Page 68 - Forbes - USA (October 2019)

Golder and Bruce Rauner, who later
went on to become governor of Illi-
nois, creating Thoma Cressey. Thoma
sent Bravo to San Francisco to hunt
for investments and eventually ex-
pand the firm’s Bay Area presence.
Bravo’s first few deals, struck be-
fore he turned 30, were disasters. He
64 backed two website design startups,
NerveWire and Eclipse Networks, just
as the dot-com bubble popped. The
O two lost most of the $100 million Bravo
A V
R invested. “I learned I didn’t want to
B invest in risky things ever again,” Bra-

O vo says. “It was too painful to live
D
N through.” Thoma Cressey was also
A struggling elsewhere, with under-
L
R performing investments in oil and
O
gas and telecommunications. It was
E
L among the worst performers in the
I
F private equity industry at the time.
O
R But the failure led to an epiphany
P
that soon made Bravo and his part-
market chain Pueblo Xtra International opened Mission Driven ners billions. He realized his mistake was in
his eyes to the world of buyouts. But mostly he Days after Hurricane backing startup entrepreneurs, an inherently
Maria hit his
says he learned he didn’t want to be a banker. native Puerto Rico, risky move, when for the same money he could
Orlando Bravo
Bravo eventually headed west to Stanford Uni- buy established companies selling niche software
loads up a plane in
versity. He’d already been accepted into its law Ft. Lauderdale with to loyal customers. With Thoma’s blessing, Bra-
hundreds of pounds
school, but he also wanted to attend the busi- of supplies, including vo pivoted and became an expert on these arcane
ness school. He called insistently and eventually hydration pills, IV firms. Coming out of the dot-com bust, the mar-
tubes and diapers.
got accepted to pursue both. He worked during a ket was littered with foundering companies that
summer at Seaver Kent, a Menlo Park, California- had gone public during the bubble and had few
based joint venture with David Bonderman’s Tex- interested buyers. Bravo got to work. His first big
as Pacific Group that specialized in middle mar- move, in 2002, was to buy Prophet 21, a Yardley,
ket deals. Upon graduation in 1998,
Bravo wasn’t offered a position there
or at TPG, and he spent months cold- Every time we picked up our
calling for a job. After about a hun-
eye of Carl Thoma, a founding partner heads to peek at a deal that
dred calls, Bravo’s résumé caught the

of the Chicago-based private equity
firm Golder, Thoma, Cressey, Rauner wasn’t software, the software
(now known as GTCR), and they hit it
off. “The biggest mistake Texas Pacif- deal looked a lot better to us.
ic made was Orlando worked there for
the summer between business school
years and they didn’t make him a job offer,” says Pennsylvania-based software provider to distrib-
Thoma, 71, who Forbes estimates is also a billion- utors in the healthcare and manufacturing sec-
aire based on an analysis of public filings. tors that was trading at a mere one times sales.
One of the pioneers of the private equity in- Rather than clean house, Bravo kept the com-
dustry in the 1970s, Thoma is a tall and mild- pany’s CEO, Chuck Boyle, and worked beside
mannered Oklahoman whose parents were him to boost profits, mainly by rolling up com-
ranchers. Thoma and his partners practiced a petitors. When Boyle wanted to buy a company
friendlier version of the buyouts popularized by called Faspac, Bravo flew to San Diego to work
Michael Milken, preferring to buy small busi- out of the Faspac owner’s garage for five days,
nesses and expand them using acquisitions. analyzing reams of contracts to see if the deal
When Bravo came aboard in 1998, Thoma and would work. “Orlando would help not only at the
partner Bryan Cressey had just split from Stanley highest level with strategy but also when we got

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