Person
1 episodes · 21 quoted claims
Alexander Taubman says roughly 80 percent of the infrastructure of Long Lake's Nexus platform is shared across its industry verticals.
“Um, I'd say roughly 80 of the infrastructure is shared across the verticals, and then there's a lot of work to take it and deploy it into those end markets.”
Taubman says it took Long Lake over a year on its first acquisitions to realize AI's potential in business outcomes.
“you know, in the beginning, it took us over a year with our first acquisitions to actually, you know, find the the real potential of AI”
Taubman says Long Lake can now deploy Nexus within days of partnering with a company.
“But now, within days of partnering with a company, we can deploy this very quickly and see immediate impact.”
Taubman says Long Lake's homeowners association (HOA) business is the fastest-growing company in the HOA industry and is growing organically.
“We're fastest growing company in the HOA industry. Now we are growing organically.”
Taubman says the acquired HOA businesses grew about 0-5% a year in volume before acquisition and now grow more than 20% a year.
“they were typically growing zero to 5 a year in terms of volume. We're now growing 20 plus a year.”
Long Lake's co-founder and chief technology officer, Rasmus, met Alexander Taubman through an early investor and board member.
“Rasmus, our our co-founder and CTO, uh, he and I were connected through one of our f, you know, early investors and board members.”
Taubman says Long Lake's early team included people from Palantir, Ramp, Robinhood and Glean.
“And people from, you know, places like Palantir, Ramp, Robinhood, you know, um, some of the top glean, some of the top, um, sort of modern AI and data, uh, companies.”
Taubman says a Long Lake co-founder who leads mergers and acquisitions came from the private equity firm GTCR, where he worked on its most profitable deal ever the month before leaving.
“one of our co-founders and M. A lead came from GTCR. He actually worked on the most profitable deal in their history, the month before he left to come to Long Lake.”
Taubman says the travel business now called American Express Global Business Travel was started in 1915 by American Express to help its traveler's check customers leave Europe during World War I.
“this is a this is a 111 year old company. It was started in 1915 by American Express as a way for them to get their travel checks customers out of Europe during World War I.”
Taubman says Amex GBT acquired Carlson Wagonlit Travel late in the previous year, and that Carlson Wagonlit was founded around 1876.
“Carlson Wagon Lead, which they acquired late last year, was founded, I think, in 1876.”
Taubman says Long Lake keeps a list of 15 to 20 target industries, and travel was always on it.
“We have a whiteboard of call it 15, 20 industries that we think are very high value for us to focus on. And travel was always one of them.”
Taubman says travel appealed to Long Lake because it is mission critical, has a high cost of failure, and most trips generate revenue.
“it's a mission critical service, it's high cost of failure, um, most trips are revenue generating.”
Taubman says Long Lake's stated plan for Amex GBT is to build on the company's existing AI transformation strategy.
“our vision is to really double down on the company's existing AI transformation strategy.”
Taubman says Danaher Corporation, which began in manufacturing and moved into life sciences, is a model that inspired Long Lake's strategy of compounding through an operating model.
“So part of what inspired us always about, you know, the Danahers of the world is they were able to compound.”
Taubman says his family business, started by his grandfather and run by his father and an uncle, was a 75-year-old company that the family recently exited.
“my grandfather started, my dad, Ru- an uncle ran for for for 75 year old company that we recently exited.”
Taubman estimates that real enterprise AI use cases are only around 1 percent penetrated in the economy.
“AI is very, very underpenetrated, it's probably around 1 penetrated in terms of real enterprise AI use cases.”
Taubman says Long Lake's pitch to acquired companies includes engineers who effectively work in their offices for about two years.
“our extraordinary engineering team will s basically live in your office for the next two years, helping you fix all your problems.”
Taubman says that in Long Lake's first four verticals, original founders and leaders have rolled over significant equity into the new business.
“in our first four verticals, service lines that we've gone into, we have significant rollover participation from the original founders”
Taubman says Danaher and TransDigm showed that a strong acquisition currency lets a company avoid losing deals on price because it can operate acquisitions better.
“Is that, you know, if you can establish a currency, you can actually, you know, not have to lose deals over price, cause you can operate the deals better.”
Taubman says labor-intensive service companies keep only about 20 cents of each additional revenue dollar because most goes to added labor.
“you only keep $0.20 on the dollar of every incremental, uh, dollar of revenue that comes in, because, you know, most of it goes to incremental labor.”
Taubman says AI can make existing teams 30 to 40 percent more efficient so they can handle more customers.
“when you make your existing teams 30, 40 more efficient and they can handle more customers.”