Chenault was describing a company his firm incubated to buy legacy businesses and apply AI to them, recounting a conversation with its founders about the end game. He says they have done many roll-ups without having to lay people off.
no, no. The roll-up strategy.
You're like, that's another thing. It's another great
…private equity or venture. It's ring the costs out, rinse and repeat, go on. What was compelling about what we put together with Alex and Zach was I remember asking him the question. I said, so is the objective that what you're going to do is you're going to make these companies more productive, you're going to cut costs. What's the end game here? He said, no, Ken, here's what we're going to do. We actually want to achieve top-line growth. If we have to lay off many people, that means we failed at our strategy. They've done now over 30 roll-ups of companies in different industries. And they haven't had to lay off people. Of course, they lay off people for performance and whatever, but they've really dramatically improved the top-line growth of really legacy companies. I mean, the HOA industry, you know, property manager industry, who would have said, boy, this is a real terrific opportunity for AI.…
There's a reason I sold that business. There's a
reason why I sold that business. And then I said, you know, back to Zach, you know, for Zach and Alex, I said to them, I said, You know, one of the things I always said is become the company that will put you out of business. You guys are doing that. If you can replicate what you were doing with…
Moving away from the roll-up piece of it, are you worried about an AI bubble? Like, I mean, obviously, the roll-up depends on sort of the utility of AI. In some ways, the question is: is the utility so great that people's concerns about a bubble are misguided, or you two are sort of like, I don't…