Episode 130: Bobby Ocampo of Blueprint Equity on
the Missing Middle and Hands-On Value Creation

Episode Transcript   

 

Shiv Narayanan (00:09.87)

All right, Bobby, welcome to the show. How's it going?

Bobby Ocampo (00:12.006)

Hey, good Shiv. Thank you for having me.

Shiv Narayanan (00:13.996)

Yeah, excited to have you on. So why don't we start with your background and Blueprint and let's go from there.

Bobby Ocampo (00:19.996)

Sure. So I'm one of the founders and managing partners here at Blueprint Equity. We're an early growth equity fund. I'll go into that in a second Shiv. Focused on investing in largely bootstrapped vertical software, AI native businesses all over the world. Our companies tend to be small, growing quickly, anti-venture in their approach to the world, meaning they've gone to some scale.

without venture capital, right? And we try to help professionalize the org largely around scaling, go to market and surrounding talent, the management team with talent around that function. So we're investing out of our second fund now of 200 million. We raised and closed our third fund of 333 million earlier this year, but we have not activated it yet. And yeah, we invest largely minority investments anywhere from

five to 20 million initially. And yeah, that we're here headquartered in San Diego, have our team of 20, 21 people here and just try to do our thing.

Shiv Narayanan (01:29.484)

Yeah. And that fund size is obviously smaller than some of the larger funds. So talk about your focus. Like how are you guys, first of all, raising capital and what types of companies are you guys investing in?

Bobby Ocampo (01:40.828)

Yeah, raising capital, like so when we first started Shiv, like as you know, any first time manager, not a lot of people really want to back you. So you scratched and clawed and kind of got there, but not all the way. But it was largely high net worth single family office capital. In Fund 2, we had fortune in Fund 1 to back some great companies and that it became a lot more institutional, the fund.

So we raised from with our existing LP base of family offices from endowments, fund to funds, entities like that. And then fund three, it's also become a lot more institutional. So we've including our fund two LPs included a handful of foundations, hospital systems, insurance companies, entities like that. For what we look for, for a founder, I mean, it's not, they're all,

pretty similar in terms of the ideal client profile. It tends to be a founder who's been in domain for five to 15 years and they witnessed a problem firsthand and are now solving that problem with their business. They tend to be either a technical founder or a product rich founder, meaning that they're really in the weeds of that.

Frankly, we haven't really invested in a lot of folks who've come into the industry recently or been a really great salesperson, tends to kind of product-led. And then the last thing, there is like a glaring gap around go-to-market. So it's great that these companies have gone to some scale. So one, two, three, four, five million in revenue on a great product and the network and the founder. But as you know better than anyone, Shiv, that to get to 20, 50 million in ARR,

that doesn't work for you to go to a conference and just expect business to come through, people dropping their business card in your fishbowl and you just call them right after. Like to get to scale that doesn't work. And so what we try to do here with our value team is to recruit and implement and deploy and execute on the early playbooks to make companies are really scale ready.

Shiv Narayanan (03:54.39)

Yeah. And that's an interesting stage to invest in as well, because a lot of companies at that stage don't have a lot of foundational elements built out. They may have product market fit, but they don't have foundational product marketing or go to market in place or the right amount of budget being invested into these areas. And so how are you differentiating between companies that let's say just need more structure or the right people and potential investment?

versus companies that are maybe that is their potential. They've capped out and how are you differentiating the winners from the losers of that stage?

Bobby Ocampo (04:29.774)

Yeah, you know, it's hard to Shiv to assess like right when we get in, like where I mean, they're in our minds are all winners to start, right? They could not have gotten there without the founder and great product. But but it is a losing strategy to believe that these companies are to be able to achieve the growth rates that interest people like you and me in the future. I would say if I had to categorize like, of course, I think all of our babies are winners, right? They're all winners when we invest.

Now the question is, can we make them winners as they get bigger? And so, but it's all a very consistent problem where they might have one salesperson, probably not. There's zero dollars or maybe call it zero to a couple hundred thousand dollars is spent in marketing ever in the history of the company. If there is a salesperson, it tends to be a part-timer or someone related to the CEO. It's not.

This person usually doesn't have any software experience, but they're great in the domain. So if you do have to count them as losers in one category, it's just that these companies are not scale ready and are going to lose. They're going to tap out at some point, right? And it's time now to go from, OK, get all my lead gen comes through a fishbowl of business cards to how do I make this like a proper scale ready business?

I'm not sure if I answered your question, but it's a common thread among all of our companies when we first invest.

Shiv Narayanan (05:51.593)

Yeah.

Yeah, definitely in the right direction. I on the winner's comment, I guess what I'm trying to think for is that there are certain companies that are capable of scaling past a certain point. And as an investor, you kind of have to figure out, this company is at 2 million or 3 million in ARR. It actually has the potential to get to 20 or 30. And so what is the process for figuring that out? Because a lot of companies, even we encounter them at 5 million or 10 million where the founder led sales has built the business and

Maybe they run the old playbook of SDRs and AEs where although that's changing a little bit now with AI, but still, that's the driving force behind the business. And there is a element of like this business will cap out at some point. And so what are the characteristics that you're looking for beyond just like product market fit or net revenue retention being at a certain level?

Bobby Ocampo (06:47.484)

Sure, sure. It's a great question. And again, I think every company should have a Shiv because you work with so many companies, right? Every company is different. I think one of the things we see early on that have translated to like really great success early, I think one is a strong referral inbound channel still coming through, right? So, you know, our best companies where it could be a quarter to half new business still comes from their current customer referrals, right?

I think we really like to see that. Two, as you know, being a marketing expert, the funnel continuing to build. And so I think where we've gone wrong is when, we expect an AE just to produce because we know the model. But if you don't have leads to feed him or her, it doesn't matter how good of a salesperson they are, right? So if we're seeing sort of the funnel build and build.

and customer referrals continue to be strong. I think those are two very, very, very good things. And the third thing is that intangible is the company culture. And with that, employee retention. I mean, I joke around here all the time, Shiv, but if you have a product with A grade retention, you have great culture and a team of people that never want to leave the company,

you can almost write a blank check into that company. It's going to work out, right? Like I know whatever wants to leave a winner. And if you've got great product and great retention, I mean, we don't have to do anything. Like you just let it set and forget it. But those three things are all hard to achieve as you know.

Shiv Narayanan (08:26.123)

Yeah, I think the employee retention one is a great one because there's just so much value in institutional memory and people growing through the business and knowing the history and knowing why you pivoted a certain way or why certain customers buy from you. And a lot of companies lose that over time, especially if they over hire or they hire too quickly or they have the wrong talent on the team. And so then they have to kind of replace management or even the CEO gets replaced and you kind of lose some of that, some of that secret sauce. So how much of

How much of the time are you spending on, one, keeping the team together, and then also on the executive team? Because if, let's say, you're a two, three million, usually the CEO or the founders are playing all the key seats, but they may not have a true executive team, and they need to kind of build that.

Bobby Ocampo (09:12.528)

Yeah, I'd say like first off, Shiv, like we, when we invest, we are fully believing that we can take it all the way with that founder. So it's really important for us to have that alignment and believe in him or her because if not, it's especially since we're minority investors, right? There's almost nothing you can do if you don't have that early and you can't affect change being a minority investor. It's not going to work out, right?

So I'm forgetting your question, I'm sorry. I think having that, and yeah, I think that with our model, too, Shiv, because we tend to be more involved than your typical fund, right? If you ask founders on a one to 10 how involved we get, where a one is, OK, we zoom into your board meetings, right? Then a 10 is like, we're coding for you and selling for you. We tend to be anywhere from a six to an eight.

Meaning that we are trying to help and effect change in three or four core areas as much as we can. And so if the founder is also reluctant to that, that's also, we try to set out pretty early because if we don't have that upfront, it's not gonna work. And we can't augment the team around the founder, that is all we're trying to do. We're trying to empower the founders. So you really need his or her buy-in early.

here are all the things we're gonna do for you. You're good with that, right? By the way, we're not gonna charge you like every other PE firm. If that founder does not wanna surround himself or herself with that, that unless they're like Travis at Uber or Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook, right? Which aren't frankly, aren't the kind of companies we're backing, then it's not gonna work out for us. So it's really important for us to qualify that pretty early.

Shiv Narayanan (11:06.217)

Yeah, that's a great insight. I guess with that then, talk about the involvement, because you said six to eight, that's definitely more involved than, let's say, a lot of firms would get involved. So walk us through that. What are some of the most common areas that you're trying to support these companies with?

Bobby Ocampo (11:23.659)

Man. So I hit a little bit on earlier, Shiv, was around, there's no go-to-market infrastructure when we first invest, right? So the first thing we do is we take our lead of the value team, who's like an exited CEO, who's built sales teams from zero to 70 million. And we come in pre-investment and just say, okay, here's our assessment of the org right now, if there is one. Here, all the shortcomings, right? Which could mean you have no marketing pipeline, zero.

your AE does great if there is an AE, but it's only because of this and we're going to hire three to five more and we're going to recruit around that. Are you good? You're good with these, these people are going to find for you. The next thing would be okay, you're here. Okay. How do we make sure these three or five are really successful? And a lot of our companies too, like you're an expert Shiv, they don't know how to build the marketing pipeline. Right. And so oftentimes we'll have our marketing lead come in. Okay. Here, like the,

the framework of you building your database from zero to whatever it should be. For a couple of our companies, we've actually done this where they've never used a CRM before, marketing automation never used before, never used any of your basic lead database, all that context and all that. It was like the blocking and tackling of SaaS, right? I think it's non-existent for pretty much every company we invest in.

And so it's all that entire framework. Okay, I go from business cards in a fish bowl to now I have a professional, I'm measuring all my channels. I have a professional outbound. I have a team here who's well versed in how to do outbound and hunt and drive all that a Legion. It's kind of surrounding that founder with the first cohort of people they can actually go and hunt and be aggressive. That's like what we do with the first six months. That's probably the most.

a valuable thing of every initiative for all of our portfolio. And it could be everything from, like I said earlier, no CRM, nothing to, my AE has no framework by which to kind of sell. Are we going to train him or her on a Sandler method and then challenge our method? And we'll have our value lead here do that for a month or two with them. So I think it can be everything, but it's really

that will be described as this large Chinese menu. And OK, here's the things we would pick if I were you. Do you have alignment with you as the founder? OK, great. We're going to help execute on that and then go. And then once we get it in steady state, we feel pretty good about a Shiv for three or four quarters. Our team will move on to the next portco.

Shiv Narayanan (14:07.349)

Yeah, that's interesting. Cause one of the things that we find when we come into companies at this stage is that they're missing a lot of foundational elements. They don't have basic messaging and positioning. They don't have a clear understanding of what separates them from competitors. They don't have sales enablement at the level that you need it to be to a level that we can hire reps and let them manage the sales process. They don't have a MQL to close process that has conversion rates beyond the founder being on.

every call, right? So I'm curious, like, how much time are you spending on the foundational side and even setting up the infrastructure versus let's say, more value creation stuff, which is driving more demand and top of funnel and scaling pipeline, because that almost is like a second step, right? So you kind of have to do the first step before you get to the second. And I'm curious, like what the mix looks like for the companies that you're in.

Bobby Ocampo (15:01.595)

I'd say Shiv, it's more the first, right? The first camp and then some of the second, right? But at the end of the day, Shiv, like we can teach our companies all how to fish or you take a horse to water, right? And you help them drink, but they ultimately have to find the water of their own and drink by themselves at some point. So we're really trying to get it all the way to the one or zero or the end zone. And we scored our first touchdown. Okay, great.

Okay, do we need to score another one with you? Or do you want to keep go? Can you do this by yourself now? And then if we feel good about that, then it becomes a lot more of a coaching mentorship, not so much, hey, we're heavy in the weeds like we were the first two quarters. So I'd say it's very highly tactical in the beginning. And it becomes more strategic on the second half of our partnership.

Shiv Narayanan (15:54.004)

Right. Yeah, that's one thing that we are always encouraging founders at that stage to also do is that like, you kind of have to go slower to go faster. So you have to build the foundational work and even something as simple as TAM and segmentation. Are you targeting the right ICP that you have great net revenue retention with and high LTVs with and where you have a right to win and your win rates are higher compared to like trying to target everybody. And a lot of founders do that, right? They're trying to land business for a win.

Bobby Ocampo (16:20.219)

That's exactly right. And I get it. Every founder is just trying to sign up business in whatever form or fashion. And it makes sense in the beginning. I'm just trying to grow quickly. And I don't care if it's an ICP that I won't retain well. I want to get revenue in the door because revenue is cash flow for me. And we love that. I think that's great.

Shiv Narayanan (16:42.293)

Yeah. Are you also pushing them to then build sophistication in other areas of the business? Like, is it about professionalizing or is it more about like building the foundation and then slowly adding people? Because you can easily bloat the organization or something that made that company special where they may have good margins or, or have profitability and at the same time be growing. Like you can disrupt that by adding in four executives that don't have as much to do. And so how do you manage those two competing priorities.

Bobby Ocampo (17:13.477)

So it's the beauty of our fund size Shiv is that we are not a multi-trillion dollar or multi-billion dollar fund. And so the religion we're preaching is very much kind of, we're going to test, early data is positive, let's double down. But because we're not a trillion dollar fund, it's not our model to go and fund the company in perpetuity. And that has some pros and cons, right? So the pros are that, and we preach this to our companies all the time,

You don't have to be diluted again ever if this works out because you're going to get to the end of the tunnel without you needing more cash. And you founder get to maintain majority and you can have a great outcome if you exit in a couple of years or 10 years, whatever it is. So I think that we're very much of like, we, of course we would love all our companies to be like huge outcomes, but we tell our founders, it doesn't have to happen for it to be great for you.

And because of that, we're trying to make this small thing a little bit better and bigger. And we do it very cautiously because we're very, and you put it a different way. One is that you're going to blow up the company. Well, we can never blow up the company. Checks are not that big, right? So it works out in its own way because of how we invest.

Shiv Narayanan (18:33.749)

And so what are your expectations? Are you trying to grow these companies to about 5 million or 10 million and then exit? What's the plan for you guys?

Bobby Ocampo (18:41.616)

Yeah.

Great question. So we try to underwrite at minimum Shiv. OK, can we see a realistic shot this company at minimum can return four to five times your money, like at minimum? And then if things really work out, is there a 10x plus return? So if anyone is a venture investor, they might say, oh, it's boring for me, and I don't want to do that. And that's our opportunity, right? And if we pick the right company and support them and do things the right way,

we found that the outcomes can be 10, 20, 30X because it's part of what we call like the missing middle. These companies, even if returning 10, 20X, it doesn't even fit the venture model, which is pretty laughable. Like you, a venture investor needs a home run every single time. And for us, we don't need that. So a great return would be, hey, like if we, four or five minimum, great.

But if upside potential things really go well, we'd love that. I think it really resonates with the founder too, because they might talk to venture investors and say, oh, well, if I don't get to 100, 200 million in ARR, I'm not interesting to them. You don't have to do that. So back to your earlier part of the question, Shiv, our companies tend to be 1, 2, 3, 4 in ARR. Our goal within 18 to 24 months is how can we get this to 10, 12, 15 in ARR?

And then at that point, will the founder be, okay, well, what do you want to do? Do you want to raise a little bit more money? And do you want a little bit of liquidity? That could be a minority recap. Do you want more liquidity? Are you ready to kind of pass the reins on to a CEO who's probably been there, done that? Great, that's a majority recap where you sell 51% or more of the company. Or do you want to go long because it's going so well? Do you want to take on

a large growth capital with some liquidity for you, but you maintain control, but you're shooting for that, hey, multi-billion dollar outcome. So those are three paths Shiv. We've done them all. And it's great because the founder can kind of like pick your own adventure and it can work out that way. And the beauty for us too, if we pick the company right, is we're able to show liquidity sooner than a venture fund, where a venture fund

you know, because you're getting diluted 10 ways a Sunday and because you have a high loss rate, you need to go long on every business that's working out halfway well, because I got to go pay off eight of the 10 that went to zero, right? For us, we don't need that. So if we have a string of three, four, five, six-Xers, okay, great. Then we don't have to force the company to go long. It's all deferring to what we instituted upfront with them. It's like, what do you want to do?

Okay, great. Let's try to guide to that. And if things really go well, then okay, like, would you want a little liquidity now or a little bit later, you don't have to just wait till the end of go to an IPO to have it make your life. And I think the type of entrepreneur we partner with like really likes that option.

Shiv Narayanan (21:53.08)

Can you give us an example of this where you've done this in practice with one of your companies?

Bobby Ocampo (21:56.7)

Yeah, sure. We've done now, so we invested in 25 platforms. We have done, what is it? Eight, soon to be nine, 10, 11 here as we're wrapping this up in the next two weeks to month. Of these flavors of different exits, right? So one, our first company is a company called Sunwave Health. Their end-to-end software for the behavioral health market. So think,

drug, alcohol, addiction treatment centers. End to end meaning they have the CRM, they're the revenue cycle management, they help you get a bill and pay. And they're the EMR, so electronic medical record for you to actually get the health record from the business, or from your patient. So we backed it when it was a million in ARR, growing really fast, albeit it's easy to grow fast from a million. But it's doing 700K in positive EBITDA, like unbelievable cash flow. Seven people.

Great technology, no go to market, exactly what we look for. We acquired a quarter of the business. Two years later, Level Equity, which now they're a firm we partnered with a lot, they're great, did a minority recap in the business, provided liquidity to ourselves and the founders when it was about three million in ARR, so tripled in about the 18 month period. Fast forward three years, late last year,

BVP Forge, which is the PE arm of Bessemer, led a majority recap of the business and combined it with the number three player in the space. Sunwave is the number two. At that point, it had grown from one to call it 15, 16 in ARR, profitable, great retention. And then we did another bite at the apple. So the founders largely exited from their position. And we did too, but we still have a lot riding the combined entity. But you see here, we went,

In our round, it was some primary capital, some liquidity to the founder. The Level round was more liquidity to the founder and some for us, but balance sheet capital. The next round was more liquidity and some balance sheet capital. And then now, so now we're going to hopefully have our third bite at this company in two to three years, still a new investment. But you see that, right? And you don't normally see that in venture land because it's just, well, I gotta go for it every time. And that's usually what we do Shiv.

We partner with funds like Level Equity, PSG Equity, Insight Partners, JMI Equity, B Capital, K1. So we're seeing it as sort of a farm system for later stage private equity. And so far, it's been good for us.

Shiv Narayanan (24:44.652)

Yeah, I really love that story because there's so much competition for companies that are, let's say 15 to 30 million in ARR that have net revenue retention over a hundred percent that have very sticky product. They're rule of 40. Like, you know, you kind of go down the checklist of characteristics and there is far less competition for smaller companies that are great businesses. Either they have great margins or they're growing fast or they have a product that a market loves and they're

often undercapitalized and there's just not enough capital chasing those companies. And then also the complexity of growing those businesses is less. Like growing a hundred million dollar platform is way more complicated. It involves financial engineering and M&A and all the stuff. And these one to five million dollar businesses just require the fundamentals, like basic go to market, infrastructure, some sales process stuff, optimizations to the funnel. And you can easily get a company to five or

or 10 million and return capital to your LPs. I actually, I'm always confused as to why more firms don't chase these types of businesses. But I think it's also a dynamic of how much capital they've raised, which prevents them from actually investing in these businesses.

Bobby Ocampo (25:57.221)

100%. And I think that the bottom line is that I don't think there are only a few firms and I of course, I'm biased, I think we're the best, right? But you've got to do a lot of the dirty work that a lot of funds don't want to do. So you're assuming a lot of risk and you're doing a lot of work, but it's also, there's a lot more alpha to generate and the companies need the most help at this stage. Like I don't know how much help a

like, you know, we've had a few of them, a 20 to 50 million ARR business is growing really well with great retention. How much value creation optimization do you really need if all things are humming, right? Like you really don't. But back to your point, it was all about check size, right? So if I'm a billion dollar fund, why would I even waste my time at this part of the market? Right. And on top of that, if it's going so well, the founders

Only want to give up minority, so now you're looking at these companies where it's hard to find a five to ten million dollar check there. And so if you're a ten million dollar check at a billion dollar fund and it returns 5x for you, that's fifty million dollars in a billion dollar fund, that's like you've done nothing, right? So I get it. And this is what we're trying to avoid Shiv is because at our fund size we could have raised way more money, but we know that we can't raise that much more

if we still want to generate alpha. Because all of a sudden, if we get bigger, we become our buyer. And now, we don't want to be our buyer. We want to be right where we're at. Because there's so much dry powder at later stages, as you said. If you become the buyer now then, well, they're concerned about making three times their money, you lose a lot of the alpha opportunity, the upside.

Shiv Narayanan (27:51.855)

Yeah, I want to touch on a couple of things you said that the first one just in terms of getting your hands dirty, I guess you would need to have a ton of operational expertise on your team. So can you talk about that? Like how have you built your own team to be able to do that? Because there's so many different domains that these companies likely need help with and they don't have the talent.

Bobby Ocampo (28:09.433)

Yeah, it's true. So we have been heavily investing in what we call our build team. So it's our value creation team. They're all, so Taylor Kavanaugh, who's an exited CEO, a company he founded called PetDesk that they've taken from zero to 70 million in ARR bootstrapped. The CTO, Paul, is also helping lead our efforts on the technical AI side. We have Kayla, who's our head of talent,

recruiting end to end for our portfolio. We have Ben Redfield, who's our head of go to market, right? So he works under Taylor to go and help execute the strategy. We have Torian, who's under Ben, who helps really execute the strategies for our portfolio. So it is purpose built to be, we can take this team of six and turn it on a new platform. And they're in there for a year. And that is all they're doing for maybe two or three other companies. And we're just getting down and dirty for all the companies. So but it requires like

Last thing to Shiv on this, we don't charge our portcos for access here. So this is another big thing. Most PE firms are going to charge 100% of the cost to the portfolio. So they've actually turned that value creation team into a profit center for them. So here's another double whammy for us. We don't think that's in a good spirit of partnership. We are minority investors, so we are not here to turn our value team into a profit center. So we eat that cost. It comes out of our own management fee.

So that's another thing Shiv is that most funds our size might have four or five people and a dog. We have 21, 22 people. We eat the costs of our value creation team. So it takes a lot of, I think, belief from the founding GPs to say, you know what, I'm going to take probably half my salary and put it into a value creation team because that's where all the real upside is and to have a large investment team. So I think it takes a lot of sacrifice.

Frankly, if I'm a GP and you've gotten to where we're at, like, why do I need to take it? I can go raise double the size of fund and eat all the fees myself. You don't have much incentive in the near term to be doing what we're doing here, but I think long term, we really believe in this. And it's important that everyone buys into it because we think we were trying to think in terms of a franchise, not, how is Bobby going to make as much money every two weeks so I can have a fat salary. Like that's not the intention.

Shiv Narayanan (30:35.116)

Right. Yeah. I guess on that, like, you said the team is only working on a couple at a time. So is that your threshold where you have two to three portcos that you're investing in and you kind of ride those out before you make a subsequent investment?

Bobby Ocampo (30:48.581)

So we try not to, I think, no, I mean, what we'll try to do is our value team will have, let's say, two to four really deep portfolio company engagements, right? And then they'll be, call it a half dozen, very light, where we've gotten in there for a year, we're good, and we can move on. So the levers don't work exactly that way. That said,

We know that we're going to have to invest more around this value and build team. So if there's one function we're growing here aggressively, it's that. We are on the lookout to double the size of that team over the next year to support our portfolio further.

Shiv Narayanan (31:27.51)

Right. Yeah, that makes sense. The other thing that you mentioned that's interesting is that you said that it almost like it's better not to raise more capital so that you can continue this strategy. So how do you manage that? Because obviously as you return the fund, you're probably going to be encouraged to raise more capital and invest in more companies. How do you balance that?

Bobby Ocampo (31:46.236)

It's, I think it's good, it's hard because, you know, everyone wants to show bigger fund size and progression, right? I think if you look at every fund in the history of private equity and venture capital, I'll bet you 99.9% of them, the returns get worse as you get bigger. It's just life, right? You can't, you start drifting, strategy drift, you wanna get bigger and better.

The returns aren't as good, the bigger you get, right? It's hard to make 10, 20X when you're buying in at 100 to 300 million EV, right? Very few companies get to that rare air of being a multi-billion dollar company. So frankly, it's just, I think our team is well coached and mentored here, of course I'm biased, right? To believe that a niche, smaller fund is gonna benefit you and everyone here longer term.

You might be able to go make more cash comp for a couple of years somewhere else. But guess what? That fund might not be around in four to five years. So I think frankly, it's us beating everyone over the head on smaller and niche here is better. Let's be focused on the best returns, not the bigger fund size like everyone else, because we see the big fund size, they get big fat happy. The returns suffer, the best people leave, start the next Blueprint.

They get big fat and happy, returns suffer, best people leave, start the next Blueprint. We are just trying to be the best Blueprint, stay here, and let's just try to dominate where we're at and not get caught up with telling our parents or our relatives that we can go raise a billion dollars. That's not great. Like we don't want that. And so anyway, I think it's just a lot of repetition around, let's just be the best and not have the biggest fund and hope people can buy in.

Shiv Narayanan (33:32.929)

Yeah, totally. I think there's something to having a secret sauce and being able to kind of be exceptionally good at that and preserving that. Like there's this book, it's called Small Giants, and it talks about this idea of being intentionally small, but exceptional at what you do and how it involves like all aspects of the supply chain. And it gives a bunch of stories on that. And I think this kind of resonates with me on that, which is

The PE ecosystem is so huge and there are a lot of people over time end up looking and sounding the same. And this is a bit of a unique strategy where you're able to generate alpha, you have a proprietary process and you're able to actually create value for these companies. So why break it? Why not just continually repeat that model and continue to create value for your investment.

Bobby Ocampo (34:17.808)

Right.

I think it's like an ego thing, right? Like why, if I'm a GP and you print a couple of good funds, like you think you're invincible, but you're not. Like the tides change and market changes, right? Like what we're doing, Shiv, right now might be very different five to 10 years from now. And so can we do it while being, we can do it, we can adapt more easily if we're smaller and nimble. And if we have the whole team buy into it.

And also too, like I said earlier, it takes sacrifice on our part as myself, my co-founder Sheldon, you can't hoard everything for ourselves if the fund size is gonna stay small and nimble. It's gotta be pretty democratic, right? Which is, we're all important, but like I'm not gonna be doing this for 30, 40 years, right? So it's important for us now in fund three to mentor our team because they're the ones that are gonna be taking this for the

next era of Blueprint and then they have to mentor their team. That's how I think the best funds have been operating is that at some point, if I hoard everything myself, the fund's gonna collapse pretty quickly.

Shiv Narayanan (35:28.238)

Totally. Yeah. I think that's a phenomenal place or phenomenal takeaway at least for this episode. And I know we're coming up on time, Bobby, but before we close off, if people want to get in touch with you or learn more about your companies or even potentially invest, what's the best way to get a hold of you?

Bobby Ocampo (35:42.332)

Yeah, like we have on our website, people might not believe it, but we have this sort of Madlib form on our website and just fill it out like name, company, how many employees you have, what you're looking for helping, is it scale and go to market, technical talent, recruiting, whatever. That's a great place. Or my email is bocampo, all one word, at onblueprint.com. Blueprint.com we could have bought at the time we were founded.

I don't know, I've never really bought domains. You've probably done this before, but the founder, the owner said, I'll sell it to you for $8 million. Yeah, you know what? Onblueprint.com is $19.99 a year or whatever. I think we're a little bit better with that. So email me, LinkedIn. I respond to a lot of LinkedIn messaging or our Madlib form on our website. We try to do our best to get back to everyone.

Shiv Narayanan (36:32.398)

Yeah, that's fantastic. And we'll be sure to include all of that and all the links in the show notes. And with that said, Bobby, thanks for coming on and sharing your wisdom. I think especially your playbook and how you're growing these smaller businesses really resonated with me. And I hope a lot of listeners take from that what I did, because I think there's a huge opportunity, there's a bit of a blue ocean in the private equity space. And I think you guys have created a great model here. So I appreciate you coming on and sharing all that.

Bobby Ocampo (36:55.078)

No, thank you, Shiv, for the great questions and for the book recommendation. I'm going to look into it.

Shiv Narayanan (36:58.935)

Awesome. All right, thanks Bobby.

Bobby Ocampo (37:00.486)

Thank you.