Mathias Calonius is a serial acquirer and co-founder of the Finnish holding company JATKAJA, which has 5 companies in its portfolio and a turnover of more than 50 million dollars.

“The first 3.5 years have included 10+ transactions and the formed 4 group companies stand at around $30M+ in revenue”

Location: Finland

HoldCo name: JATKAJA (means: continuer)

This short 55-minute call turned out to be an MBA on how to build a diversified HoldCo around boring traditional companies.

We discuss:

— Day-to-day when operating 5 portfolio companies

— How to find excellent deals

— Expensive mistakes to avoid in the future

— How to 3x a $3m company to $9m company

— Entrepreneurs being too greedy

Show Notes:

00:00:00 - Intro

00:00:15 - Why invest in traditional companies and not in something else?

00:02:25 - Swedish series acquirers (trading at P/E ratio of 25x) were a big motivation

00:03:45 - Is Mathias a generalist or a specialist

00:06:15 - What Mathias and the JATKAJA team look at when acquiring the company

00:08:45 - This is how they find deals

00:13:10 - How much time they spent on finding good deals in 2023

00:14:05 - Will they buy 100% of the company

00:17:00 - Growing a portfolio company from 3 million to 9 million in revenue

00:19:35 - Exact methods to accelerate growth

00:23:30 - The biggest mistakes with portfolio companies

00:28:10 - HoldCo's biggest risks in the world (sales-sales-sales)

00:31:20 - How Mathias spends his time between 5 portfolio companies

00:32:55 - Mathias' difficult situations in life and business

00:35:02 - Should we build one company or focus on 19 other companies?

00:38:03 - When a great team meets a bad market, the bad market wins - how and why?

00:40:20 - We all have that friend who isn't the smartest but runs a very successful business

00:41:25 - Should you be greedy in business?

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Mathias on Twitter: https://twitter.com/MathiasCalonius

This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions.