How I Bought 7 Small Businesses and Had One Exit That Returned a 35x MOIC | Dev Shah Interview

Dev Shah is the founder of Pocket Fund, a HoldCo that has acquired 7 businesses. At just 23, Dev has built a growing portfolio of newsletters, SaaS products, and mobile apps without raising a dime of outside capital. One of his first acquisitions, Sourcely.ai, made 37.5x MOIC.

Thank you to our sponsors:
Scalepath: https://www.joinscalepath.com/
Spacebar Studios: https://www.spacebarstudios.co/

In this episode, we cover:
00:00:00 - Intro
00:01:56 - Discovering acquire.com and the first acquisition
00:03:04 - Overview of Pocket Fund's portfolio and team structure
00:07:08 - Sponsor: Scalepath
00:10:08 - Building and managing a team in India to run the portfolio
00:11:03 - How he finds operators and builds systems to scale to 20+ companies
00:17:14 - His buying criteria and approach to value creation
00:17:26 - Sponsor: Spacebar Studios
00:21:52 - Deal sourcing
00:36:55 - Deep dive into his 35x MOIC case study (Sourcely.ai)
00:43:47 - How does Dev manage a portfolio of six companies
00:47:56 - Why he is rejecting VC and fund money for now
01:00:37 - Long-term vision and building a new Constellation-like model in India
01:05:24 - Hiring global talent

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Dev on Twitter: https://x.com/devlikesbizness

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