你知道，它可能会以不同的方式被重建？你今天是如何对其进行风险评估的，这与你在2010年可能采用的方式有何不同？

So you started doing a lot of these SaaS deals in 02/2010. When you sit there with your partners in 2025, is there a risk of SaaS being cannibalized from within by AI or, you know, how it can just be rebuilt in different ways? How do you underwrite it today, which is different from how you may would have underwritten it in 2010?

我们的投资者不喜欢听到这个，对吧？我们的投资者，尤其是大型机构，那基本上就是我们的市场。那些是长期支持我们的人。除了良好的回报，他们需要一致性和可预测性。他们宁愿我们继续做2002年在这些交易中所做的事情。

Our investors don't love to hear this because for right? Our our investors, especially the large institutions, that's kind of our market. That those are our our our people that have backed us for a long time. Besides good returns, they need consistency and predictability. They would rather have us do what we were doing in 2002 in these deals.

我在想，为什么你们不能继续做同样的事情？一切都变了。一是这个行业存在巨大的AI风险，我是说，非常大的风险。有很多垂直领域将会被颠覆。有很多领域非常混乱，你根本不想碰。

I'm wondering, why can't you just keep doing the same thing? And it all changes. One is there is a big risk of AI in this business, I mean, in a big, big way. There are so many verticals that are going to get disrupted. There are so many areas that are very confusing and you don't want to touch.

所以这极大地限制了空间。即使你相信我们所相信的，即在企业领域这需要时间，因为我们总是说技术是渐进的，而非革命性的，因为我们的客户购买这些东西是为了成本。他们想要投资回报率，他们需要看到计划等等。但一是存在巨大的颠覆，那是另一个我们不涉足的所有这些领域。我们必须不断学习和更新自己。

So it limits the space significantly. Even if you believe what we believe, which is in the enterprise it's going to take a while, because we always say technology is evolutionary, not revolutionary, because our customers are buying this stuff for cost. They want the ROI, and they need to see the plan and everything else. But one is there's a big disruption, that's another all these areas we don't get into. And we have to keep learning and updating ourselves.

这是公司里的年轻人也必须做的大量工作。但我们还有另一个同样大甚至更大的挑战，那就是如果你看看我们的发展轨迹，并不是某天我们醒来就说，哦，我们能做一笔100亿美元的交易。不。我们从50开始那条轨迹，在2010年2月，我们连续做了30亿美元的交易。我们收购了BlueCode，将其私有化，收购了Deltic，将其私有化，我们从Intuit收购了Digital Insight。

That's a lot of work that the young people in the firm as well will have to do. But we have another equally big or even bigger challenge, which is if you look at our trajectory, it's not like one day we woke up and said, oh, we can do a $10,000,000,000 deal. No. We we started 50 that trajectory, in 02/2010, we did $3,000,000,000 deals in a row. We bought BlueCode, we took it private, Deltic, we took private, we bought Digital Insight from Intuit.

当那些交易成功后，我们做了一笔25亿美元的交易，变成了Dynatrace。那是Compuware。当那笔交易成功后，我们做了一笔55亿美元的交易，Adina昨天还在这里。那是我们卖给纳斯达克的业务，并且成功了。但现在我们正在做100亿美元的交易。

When those worked, then we did a 2 and a half billion dollar deal that became Dynatrace. That was Compuware. Then when that worked, we did a 5 and a half billion dollar deal, which Adina was here yesterday. That was the business that we sold to NASDAQ and that worked. But now we're doing $10,000,000,000 deals.

我们必须以250亿美元的价格出售这些交易才能赚钱。哇。我们在这里的替代方案，我们必须承销的是，以比可比公司大幅折价的方式进行IPO，而我们最初购买那家公司时是支付了比可比公司高出30%的溢价。所以我们一开始就相当于亏了50%。要做到这一点，你必须...

We have to sell those for 25 to make money. Wow. Our our alternative here, what we have to underwrite is an IPO at a big discount to the comps when we paid a 30% premium to the comps to buy that company in the first place. So we kind of start 50% in the hole Well to do that. So you have to anyway

我想问你这个问题，因为我问过我的一位朋友关于你的事，他当时正和你竞争波音的业务。你最近以105亿美元收购了波音的航空电子业务，我想我们都很关心这个，因为这有望提高飞行安全等等。但我们待会儿可以谈谈这个。但他说，与奥兰多竞争极其困难，因为他们（他）如此准备好购买他想买的东西，他并不真的，你知道，在边缘上斤斤计较。就像是，让我们找到一个公平的价格，然后我们就交易。

I wanted to ask you this question because I I asked a friend of mine about you and he was competing with you to get the Boeing business. And you you bought the Boeing avionics business recently for 10 and a half billion, which I think all of us care about because, hopefully, it'll improve flight safety and all of that other stuff. But we can talk about that in one second. But he said, Orlando's incredibly difficult to compete with because they're so he's so ready to buy the thing he wants to buy and he doesn't really, you know, nickel and dime at the edges. It's like, let's find a fair price and we'll just transact.

这让其他所有人都很难与之竞争。当你有了这种信念时，你是否愿意投入那么多资金，并说我们会想办法解决这个问题？

And it makes it very hard for everybody else to compete with. When you get that conviction, are you just willing to just basically put that much money on the line and say, we're gonna figure this out?

是的。这有点像沃伦·巴菲特的心态，对吧？他已经了解所有公司，知道他想买哪些，当机会出现时，他不会斤斤计较。他会迅速达成交易。这是你拥有的心态吗？

We are. That's sort of Warren Buffett's mentality, isn't it? That he he already knows all the companies, he knows which ones he wants to buy and when they come up, he doesn't nickel and dime. He just quickly works out a deal. Is that something is that a mentality that you have?

100%是的。这一切都与拥有一个小团队相契合。我们还有一个小的投资组合。所以在每一只基金中，我们会购买10到12家公司。我们努力追求我们试图拥有的两个核心竞争力。

100%. It all it all fits together with having a small team. We also have a small portfolio. So in every fund, we'll buy 10 to 12 companies. We we strive for the two core competencies that we try to have.

一是买入最好的并运营最好的，并专注于这一点。在我们基金的三到四年投资期限内，我们不能坦然地说当时有30家最伟大的公司可供购买。对吧。所以这是一点，第二，如果我们有一个30家公司的投资组合，我们不能坦然地说我们能尝试用我们从一位不可思议的导师那里学到的一切去影响管理层。这是我们能处理的极限，所以我们必须全力以赴。

One is buy the best and operate the best, and just focus on that. In a three to four year time frame for our funds, for investing our funds, we cannot say with a straight face that there are 30 of the greatest companies that were available to be bought at that time. Right. So so that's one and two, we cannot say with a straight face that we can try to influence management with everything we learned from an incredible mentor if we had a portfolio of 30. That's as much as we as we can handle, so we have to go for it.

现在，我想补充一点，我喜欢私募股权业务的一点是那些交易。因为在投标前一小时你与合作伙伴做出的决定真的非常、非常重要。这真的很能说明问题。

Now, I do wanna add that what I love about the private equity business, one of the items, is that those deals. Because the decisions that you make with your partners an hour before the bid is is really, really important. It's really telling.

那么，你能带我们深入了解这个波音资产的幕后情况吗？我认为它触及了我们所有人，即使我们大多数人甚至不知道它的存在。

Well, can you take us behind the TikTok of this Boeing asset? It's think it's like a it touches all of us even if most of us don't understand that it even existed actually.

嗯，基本上，没有Jepus及其系统，你可能就无法驾驶飞机，对吧。这笔交易的开始方式是，我们给波音的CEO打了电话，实际上是给他发了封邮件说，嘿。我们可以买下这个部门，我们愿意出这些好价钱。所以对方产生了一些兴趣。流程开始了，大约有15家私募股权集团参与其中，都是非常优秀的集团。

Well, it it basically runs maybe you cannot fly an airplane, right, without Jepus in and and its system. And the way the deal started, we called the the CEO of Boeing, actually sent him an email saying, hey. We could buy this division and we're paying these these good prices. So there was some interest. The process started, and there were about 15 private equity groups, all excellent groups involved in the deal.

但波音为什么要出售其航空电子业务呢？我想，让我先从这个开始。

But why would Boeing want to sell its avionics business? I guess, let me start with that.

是的。这看起来相当核心。

Yeah. It seems pretty core.

这这这是个好业务，我我很高兴他们做出了这个决定。

It it it's a good business and I I'm happy that they decided that.

所以你是说

So you're saying

那是一个

that was a

糟糕的决定。我们只是说说那那是我们是一个

bad decision. We're just saying saying that that was We're a

战略理由不会回答。波音想出售其航空电子设备，是希望其他飞机制造商也能使用那个航空电子系统吗？

the strategic rationale not gonna answer. For Boeing to wanna sell its avionics Is the idea that other plane manufacturers can then use that avionics system?

我来回答一下，也许你可以。是的。我认为波音正处于一个极其艰难的境地，公司内部有很多分散的事情在发生，他们必须进行一次真正的合理化调整。我们能做好哪几件事？所以，你知道，我们的朋友布莱恩·尤特科被任命负责新飞机开发。我想，你知道，你可以猜到接下来会发生什么。

I'll give my answer, maybe you can Yeah. I think Boeing is in this incredibly difficult position where there's a lot of diffuse things that were happening inside of the business, and they had to make a real rationalization. What are the few things we can be good at? So, you know, one of our friends, Brian Yutko, was put in charge of new plane development. I think, you know, you can guess what's gonna happen there.

这是最明确的战略赌注。你知道，让7.37项目（或这个Max项目）重新上线，那是一个明确的赌注。但当你这样做时，你有各种债务之类的东西需要清理。有时你不得不卖掉，而且顺便说一句，你是对的。你的直觉是对的，因为给我打电话的朋友们基本上都说这是波音内部的宝石资产。

That's the clearest strategic bet. You know, getting the $7.03 7 or this the max program back online, that was a clear bet. But when you do that, you have all kinds of debt and stuff that you just need to clean out. And sometimes you have to sell and and by the way, you are right. Your instincts are right because my friends who called me basically said this is the gem asset inside of Boeing.

我的意思是，他非常客气，没有，是的。所以是的。但Jepsen是每个人都使用的东西。美联航、达美航空，每个人都需要这些信息来准确飞行。它曾经是波音的生意，现在是Orlando的生意了。

I mean, he's being very gracious by not, yeah. So yeah. But Jepsen is this thing that everybody uses. United, Delta, everybody needs this information to fly accurately. And it was Boeing's business, and now it's Orlando's business.

好的。所以它是我们的

Okay. So It's our

基金的生意。我希望它是你们基金的生意。

fund's business. I wish it was It's your fund's business.

Orlando，我们不买东西。我们通常是零年、第一年、第二年的投资者，帮助建设事物，但萨克斯和我看着我们的朋友埃隆收购了推特，那真是大开眼界。那也是我认为他第一次以那种重大方式收购东西。进入这些科技公司的剧本是什么？而且如你所说，你有疲惫的管理层。

Orlando, we we don't buy stuff. We're we're generally year zero, year one two investors who help build things, but Saxe and I got to watch our friend Elon buy Twitter and that was quite eye opening. It was also the first thing that I think he ever bought in in in a major way like that. What is the playbook for coming into one of these technology companies? And you have, like you said, tired management.

也许还留在这家公司的人是那些找不到其他工作或可能没那么有野心的人。当你进去时，第零天、第一天、第二天是什么样子？剧本是什么？你知道，第一、第二、第三，我们在头三十天必须做这些事情？

Maybe the people who are still staying at this company are the ones who couldn't find other work or maybe weren't as ambitious. What's it like day zero, day one, day two when you get in there? What's the playbook? What's, you know, one, two, three, we gotta do these things in the first thirty days?

几乎总是这样。我们试图收购公司，而杰斐逊公司在这方面处于中间状态，因为他们的利润率约为25%，但我们认为这个业务可以像我们以50%以上利润率卖给纳斯达克的Denza那样运营，像软件公司一样运营并进行正确的投资。我们的操作手册是这样的：你会见一家公司，通常是上市公司，它们按收入倍数交易，因为它们盈利能力不强。我们的心态是，我们试图将我们所说的优秀创新者转变为优秀的企业。

It's almost always the same. We try to buy companies, and Jefferson is a tweener in that because their margins were about 25%, but we feel that business can be running like a Denza that we sold to Nasdaq for 50% plus, running it like a software company and making the right investments. The playbook is this. You meet with a company, usually a public company, that trades for a revenue multiple because they're not that profitable. And our our mentality is we try to turn what we call a good innovator into a good business.

我们与管理层进行了所有这些会议，在充分听取他们的意见后，我们会回到他们那里，与他们一起制定一个削减成本的计划。所以有这样一个因素，因为你必须达到一定水平的基本收益才能负担得起这笔交易。我们基本上试图做的是，从第一天按收入倍数（比如我们以六到七倍的价格购买）转变为第四天按EBITDA倍数估值。如果该公司增长了20%，而你实现了50%的利润率，你就做到了。然后你会问，可比公司是怎样的？

We have all these meetings with management, and after we listen a lot to them, we come back to them, and we have we put together a plan with them to cut cost. So there is that element because you have to get in the game with a certain level of fundamental earnings to be able to afford the deal. You you you basically are what we're trying to do is turn a revenue multiple day one, say we buy it for six or seven times to an EBITDA multiple in day four. If that company grew 20% and you achieve a 50% margin, you've done that. And then you say, what are the comps?

这个东西值多少钱？是20倍市盈率，还是25倍市盈率？20倍市盈率大约是15倍EBITDA。在30%的杠杆率下，即使不考虑这一好处，你也可以使资产价值翻倍，同时偿还部分债务，这就是你创造回报的方式。因此，在这个过程中，我们与管理层非常公开地交谈。

What is this thing worth? Is it a 20 PE, a 25 PE? A 20 PE is about 15 times EBITDA. You could double your asset value without the benefit of that at 30% leverage, which you pay down a bit, and that's how you create your return. So we talk to management very openly during the process.

甚至在我们赢得交易之前，即使他们不会喜欢我们，这样更好。我们说，嘿，我们能否制定一个计划，让你们能够做出正确的投资决策，但同时削减公司15%的成本？在私募股权交易中，谈到变革推动者，如果你在交易完成时不这样做，为什么之后要震惊员工呢？第二、三、四年。由于每个人都认为新所有者会带来变革，交易给了你立即变革的机会。

Even before we won the deal, even if they're not going to like us, it's better. And we say, hey, can we put together a plan where you can make the right investment decisions, but can you cut 15% of the cost of the company? At closing, the deal in private equity, talk about the change agent, if you don't do that at closing in private equity, why are you going to shock the employees afterwards? Years two, three, four. The deal, since everybody's thinking there's a new owner that's going to provide change, gives you the opportunity for immediate change.

正如我的导师马塞尔·伯纳德曾经说的，他是我见过的最伟大的运营者，在摩托罗拉工作了三十五年，管理不同的部门，那是一所卓越的管理学校。无论你多么盈利，你总能削减10%。无论你多么不盈利，削减超过20%都很困难，因为你必须改变人们的决策方式、管理层的互动方式等等。

Now as my mentor Marcel Bernard used to say, he was the greatest operator I've ever met, thirty five years at Motorola, running different divisions, and that was an exceptional school of management. No matter how profitable you are, you can always cut 10%. No matter how unprofitable you are, it's difficult to cut more than 20%, because you have to change the way people make decisions, the way management interacts, etcetera.

你如何评估人才梯队？这实际上是戴维在推特收购期间非常擅长的事情。我们坐在一个房间里，他说，那么，谁在工作中表现出色？然后埃隆说，谁对这项业务绝对关键？我就走到白板前，画了四个象限。

How do you evaluate the talent stack? That was something that actually David was exceptional at during the Twitter acquisition. We sat there in a room and he said, well, who's exceptional at their job? And then Elon said, and who's absolutely critical for this business? And I just walked up to the whiteboard and I drew four quadrants.

卓越的，必不可少的。然后还有这种卓越但不必要的。

Exceptional, essential. And then there was this sort of exceptional but not essential.

然后我们我们当时有一个

And we we then had a

埃隆证明了即使裁掉推特85%的员工，它依然能正常运行。对吧。

Elon proved that you could cut 85% of Twitter and it would still work just fine. Right.

所有记者都在说，推特随时都要崩溃了。然后他们每天都写同样的报道。推特一宕机，他们就大惊小怪说，哦不，是你手机网络断了。但实际情况根本不是这样。

And all the journalists were like, Twitter's gonna go down any day now. And then they were like, every day, they would write the same story. Twitter went down and be like, oh, no. You lost your Internet connection on your phone. And they'd be like, no.

就是上不去啊。然后你会发现，对啊。重新输一遍WiFi密码，其实推特根本就没宕机。这真的很疯狂。

It's it's not coming up. And it's like, yeah. Yeah. Reput the Wi Fi password in, and it never went down. It was pretty crazy.

但当你接手这些老牌企业时，如何评估人才？特别是已经运营了十年二十年的企业？

But how do you assess talent when you're coming into one of these legacy businesses, ten years, twenty years into the business?

历史告诉你很多信息。你要明白不是每个人都擅长所有事，关键始于领导者。领导得力，一切皆顺；领导不力，万事皆休。你不能绕过他们去处理销售和产品等事务，因为现在根本没有任何进展。

History tells you a lot of that. So you're trying to identify not everybody's good at everything, and it starts with a leader. If the leader is good, everything is good. If the leader is not good, nothing is good. You don't wanna work around them to deal with sales and product and stuff because nothing is going on now.

优秀领导意味着什么？对吧？这里面涉及很多判断标准。公司是否达成预订目标？还是未达标？

What does a good leader mean? Right? There's so many judgments that come in. Is the company hitting bookings? Is it missing?

他们的客户服务好吗？客户留存率如何？他们是如何做决策的？我们总体上看重的是，因为没有人是完美的，就是支持他们擅长的地方。我们喜欢为公司进行附加收购。

Are they good at customer service? What's their retention? How do they make decisions? What we look for overall, because nobody's perfect, is to back what they're look what they're good at. We love to do add on acquisitions for our company.

所以我们喜欢一次性削减成本的原因是，剩下的就是关于预订增长和附加业务。我们不想过多重新讨论利润率。我们希望未来实现盈利性增长。把这件事搞定，然后继续前进。领导者可以站在全体员工面前说，我们需要这样做。

So the reason we like to take out the cost once is the rest is about bookings growth and add ons. We don't wanna revisit margin too much. We want profitable growth going forward. Let's be done with that, and then let's go forward. The leader can stand up in front of the entire employee base and said, we needed to do this.

这笔交易可能给了我们勇气去做需要做的事。让我们去，让我们去发展业务。所以我们审视一位领导者时会说，如果他们思想开放，关心数字，拥有员工和客户的追随，并且真正了解业务，这是我们非常非常愿意合作的特质。在我们所做的所有变革中，我们在行业中相当另类，因为我们首先尝试与现有人员一起实施。有时，你知道，我们在这方面会犯错，他们改变了主意，但我们会尽力这样做。

This deal probably gave us the courage to do what we need to do. Let's go let's go build the business. So but we we look at a leader and we say, if they're open minded, if they care about numbers, and if they have the following of their employees and customers and really know the business, that is something that we really, really, really try to work with. With all the changes we make, we've been pretty contrarian in the industry because we first try to make them with the existing people. And sometimes, you know, we make a mistake on that and they change their mind, but we we try to do that.

在做交易之前，弄清楚资产质量的秘诀是什么？你会去和客户交谈，做背景调查吗？你会去找那些辞职并创办公司的员工面试他们吗？比如，在甚至让他们知道你对他们感兴趣之前，肯定有一些技巧来评估一家公司。这些技巧是什么？

Before you do a deal, what's the secret to figuring out how good the asset is? Do you go talk to customers, backdoor references? Do you go find the employees who quit and started companies and interview them? Like, there's got to be some tricks to assess a company before you even let them know you're interested in them. What are those tricks?

所有这些。所有这些。通常，我们也拥有该公司的竞争对手或合作伙伴。而且我们通常认识他们很久了。比如，我们最近宣布以125亿美元进行Dayforce交易。

All of that. All of that. Now, we've usually owned a competitor or a partner to the company as well. And and we've usually known them for a long time. Like, we recently announced that we were doing the Dayforce deal for 12 and a half billion.

我的合伙人Holden Spade在2008年2月会见了Dayforce的首席执行官，我们跟踪这家公司很久，一直观察它。它什么时候失误？什么时候达到目标等等？此外，一旦你签下他们，或者处于公司向你提供所有原始数据的过程中，你就有大量信息来做这些选择。例如，如果一家公司的支持毛利率非常低，它就不能说自己的产品真的非常好。

My partner, Holden Spade, met with the CEO of Dayforce in 02/2008, and we tracked that company for so long watching it. When does it miss? When does it hit its numbers and everything else? Also, once you sign them up, or are in a process where the company is giving you all their raw data, you have so much information to make those choices. Like for example, a company cannot say that it has really, really good product if its gross margins on support are very low.

我们可以让技术人员来评估这一点，我们团队中有这样的人，他们会审视架构、人才等所有方面。但然后你会问，为什么你们的支持电话这么多？

And we can bring technology people to assess that, and we have that on our team, and they look at the architecture and the talent and everything else. But then you go, how come your support calls are so high?

这是个糟糕的产品。

It's a bad product.

是的。它它它一切都契合。我们有很高的客户留存率，支持服务利润率也很高。比如说，就拿支持服务来说。很多人倾向于离岸支持，而现在也许人工智能会介入，就不再需要那样做了。

Yeah. It it it all fits together. We have great retention, great margins on support. It's like, for example, take support. Many people look to offshore support, And now maybe AI would would get on on that and there's no need for that.

我们的理念是彻底消除打电话求助的需求。对吧。能否在产品层面做些什么？没错。所以我们正在全面评估这些。

What we say is eliminate the reason for the call altogether. Right. Is there something you can do in product? Right. So we're evaluating all that.

我们热爱它。我们对此非常着迷。

We love it. We geek out over it.

显然，有几家私募股权公司现在是资本市场的关键支柱。黑石、阿波罗、KKR、凯雷，它们都已上市。它们是多元化策略公司，是巨大的支柱。我的意思是，你们建立了一项了不起的业务。

There's a handful of PE firms, obviously, that are now linchpins of the capital markets. Blackstone, Apollo, KKR, Carlyle, they're public. They are multistrat. They're huge pillars. And, I mean, you've built an incredible business.

你们有信誉去做这件事。是否有动力去做？是否有动力超越技术焦点去扩展？如果没有，你们如何保持专注？因为这，你知道，你们是怎么做到的？

You have the credibility to do it. Is there an impetus to do it? Is there an impetus to kind of grow beyond that technology focus? And if not, how do you stay in your knitting? Because it it you know, how do you do that?

这种纪律性从何而来？

How where does the discipline come from?

看。我认为我们对投资者群体和同事都非常纯粹，这两者同时兼顾。对他们来说重要的是回报。所以对我们来说，发展业务的关键是获得资金、达成交易、优化交易。上市对我们这些方面没有任何帮助。

Look. I I think we are very pure to our investor base and our colleagues, the two of them at the same time. What I say matters to them is the return. So what matters for us to grow the business is get the money, get the deal, improve the deal. Going public does not help any of those things for us.

这是第一点。第二点是，我真的很感激，真的非常感激我的导师们。我的意思是，卡尔·托马斯把公司交给了我和我的合伙人，并且指导我们。所以我们想为下一代做同样的事情，而且我们实际上认为，当时机到来时，通过投资下一代会比上市获得高估值、风光一天然后不知后续如何更能赚钱。所以目前我们打算保持现状。

That's number one. Two is we're really I'm just so grateful, I really, really am for my mentors. I mean, Carl Tomas gave me and my partners the company, and he mentored us. So we wanna do the same thing for the next generation, and we actually feel we'll make more money by investing behind the next generation when that time comes than by going public and having a great day and a great multiple, and and then what? So so far we're just gonna we're just gonna stay where we are.

在我们结束前，我想再问一个关于波多黎各的问题，就像我们开始时谈到的。你是第一位波多黎各亿万富翁。我理解这显然只是一个数字，但波多黎各应该成为第五十一个州吗？你知道，特朗普在谈论格陵兰岛之类的。

As we wrap, I I just wanna ask you a question about Puerto Rico again, where we started. You're the first Puerto Rican billionaire. I understand. Just a number, obviously, but should Puerto Rico become the fifty first state? You know, we we have Trump talking about Greenland, whatever.

你知道，我们有这些雄心。波多黎各人民似乎希望与美国建立更深入的关系。他们处于这种中间状态，看起来非常不公平。

You know, we have these ambitions. The people of Puerto Rico seem to want to have a deeper relationship with America. It seems profoundly unfair that they're in this, you know, sort of middle state.

是的。那是个分裂严重的地方。我小时候，波多黎各的选举投票率曾经达到90%左右。选举时整个岛屿就像一场庆典，在支持现状的政党和支持建州的政党之间进行。现在支持建州的政党已经壮大不少，而一些在联邦地位下的税收优惠已经逐渐消失。

Yeah. It's such a divided place. The turnouts in elections in Puerto Rico, when I was a kid, used to be like 90%. It's a whole festival in the island when elections happen between the party that wants the status quo and the party that wants statehood. Now the party that wants statehood has grown quite a bit, and some of the tax incentives are being kind of in this commonwealth status have gone away.

我要说一些以前从未说过的话，我真的相信如果美国允许的话，波多黎各成为一个州会更好。

I'm gonna say something I've never said before, and I do believe it'll be better for Puerto Rico to be a state if The US would allow that.

我支持。我完全赞成。

I'm for it. I'm here for it.

女士们先生们，奥兰多·布拉沃。谢谢，伙计。哇。

Ladies and gentlemen, Orlando Bravo. Thanks, man. Wow.

谢谢。太棒了，我很快会再和你聊。太好了

Thank you. Incredible, I'll talk to you soon. Great

干得好。谢谢。是的。太神奇了。

job. Thank you. Yeah. Amazing.