Tracy Graham - Investing in Overlooked Businesses – [Invest Like the Best, EP.206]

My guest today is Tracy Graham, founder and managing principal of Graham Allen Partners, a private equity firm that specializes in acquiring and building technology-enabled businesses. In our conversation we discuss how Tracy ended up playing football at Notre Dame, the key lessons he learned from famed coach Lou Holtz, why Graham Allen believes that businesses in secondary or tertiary US markets are undervalued, and why technology represents a great way to improve old businesses. I hope you enjoy my fun conversation with Tracy.

For the full show notes, transcript, and links to mentioned content check out https://www.joincolossus.com/episodes/86798473/graham-investing-in-overlooked-businesses.

This episode of Invest like the Best is brought to you by Tegus. Tegus has built the most extensive primary information platform available for investors. With Tegus, you can learn everything you’d want to know about a company in an on-demand digital platform. Investors share their expert calls, allowing others to instantly access more than 10,000 calls on Square, Snowflake, or almost any company of interest. All you have to do is log in. Visit https://www.tegus.co/patrick to learn more.

This episode is brought to you by the MIT Investment Management Company (MITIMCO). MITIMCO is always on the looking for promising investment managers with the potential to compound our capital for a decade or more. If you think your firm is too small, too young, or too non-institutional, you might just be exactly what we are looking for. Check us out at https://mitimco.org/partner/ or e-mail us at  [email protected]. Please also see our new page for emerging managers https://mitimco.org/emerging-managers/.

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Show Notes

[3:35] – [First question] – Tracy’s origin story

[7:17] – Lessons from Lou Holtz

[8:58] – Why Lou was so good as a leader

[10:32] – His early experience as an entrepreneur

[15:45] – Investing principle at Graham Allen and how it was shaped by his experience

[18:41] – Types of companies they target for investment

[23:09] – Defining a unique and interesting data set

[27:14] – Mispricing data sets and the fools gold

[29:19] – Overview of a Midwest manufacturing company

[31:50] – How data is being generated in manufacturing businesses

[36:57] – Data to improve marketing

[41:13] – Using data to dissect distribution

[45:59] – Valuation of the companies in terms of multiples they are looking at

[47:31] – Business values he strongly believes in

[50:54] – Significance of Kenneth Allen in the firm

[52:23] – Kindest thing anyone has done for him