Episode 22: Ripan Kadakia of ZMC
on How to Be of Service to Your Portfolio Companies

Episode Transcript

Shiv: All right, Ripan, welcome to the show. How's it going?

Ripan: It's good, how are you? Great to be here.

Shiv: Good, excited to have you on. So why don't we start off with a background about yourself in ZMC and we'll take it from there.

Ripan: Yeah, so my name is Ripan Kadakia. I'm a partner at ZMC. I've been at the firm coming on 10 years now. Within the firm, I spend a lot of time in a couple of different categories - internet and digital media, which includes e-commerce, advertising technology, marketing services. I also spend a lot of time in live entertainment, in particular, kind of the technology and service ecosystem that powers that industry. And then cybersecurity, and music and music royalties are sort of my four key areas. Most of my career I've spent in private equity, mostly in technology and technology services. A little bit on the firm. So we've been in business since 2001. And when we were founded, the idea was to create an investment firm that looked for companies that were benefiting from the shift to digital. And 20 some-odd years later, we still feel like we're in the early innings of that disruption and there's always some new trend or some new idea that helps us find new opportunities. So what that means for us day to day is really focus on two things. One is we try to identify broad investment themes, big trends that we have conviction on, and then come up with investment ideas underneath those. That's one piece of our strategy.

And then the other piece of our strategy is we look for businesses where we can be helpful in some way. You know, the mantra internally is, you know, how can we be of service to our portfolio? And so for us, it's really important in part of our underwriting to identify what those value creation opportunities are. Sometimes it could be, you know, an underdeveloped, underdeveloped business development function. It could be an opportunity to buy other companies to scale. It could be building out a management team or other projects that we've got some experience in. And we try to do that through a combination of our collective experience. So if you look at our senior team, it's not just investors. We've got operators, we've got consultants, which I would put myself in that bucket. And then kind of traditional kind of investment backgrounds. And one thing that's kind of unique about our business is that in addition to our private equity fund, where the majority of our team focuses, we also run and manage a public company. So Take-Two Interactive, for all the gaming fans out there, is a business that we've managed for coming on 15 years now. And we usually bring that up not because we feel like we have any sort of authority on how to run a company, but frankly, the opposite, that we have a lot of empathy for the challenges of running a business. And we're constantly learning what it takes to manage a large company, and to the extent any of that can translate to our portfolio, it's valuable. And I think a lot of our CEOs and founders that we partner with really kind of benefit from us being able to kind of sit in their shoes from time to time. 

So really those are the two elements of our strategy. We've been very consistent about that over the years. Where we are today is we are raising our fourth fund and we're intending to close that this year, targeting plus or minus a billion dollars.

We take a pretty concentrated approach to our investing. So in any one of our funds, we'll have somewhere between six and eight companies. And that's intentional. The reason we do that - it goes back to what I was saying before of we only invest in companies where it can be helpful. And our perspective is that it's very hard for us to really be value added and be available if we've got a really large portfolio and we're spread too thin. We really try to pick our spots where we have a lot of conviction and then focus on those winning levers and trying to pull those. 

And then the last thing on us is that we're big believers and we put a lot of stock in culture, both culture within our firm and also with the companies that we work with. And it's even part of our mission statements, our mission - we emphasize transparency, integrity and kindness. And I think - and we haven't validated this - but I believe we are the only private equity firm with the word kindness in our mission statement. And we take it seriously and it translates into how we kind of act internally, but also kind of how we work with our portfolio companies. We try not to be command and control. We don't point fingers and really talk about - it's great when things are going well and everyone's high-fiving and friendly, but we get tested when things aren't going well. And the last few years, we've had a lot of things, a lot of roadblocks, pandemic various global crises that we've had to manage through that have impacted our business. And how we act then is really, I think, where we shine. And so it's something that's been reinforced and it's served us well. And so that's going to continue to be core to our mission and our strategy.

Shiv: That's great. That's a great overview. So why don't we touch on all three of these things and starting with the broader themes that you focus on. And I think one of the things that's different about you as a private equity investor is the industries and sectors that you are deploying capital in are beyond just the traditional SaaS and tech-enabled services world. So talk about that focus a little bit and why you choose to deploy your capital there.

Ripan: Yeah, it's a good question. So we tend not to be kind of business model focused in how we organize ourselves. So we don't really think about the categories we invest in as B2B SaaS or vertical lead gen or online marketplace. So we're kind of business model agnostic. There's certainly some business models we like more than others and software is a great business model. But where we focus is on businesses that really kind of two things. 

One, that are gonna be secular growers because of some macro trend that we believe in. And two that have some - one or more kind of what we think of like unfair advantages. They've got incredible moats, you know, network effects, proprietary information, scale, or frankly, just world class execution and people. And usually the businesses that we've invested in that are successful have both of those ingredients. How we go about identifying those themes, it's an ongoing process. It's not a once a year we get together and think about what to do over the next year. It's an ongoing process. 

So really, the ideation, it could start anywhere. It could be someone reads an article, someone has a conversation, someone meets with an executive in an industry, and there's an idea. And then from that, we spend a lot of time internally researching that idea, talking to our people we rely on internally to try to vet theses. And then it's experimentation. We start talking to companies in the space, and we start to hone on where in the value chain we want to play. And then the origination sourcing effort becomes very focused on those areas. So as an example, I mentioned live entertainment. So this was something when I joined almost 10 years ago, was an area that I was personally passionate about, which is usually not something I would advise informing an investment strategy. But I spent a summer, just a week, researching the live entertainment space. And very quickly, you realize that it's a massive industry, 50 billion plus, depending on how you look at it, one that's incredibly fragmented, one with limited technology really, and one with limited kind of sophisticated talent, which is a great sort of sandbox for private equity to play in. And also we felt - we had conviction that the consumer demand for live entertainment was gonna grow. And we had done a lot of research to prove that out. So, I kind of presented that idea to our firm and everyone believed it was interesting. And then it was a very methodical value chain mapping exercise. And we identified a couple of subverticals within that industry. Ticketing namely was one and then services, service providers that enable events to happen was another. And fast forward 10 years later, we've got two platform investments, one in each of those categories respectively. We've got two other investments in the live entertainment category, so it's probably the area we've been most active in. 

And that process continues. So we meet as a firm and as a team constantly to talk about how we refine this theme, how do we evolve it. So for us, it's got to be an organic ongoing process to help hone those areas. And at any point in time, there's eight to 10 areas that we look at - to live entertainment, content, the explosion of data, and the implications on the data center ecosystem. We spend a lot of time in music and music royalties and sort of the fragmentation and complexity in that industry. E-commerce and frankly, e-commerce enablement, so as the retail world moves online, what are kind of derivative ways to play that? And we've had some success in social commerce as one example. So yeah, variety of areas that we're continuing to spend time in.

Shiv: So it seems like a very first principles-driven investment approach. I guess one of the challenges that I can foresee is that with so many different business models, like you kind of need a different approach for every kind of business that you're operating in. So how do you navigate that complexity and how do you kind of figure out how to allocate your limited resources or time and effort across these entities when they are kind of - they have different challenges and constraints as a business?

Ripan: Yeah, it is the - I think it's the single biggest challenge and question that our firm thinks about because we're pretty lean. You know, there are roughly 20 investment professionals. We have a portfolio of nine companies, which isn't huge, but given our approach and how, you know, hands-on and involved we are, there are, you know, often times where we are stretched thin across the portfolio. So we've tried to scale but scale in a way where we're still delivering the firm and it's the - you know, our proposition to our companies is that it's the same deal team that works on the original investment is the team that's supporting you as your portfolio company all the way through exit. And I think that's something we're not gonna change because I think it's an important part of how we create value. But over time, we've added to our functional expertise. 

So in the first 10 years of our existence, it was really the founding team. Those were the operators and those were the investors. Where we are today is we have dedicated personnel on technology. So one of our former CTOs runs technology initiatives across our portfolio. And he subsequently has a team that he taps into if we need someone in data and analytics or ERP implementation or CRM implementation. So we've got - we're kind of building a team around that.

We've recently brought on functional expertise and talent because one of the things we've learned is there's a direct correlation to quality of management team and how much time we're spending with the company, right? And we've spent a lot of time over the last few years really topgrading founder-led businesses, bringing on world-class heads of sales, world-class finance leaders, world-class product leaders. And we now have a dedicated head of talent who can provide a lot of leverage in that exercise.

We're adding, or actually in the process of adding, capabilities around finance. Because every time we invest in a business, there's an opportunity to upgrade financial systems, upgrade visibility into the metrics, make sure we're measuring the right things. So the way we've kind of addressed that bandwidth constraint is by building functional expertise to supplement the strategic work that we're doing constantly with our companies. And that's been incredibly well received, both internally and externally.

Shiv: And I guess that connects to the second point that you'd brought up and just being of service to the companies that you're investing in. So when you - building up the team is a big part of that, right? Because you need that on your side to be able to support those companies. And then how are you supporting those companies in the first place? Like, what are the avenues that you're bringing in that expertise to help them grow and get to the next level?

Ripan: Yeah, so it starts before we make an investment. So as part of our diligence, a big component of it is what are those things that ZMC is going to do that we believe we can do uniquely? And so before we even make an investment, the deal team has to convince our committee that there are these somewhere between two to five big initiatives that with authority, we think we can drive. And that's kind of fundamental to our diligence. 

Then when we, you know, if we’re successful in making the investment, there's a couple of things that happen - that happen across the portfolio. We establish some sort of cadence with all of our companies. So usually it's a weekly call or bi-weekly call. And the idea there is really not for us to kind of ask, hey, how are things going or run through financial reporting. That to us is a little counterproductive. We do put in place metrics and leading indicators, but we tend to just you know, make sure that's an automated process and we kind of consume that so we're up to speed on what's happening. Really it's for the CEO and his team to use us as a sounding board on hey, you know on this sales initiative, I'm running into a roadblock here - how can you guys help? And so it's really more for us to kind of help push things forward and usually within the first 30 days we have a broader strategy discussion to align on. Hey, these are the three or four things that really are going to drive the business because you can't do 10, right? It's just too hard to push big strategic initiatives forward. There's too many of them. So we really try to prioritize and then really set action plans. And I think what's different - and having worked at other private equity, I think what's different about us is we hold ourselves accountable as if we were an extension of management. So it's not that we're asking the management team, hey, where are you on this initiative? It's usually the other way around. And I think that's been an important element of how we kind of add value, is really just be an extension and be a partner. And deliver, right? I mean, ultimately we have to be able to deliver on what we say we're gonna do. And I think by and large, our management teams would say we do that.

Shiv: What are some of the most common accountability metrics or things that you're looking at to hold yourselves and the companies accountable?

Ripan: Yeah, so a big area or often a big gap that we see with our portfolio companies at the stage that they're at - and these are typically founder-led businesses that have scaled to a certain level, and then in order to kind of 2X, 3X from there, they need to professionalize in some way. And one of the gaps that we often see is immaturity in the sales organization. So oftentimes you see these founders that are incredible salesmen or salespeople, or have teams of incredibly good hunters. But to evolve to kind of the next level, what you need is more of a sales machine. You need process, you need a CRM, you need visibility to create more forward visibility into the business. And so that's often something that we sign up to do, to support. And on top of that, we supplement by saying, ZMC's got a pretty broad network that we've built over the years, and if there's commercial relationships that we can drive, we will sign up, we will put our name next to target customers and effectively be an extension of the sales team. So in those instances, we hold ourselves accountable because we're part of the pipeline report. So if it's my job to reach out to someone at Live Nation to support one of our live events businesses, if that doesn't happen, it's very visible. And so we hold ourselves accountable by creating that visibility. We try to deliver as much sales support as we can. 

So as an example, we invested in a live entertainment infrastructure business six months ago. And part of why we were excited about it was because we knew the entire end market. We knew everyone in sports, we knew everyone in the music space, and we've been slowly making those introductions to the team. And they have their list of the companies that we said we were going to reach out to. And on a regular basis, the CEO is working through that with us and making sure we're making those calls. He's letting us know, hey, so and so didn't respond, so can you follow up? And those kinds of things happen. So it's a very kind of hand in hand partnership, at in some cases a very granular level.

Shiv: Sorry, I was saying the places where you guys invest and the areas that you identify as opportunity areas for the business - what are the most common areas where you find that ZMC usually is adding the most value for its companies or where do you focus where you see, hey, these are the highest leverage points inside these companies once we've invested.

Ripan: Yeah, I mean, the business development one, which I just spoke about, is definitely the most common. I think without fail, every single one of our businesses, because we have researched the thematic areas and we understand the end markets and have likely built relationships there, we can often help drive direct commercial relationships, strategic partnerships. So that's probably the first area. 

The second - and that's sort of the biggest. And then the others, I think, are all kind of similar in priority. But certainly supplementing management teams. So whether it's bringing on financial leadership, sales leadership, tech leadership - without fail, every one of our company's benefits from that. And we spend a lot. That's why we brought in a head of talent, because we realized there's such a big part of what we're doing. Let's bring in more expertise to support that. So I think those two are big areas.

And then I mentioned, you know, we have dedicated technology support because every company is a technology business these days. And particularly around business intelligence and analytics, like that increasingly is becoming a way to build an edge in the marketplace. And so we've built business intelligence frameworks and tools across the majority of our portfolio, and that's something we're going to continue to do.

Shiv: Can you give an example of that? Because that’s something that we see ourselves when we're coming into companies, that just data, regardless of how big or small a company, is just constantly a challenge to get it wrangled, get it organized, be able to get the right insights out to make strategic decisions. So how are you going about it? Or what's an example of how you're addressing that challenge?

Ripan: Yeah, so. One of our businesses is actually - it's an operator of attractions. They have you know, I think eight or nine kind of entertainment concepts around the country. Family-owned business, it was owned by three families for a very long time. One of the first things we're did when we came in was we brought in a person that we've worked with a lot to implement just kind of top-level dashboards on the key metrics for business. You know, it's daily attendance, daily ticket pricing, and then daily kind of food and beverage sales. Kind of very simple metrics, but because of the legacy nature of the business, it actually took some time to get that in place. But once we put that in place, it was very easy to kind of, one, diagnose issues. So, hey, attendance has dropped off, like what was happening, but also measure the efficacy of initiatives. So that particular business, we saw an opportunity in dynamic pricing. So we started implementing dynamic pricing. You very easily see the impact it was having or not having. And so just by having that feedback loop allowed us to just be more responsive to how we created value in the business. So that's one example. 

Another example is we have a business in the cybersecurity space, enterprise selling. And this is an industry with notoriously long sales cycles. And a big blind spot of the company was just understanding sales efficacy. Cause this was, as I gave the example before, this is a business that was, you know, a lot of the sales were driven by the founder. And as we professionalize the business, it's very important for us to start tracking what are all the deal opportunities we're looking at, what stage are they in, what's the expectation for what's going to close in this quarter versus following quarters, because we then have to service and provision that work. So, if not, you had these mismatches where we would sell less than we thought, and as a result, our delivery team was too large and vice versa. So we spent - and it was a multi-year effort of really building a process and analytic capabilities so we can really manage our pipeline. So that has been incredibly impactful from a planning and then ultimately a results standpoint. So those are kind of just two examples where...

Shiv: Got it. And those are great examples. I guess when you're bringing these things to life and you mentioned the - getting the right leadership in place, do you find that to be one of the critical variables is getting the right sales leader in place or the right marketing leader in place or the right data and intelligence leader in place?

Ripan: Yeah, absolutely. You need ultimately - you know, we can be helpful, but we can't be an ongoing substitute for operations and management of the company, right? There are times where, you know, we have to kind of more intensely work with the companies, but in general, our job is to kind of identify strategic opportunities and then help make them happen and ultimately have the company be empowered to move on.

So with these types of initiatives, you need an internal champion and someone that's aligned with understanding the value of doing these things, but then being able to take it on and then ultimately own it. And so there's a direct correlation between having the right person at the company who has the bandwidth and the capability to carry on these initiatives and the success of those initiatives. So in the case of the cybersecurity business, we brought on, you know, a head of - a head of sales who's an extremely data-driven, analytical person. And he architected the vision, and really we were just kind of helping and approving investment in these areas, et cetera, and kind of working with him to make that happen. But had he not been in that seat, very challenging to get that.

Shiv: How often is that the CEO that you're kind of supporting and them actually leading this? Because some CEOs are experts in go-to-market and others are more technical founders. And so is the CEO the main conduit in making that happen? Or are you trying to make sure you're making up the gaps in the CEO skill set to make sure that they have the right executive team around them?

Ripan: Yeah, in most, in all cases, we as the private equity firm, we are partnering with the CEO, right? They are a thought partner. There's always alignment on what things are priority initiatives. But very commonly, we find the investments we make, the CEO kind of has too much on their plate. Too many direct reports, there's too many initiatives that they're personally driving. So a big part of the businesses that evolve under our ownership is really kind of providing that CEO with leverage. So in that, again, I'll come back to that example with the cybersecurity business, founder-led business with functional business heads, or sorry, with regional business heads. When we fast forward to today, for the first time, he has a COO, a CFO, a head of sales, because before that was all sitting within him. So that - providing that kind of leverage and making sure we get the right people in those roles is vital.

Shiv: Right, right. That makes sense. And I think this is a good place to kind of connect it to the culture piece because there's the culture inside the companies and then there's your view as the investor on culture. So maybe expand on that a little bit.

Ripan: Yeah, no, we are very much - like internally at ZMC, I mentioned kind of some of our values, you know, high performance, integrity, transparency and kindness. And, you know, our companies tend to espouse these values as well. You know, many of our businesses are, you know, people-oriented, relationship-oriented businesses. And so we, we encourage and oftentimes we see that the better-performing businesses are ones that invest in their talent and really look to create career opportunities for their talent. You know, manage with a combination of aligned incentives and constructive criticisms. We don't like the people that are throwing chairs and throwing staplers. That kind of cliche is something we really try to avoid

And that's important. And we've seen in the more successful businesses in our portfolio, ones where that culture is really important, where they have high employee retention, where people give positive feedback to the companies. That is an important part of our investment criteria, looking for places that are good places to work, that are growing, that really invest in their people. And when there are challenges, the attitude is to put your arm around people and help them through it which we've run into plenty of times.

Shiv: And I guess culture is one of those weird things where like, there's what you say, and then there's what you do. And what you do is a better indicator of what your culture actually is. So how do you screen for that in an acquisition process? Because you need alignment, right? And your approach versus the company's approach, if that's in conflict, that's going to lead to more problems down the road.

Ripan: Yeah, so we, you know, I think chemistry with the management team is incredibly important. And, you know, there have been situations where we have walked away from investments where the business, you know, on its face, you know, was a good well-positioned business, but we felt like there wasn’t alignment or that, you know, some of these cultural elements that we focus on weren't necessarily viewed similarly by management, decided, hey, this isn't the right situation, we're going to walk away. So that's in terms of internally, in terms of how you test for it. I mean, I mentioned some of the metrics that we look at, certainly employee retention, employee tenure. How often, you know - what is the construct by which the company is enabling advancement? Those types of things are important, particularly - I mean, we have many businesses that are managed service oriented, so they're very people heavy, they're technology enabled, but fundamentally there's customer service and things like that. We put a lot of emphasis on customer feedback. So understanding what a customer's view is of the company and NPS scores and retention rates are very telling because companies with good cultures attract clients that want to continue to work with them. And putting the customer first, that's a very common thread across our portfolios. And so we kind of, you know, there's a pattern recognition that we've kind of learned to use when we're looking at newer investments.

Shiv: And, you know, there's this concept that's been talked about for many years, which is that culture is more important than strategy because culture then allows you to heal broken processes. It's like an agile thinking, there's holacracy and all these other concepts that have come up over the years. So in your portfolio companies, do you find that when you're faced with certain decisions, you're prioritizing the cultural well-being of an entity more so than, let's say, growing faster or hitting an EBITDA target or when you're faced with tough decisions, that's when really the rubber meets the pavement of what you say versus what you do, right?

Ripan: Yeah, I can give two examples on that. So, one, we have an investment in a business called Raptive. In Raptive, what they do is they work with now 5,000 independent web publishers. We help them monetize their content online. So these are sole entrepreneurs that have smaller businesses that are passionate about creating content, and we allow them to have that be a career. So for our customers, this is their lifeblood. What we do for them is how they put food on the table and pay their mortgage. And they, you know, this is a business with incredibly high customer retention, incredibly high NPS. And when we're faced with decisions to make on how to drive the business as a board, the question we keep coming back to is, well, what's in the best interest of the publisher? Like without fail, it's almost like I think we've gotten annoying in terms of how often we start with that.

And that's really the guiding principle on how we drive the business. So, you know, as a business with very high retention, so your one instinct would be, hey, we should drive pricing. Is that really the right answer for the publisher? Not really. So we haven't done that. We've kept pricing flat for the entire tenure of our ownership in that business. So that's one example of how, you know, we're really prioritizing the culture and sort of the ethos of the business over our financial outcomes.

Another example is we have a business in the ticketing space. And as you could imagine, the pandemic was a shock to the system for any business in that ecosystem. We actually went overnight from a business that had revenue to negative revenue, which was something that I'd never experienced before and hoped to never experience again. And, you know, the in instances like that you could take a portfolio theory approach and say, look, it's one of a handful of investments. Let's just focus our time on other things because this one, you know, no one knows where the end is. If we're ever going to come out of it. And rationally, you may say the ROI on my time is better spent elsewhere. Culturally, we didn't do that because, you know, our, our mission is to deliver the firm and to be of service independent of the situation. 

And so, you know, after maybe about 30 seconds of panic in, you know, March of 2020, when we didn't know what was going on, we very quickly got on the phone with the team and said, okay, let's just think through methodically, what's the next step? And then what's the step after that? Let's just very, you know, carefully walk one step after the other. And, you know, without raised voices and without finger pointing, and we had to make a lot of tough decisions. You know, we cut the workforce down in that company by probably 80%. Now, many of them have come back, which we're very proud of. 

But we had to make a lot of tough decisions. But had we panicked or walked away, I think we would have been - you know, at the benefit of hindsight, it would have been worse off. Where we are now is we used that time to very quickly take the actions to kind of stem the bleeding. You know, we borrowed a lot of money on a revolver. We managed our supplier relationships and really gave us 18 months of kind of runway to see how it would happen. And in that time, while everyone else was panicking, we actually decided to invest more in the business. So we actually took a bigger stake in the company, invested in their technology, because it's rare that you are able to really focus on a company when there's nothing else going on. So there were, we saw kind of the silver lining of, hey, nothing's happening in the live event industry, let's really invest in the business. And coming out of it, we now had a bigger stake in the company, we had a better team, we were leaner, and the people that stayed really appreciated the fact that we backed them and supported them through it. And the business actually this past year has hit an all time high in terms of revenue and profitability and the technology goals that we set. So even though it wasn't a, you know, up into the right like massively fast growing company, I think in a lot of ways we're more proud of this outcome because it's truly emblematic of our culture. Like something that our founders does all the time is, you know, culture like character, it's tested in the breach and sort of how you behave when things aren't going well is really what defines you. And this is a story that hopefully I'll get to tell as many times as I can, because I think it's a really interesting one, a good example of how our kind of no-nonsense partnership approach really paid dividends.

Shiv: Yeah, that's a great story and a great example. I think one of the challenges that companies and investors face in general is that there's this inclination to go with the short-term win or prioritize short-term outcomes. And as a result, you look at like business metrics or financials and you'll make a decision from that dimension where it'll compromise your culture and maybe employees will leave, and you'll lose some institutional memory and a bunch of other benefits that the company has built up as assets that are not tangible. And then later on - you don't notice that impact right away, but you start to see that in a few years time. And that's when there's a true decline. So having that patience like you're describing in the breach is critical to maintaining the culture so that you can get to the other side and experience the upswing as well.

Ripan: Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's why it's really important to have that alignment on what are the goals of the business. So one of the - one of the exercises we go through with all of our companies is we get together and say, what do you want to be five years from now, which is typically how long we hold a business. What does success look like? And some of that may be financial, but usually the output of that exercise for us are more qualitative things. The commentaries on market position, product offering, customer perception, like what is it that we want to be? And then we work backwards. So if we want to be this type of company in five years, what does that mean for three years from now? And therefore, what does that mean one year from now? And therefore, what does that mean over the next 90 days? And we revisit that at every board meeting. It's sort of a focusing function. So that way, as best we can avoid the short-term thinking that you're alluding to, let's make sure it's always aligned to where we want to get to. It may take a while for it to materialize versus like just reacting to what's happening in the market. Now, sometimes you have to do that. But if you are - our experience has been if you're aligned to those, you know, three to five big picture goals and working towards them, you just have a better chance of succeeding.

Shiv: Right, totally. And I think that keeps an organization on track, even if things are not going your way, because you have that long-term vision. So I think that's great. I think that's also a good place to end the episode. So if there are founders listening that wanna learn more about ZMC and yourself, where would they go to learn more?

Ripan: Yeah, certainly they can go to our website, zmclp.com. The other thing we always say is, I or any of my colleagues can talk to anyone about how great we think we are and what our performance is. But the best way to reference us is to talk to our CEOs and our founders that we've worked with, particularly the ones that have left, which are easy to find, they're easy to reference. And we're proud of the fact that we offer them all up. So I think that's the best way to do the diligence on us.

Shiv: Awesome. Yeah. And we'll be sure to link the website and LinkedIn profiles in the show notes. So with that said, Ripan, thanks for doing this. I think it was a very unique piece of content just to hear how you approach culture and your approach to growing companies and building out a thesis in different markets. So thanks for doing this and sharing your wisdom.

Ripan: Yeah, no, thank you. It was a pleasure to be part of this and flattered that you invited me on. All right.

Shiv: Thanks for being here.