Speaker 1: 0:02

Welcome to Uplink, where we explore the world of digital infrastructure, uncovering the technology, fueling AI and cloud innovation, with the leaders making it happen. All right. Well, welcome to another podcast for Uplink, where we're thrilled to have Mark Gansey join us today. I just have a little intro for Mark and then I'd love to get your perspective on how you would see that. But let me just read through a couple of these pieces. So Mark is the CEO at Digital Bridge. Now.

Speaker 1: 0:33

Digital Bridge is one of the largest infrastructure investment firms on the planet. There's approximately $100 billion in assets under management. I'll repeat that $100 billion in assets under management. There's a whole range of companies you'd be familiar with that we'll sort of chat through as we go through this session, potentially covering everything from macro cell towers, fiber networks, small cells and edge infrastructure and what's really interesting and that's Mark by day, but Mark by evening. He's a competitive polo player and actually last time you and I chatted I saw a lot of the trophies that you've had over what is a lifetime in polo, from what I can see, and then by night, when everyone's going to bed, mark's an endurance motorsport racer. So you've got a lot on your plate and I'm sure you've got family commitments and so forth, but I mean between all the companies that you oversee and you partner with. Give us a bit of a perspective in your world, and have I described your business appropriately? Should we start there?

Speaker 2: 1:33

Yeah, well, thanks, michael. First of all, it's a pleasure to be here with you today and, in full disclosure, michael's a dear friend and someone who I have a ton of respect for, who's built a great business in digital infrastructure, who we partner with across a bunch of our portfolio companies. As you know, megaport is co-located in places like Switch and DataBank and Vantage and Zayo, and so we have enormous connectivity to you, michael, and you understand. Digital infrastructure is better maybe better than I do, at a fabric level at least, but I am delighted.

Speaker 1: 2:04

We live in your data centers, we procure your fiber. We stitch them all together. It's a good partnership across the board actually.

Speaker 2: 2:12

And I think it really. Let's start there, right? I mean, that's what's happening in the sector today, michael. I think that there's this. You know, a word that's largely overplayed in our sector is convergence. But actually you and I have the pleasure and the privilege of seeing convergence every day.

Speaker 2: 2:28

Software-defined networking really has changed the landscape of how you can virtualize cross-connects, how you can virtualize your presence in a data center. We can be sitting here in Boca Raton, but really I'm co-located in Sydney or I'm co-located in Melbourne and then I have access to over, you know, 5,000, 6,000 cross connects in Asia. That's the new world, right, a virtualized world where software-defined networking really transcends barriers. And what makes me so excited about digital infrastructure today is that you know our customers operate on a global basis. You know, when we hear about tariffs and geopolitics and Trump versus Xi and versus Xi and China versus the US, the reality is digital infrastructure has no boundaries. I mean, that's what makes our business so really unique, differentiated and honestly exciting.

Speaker 2: 3:13

I wake up every day with this youthful exuberance. It's not fake, it's just because the challenges are so enormous of what we have to do, and the privilege of what we get to do in terms of working with customers is tremendous. We have great relationship with our customers. They invite us to go with them around the world to to go build infrastructure, whether it's from from cape town to cyber java, to dublin, to some of the things that we're doing in the gulf, to the us, to canada, to latin america, this new ai park we're building in puerto alegre in brazil with the help of the US government and Scala. I mean, we go everywhere. There is no boundary to what we do, and so every day, I have this unique privilege of walking in. Yes, we manage a big pool of capital. Now, 100 billion of assets seems big. You know, you look up at some of the other guys who manage a trillion in assets, like Apollo or like Blackstone, you say, okay, I'm a small guy, but as it relates to what we do.

Speaker 2: 4:02

We are the biggest of what we do. We own a very specific street corner. We have a series of different funds and products. We made a decision to go asset light, as you know, about five years ago, where we started raising a lot of third party capital, working with clients to help them get exposure to what we think is really the most important secular thematic in investing today, which is how do you invest in the digital economy, how do you invest in AI without taking outsized risk? And so that's what we do.

Speaker 2: 4:31

We work with over 300 clients globally. We represent their capital, whether it's in our flagship equity product, whether it's in liquid securities, whether it's in credit, whether it's in a core offering or whether it's in a continuation fund or some of the new things that we're doing in power and real estate. Everything we do is with an eye towards, first, the client. The client has to come first. You know, what kind of capital are we managing for them? What are the objectives of that capital? What's the time duration, what's the return profile? Are they going risk off? Do they want yield? Do they want more risk? And so it's a really, you know, unique relationship we have with our clients because we have to go out and perform for them. Right, Like in any situation, you have to go out and perform. So I feel like we're very privileged, we're very lucky, you know. But every day that privilege is tested. Right, You've got to go out and perform.

Speaker 2: 5:12

And so that's what we're doing in a changing landscape where now everybody wants to be in the data center business.

Speaker 2: 5:17

by the way, Everyone in the 90s wanted to be in the tower business. Everyone in the fiber business, everyone in the early 2000s wanted to be in the fiber business, and I'm like I've been to this movie before Everybody always wants to be in the verticals that we're in, and so that's not new to us and I think it's again this perspective that I'm investing for decades. I'm not investing for a moment in time. This isn't an AI trade for me, and it shouldn't be an AI trade for investors, and so we caution people that are sort of getting pitched that AI fever or let's go build a data center, or gee, I've got renewable power and extra data center, so I've got something really valuable. You know, what's valuable.

Speaker 2: 5:50

People are valuable, relationships are valuable. You know, I tell the story of 1994 when I built my first cell site in South New Jersey, and I know who I built it for. I built it for Bell Atlantic Mobile. The guy who's doing site acquisition was Kyle Mullady, who's now the CTO of Verizon, who's a good friend of mine. But those relationships, for us, they matter. They go back 30 years and it's relationships, michael, that are built on trust and you know this because you run a business and if we don't have the trust of a customer, if we don't have the trust of an investor, we really don't have a business. And so these are just some of the things I was thinking about and you and I were going to have this conversation today about. I don't usually get to have a conversation like this in a podcast, where I'm talking to a peer, somebody who actually runs a business and understands some of the challenges that we're dealing with today. But really they're not challenges, they're really opportunities.

Speaker 1: 6:36

Well, there's a few pieces I want to unpack there. One of the things that I've loved about my engagement with you I think we met about a year and a half, maybe a bit longer ago, when I sort of stepped into this role. I'm two years now in. I think I was six months delayed to get to you. But the one thing that strikes me, you talked about people. You're not just talking about people in terms of the customers.

Speaker 1: 6:55

One thing I've loved about your businesses, and when you and I first caught up, I said, how are you doing this? How are you running such incredible companies? And you said to me it's about protecting the CEOs or the leadership teams inside those businesses. And I've had the pleasure of working with a lot of your CEOs or the folks that are running the businesses, and they're all amazing. They're rock stars. Some of them have been with you for a very long time.

Speaker 1: 7:18

Raul as well is a good example. We actually came on the pod and we chatted to him and he's a legend in the industry. I mean, what a great human he is. But you've managed to make sure that these people stay in the businesses that you've acquired or you've built, and I think that's a huge part of the success that you've had. I would have to say it's just from an outsider looking in, so maybe just comment on that and then I'm going to unpack the crazy world of data centers and the fact that you were there long before AI became this space and you were. We'll unpack that in a second, but let's pause on the people bit.

Speaker 2: 7:50

Look on the people piece. It's super easy. You said it Raul's just a great guy, right? My litmus test is can I have a beer with that person? Like, can I sit down in a pub or a bar, have a beer with them and just have a normal conversation? I like people that are very relatable, that really don't have that what I call Park Avenue airs about them. You know, I like working with guys that know how to build businesses, that understand what it takes, that have taken risks, that have stared the cliff moment down. We talk about that a lot.

Speaker 2: 8:16

You know, when we're in board meetings and when I get to know my CEOs, I try to get them to know them on a really personal level. I want to know what motivates them. I want to know what drives them more than just making money. But what are their goals? I know what Raul's personal goals are. I know what Surreal's personal goals are. I think I sometimes know what Rob Roy's goals are. I'm not quite sure, but I have a great relationship with all my CEOs.

Speaker 2: 8:38

The litmus test is really Michael, they're just good human beings. I think if you get that right, you know if they are people that you can trust and that you want to get in the bunker with if times get tough. You find out the most about people when things get tough. And look, we're not perfect. You know we've got 50 plus companies today. Do we have every CEO right? I'm sure we don't. But I think this guiding principle of, like working with people you've worked with before, working with trustworthy people, working with people that want to work hard and that want to do well for the organization and that really love their culture and love their people you can't fake culture. You know the Megaport culture is really strong, right? You carry that torch. You're the guy that is the pallbearer of that culture.

Speaker 2: 9:19

I set that tone here. I try to set it. My partners do an amazing job. I wouldn't be able to do this without the 300 people that work at Digital Ridge, who are amazing. I've got amazing partners, you know, and I've got guys that really understand their disciplines. You know whether it's John Mock on data centers or Jonathan Frizzell on fiber, justin Chang running Asia, mandri Gavada, now promoted running Europe for me, Dean Kraras in credit, bill Hughes and Alan running Liquid, jeff and Jen running our core fund.

Speaker 2: 9:45

We have so many talented people that help us get out there and get our message out there in a way that's a bit more intense than our competitors. So I think, look, we don't want to be Brookfield, we don't want to be Blackstone, we don't want to be KKR. We think those are great organizations and we're trying really hard to just be ourselves and I think if we can perfect the fine art of being comfortable on our own skin, we're gonna be really successful. And the reason we're gonna be successful is because the 300 plus people here that work at DigiBridge wake up with one mission on their mind, which is how do we invest in great companies and great people, in digital infrastructure and sort of? Having that kind of narrow mandate allows us to be super intense in our focus and allows us to be super intense in our focus and that allows us to really create the culture down at the portfolio companies and that transmits down to our management team. So there is a strategy to that right.

Speaker 2: 10:31

We are trying to do something that is very intentional and it starts with people. It starts with our people, it starts with the management teams and I think again, it's just about that culture. It's about creating a culture where people want to win, they want to work hard, they want to respect each other and and you know it's not accidental Like a lot of the guys here have been with me for 30 years. Yeah, that's not an accident when you have people that have stood by you for three decades and you can trust them and you know when the time gets tough, you can navigate through those things, because it always hasn't been perfect, right? You know we had the dot-com crash, we had the mortgage crisis, we've had COVID. Like I've been through enough crises at you know, at the ripe age of 53, where I could say, okay, I have the battle scars to tell you we're going to get through it but we're going to get through it.

Speaker 1: 11:13

You also have the team that's followed you through it and that's a testament, obviously, to your leadership and also will follow people. What's interesting about you is Digital Bridge is, as you said, a 300-person company that then invests and owns a whole range of other companies, so you sort of run your own business and then you've also got these other businesses that you're supporting or at least empowering to go on and continue on, and that's where you've got, I guess, two teams. You've got the people that run the businesses that you own. Then you've got the entire team that you have that builds that digital bridge.

Speaker 1: 11:45

Now, you said a few points there and you were doubling down. I think it must have been during COVID. Actually, if I think about it, when most folks are probably, you know, sort of shrinking into themselves or getting very conservative, you were going big. I'm just trying to think of the switch, acquisition and time. I can't remember when that would have been, but that was what was that? An $11 switch, acquisition and time. I can't remember when that would have been, but that was what was that an 11 billion?

Speaker 2: 12:07

dollar acquisition of a data center company that was public. You started looking at switch and covid. You know it was kind of one of those misunderstood reits. It never should have been a data center reit. It was. It was a business that was really focused intensively on private cloud environments and that ultimately, what rob was trying to do was build the most reliable and dependable name in protecting people's data and building an incredible customer experience where you could look a customer straight in the eye and say, look, you're going to put your equipment with us. It's never going to go down. We've got a thousand you know, a hundred percent reliability. That's really unique and I think Rob really cherishes that role that he plays, you know, in the ecosystem In COVID.

Speaker 2: 12:46

He didn't have a lot of fresh capital as a REIT. They struggled with their free cash flow, they struggled to raise the hundreds of millions of dollars that Vantage and DataBank was raising in a private format, and so we started the discussion with Rob like five, six years ago. We said, hey, we get it. You've got this massive land bank, you've got this huge power bank, but you don don't have capital and you've got public shareholders that do not understand the enormity of what's coming down the pike yeah, we do.

Speaker 1: 13:09

We want to help you, and so we started that dialogue in time for you.

Speaker 2: 13:14

Yeah, it was great, I mean investment, you know before it was.

Speaker 1: 13:18

Before it was all boom and exploding. Yeah, yeah, yeah, and the outcome for your shareholders must be phenomenal. I mean, from that that is a particular one in terms of timing. I mean, a few years later would have been less than maybe a few years. Ai takes off and then data center becomes the hottest place in the world to be.

Speaker 2: 13:37

Which was a great, great situation. People really didn't value the power in the land bank and that's what we saw. We saw what was coming, which was, you know, was AI was nascent, but we saw it coming and we felt like a marketplace that was, at that point in time, was like 20 gigawatts. We saw 20 going to 40. We saw 40 going to 80. We saw 80 going to 160. So we took a long view and I think one of the benefits of being an infrastructure investor where you've got long-term capital is you can sit back and make those bets with a 10-year prism, not a two-year prism or a one-year prism.

Speaker 2: 14:09

And I think what was frustrating for Rob as a public CEO is he was managing switch quarter to quarter. You can't manage switch quarter to quarter. These are guys that had thousands of acres, great land, great fiber, great power, and you had to look through that and you had to understand the land bank and you had to understand the importance of Reno. You really had to understand the land bank and you had to understand the importance of Reno. You really had to understand the emerging, how Atlanta was emerging, how important Austin was in a market where Dallas and Houston and San Antonio were losing power because of ERCOT. So just the depth at which we underwrote that deal and which we understood, it was really a competitive advantage and we really got into the assets at an intrinsic level that I think others didn't understand.

Speaker 2: 14:48

So advantage us. I mean we had one strategic and we had another GP. Go hard on that deal, but not hard like us. And so Rob really understood that we were the right guys. And the good news is Rob was like well, who can I call to get a reference check on you, because these other guys have never bought an $11 billion data service. I said, well, here you go, call Raul, call Surreal, call Marcos, call all my CEOs and just ask them what it's like to work with us. And he was like get on a plane, come to Vegas, let's have dinner. I talked to your guys, they can vouch for you.

Speaker 1: 15:19

That's the piece to it and what you've built. I mean, that's what's quite astounding for the rest of the world right now who? Everyone's looking at data centers going oh, it's the hottest space a bit. And, by the way, I kind of find this entertaining that everyone's now become a data center builder and you know you look around as well, it's some land and someone's going to give me some power.

Speaker 1: 15:37

And now I'm a data center builder and but I mean, if I just look through some of your brands, you know it's like vantage databank. I mean datab got, I think, the largest number of data centers, or something like that, in the United States in terms of quantity. And then you go Vantage is one of the largest hyperscalers. Switch is just one of the sexiest data centers there is. I mean I'm sure you've toured lots of them. You haven't toured all of them, but I can tell you that, going through that Switch data center in Vegas, Rob, it's sexy.

Speaker 2: 16:05

Let's keep that quiet. He likes secure, not sexy.

Speaker 1: 16:07

But you know it's secure. You can't take a photo.

Speaker 2: 16:09

Very good piece of real estate.

Speaker 1: 16:11

That's right. You can't show anyone how cool this thing is. I mean, he's got something like I don't know what it is, but it was 900 patents inside, I think to his name personally.

Speaker 2: 16:21

Yeah, a lot of patents.

Speaker 1: 16:21

Unbelievable. I have a lot of patents.

Speaker 2: 16:22

Unbelievable.

Speaker 2: 16:23

A lot of very interesting patents, particularly around cooling and security. I mean, these are things that really matter and you know, if you're going to do business with the customers that Switch does business with, you have to be differentiated, and I think that's where Rob makes his mark. I mean Fortune 100 customers, government agencies they trust Switch. It's a very trustworthy brand because the things that they're doing in private cloud are very different than public cloud, as you know. So, having that intimacy with your customer and understanding how to protect them and understand how to achieve their objectives particularly now in AI, where data is really the commodity we all can agree on that Data is the new gold or the new oil in a corporate environment or an enterprise environment. You want to control that data, you want to keep it secure. You certainly want to build your own LLM if you're a Fortune 100 user, and then, of course, you want to build your own generative AI and inference to ultimately improve the customer experience.

Speaker 2: 17:12

So Switch was right place, right time and we've had a couple of those. I mean we've had a bunch of situations where we've been right place, right time. But you have to do the work up front, you have to take a view and you have to take what I call calibrated risk, and calibrated risk is how I built my career Understanding how to do the work, understanding how to really underwrite a deal and really understanding when the opportunity presents itself. You gotta go, and you gotta go quickly and you've gotta go with all your might, and we did that in Zayo, we did that in Switch, we've done it numerous times, we did it in the Deutsche Telekom Tower process in Europe. When we make up our mind and we have conviction, we rarely lose. I think our win rate's like something like 90, high 80s, like 87%. When we make a real decision to go for something, we win and we win a lot.

Speaker 1: 17:58

Well, you've got all the I mean, you've got the proof points of it, but you've also been here a lot longer than from the flash and the pan hotness, and the cool thing is it's all become hot Like even so, it sort of was COVID came through and then everyone's sort of exploding, taking all their data somewhere else other than the office, and then the data centers are sort of exploding. Then the hyperscalers were going through their piece, but then all of a sudden, ai turns up. Then that explodes, then hyperscalers explode again. Now what's happening is the connectivity piece is taking off and you look at your investments in Zayo as a great example huge fiber assets like unbelievably large, but you're also investing more, and so that's what's cool about you guys. I think there's different sort of funds out there that acquire companies and then strangle the life out of them and basically cut costs and reduce. That's what I've always been super impressed about your business is you come in and you like triple, quadruple down.

Speaker 1: 18:55

I remember catching up with some of the data centers and they're just like we're gonna do. They're sort of showing me their plan, this is before anything, and they're like this is what we used to do and I'm like, well, what are you doing now? Well, this is since gansey's company's coming, now, this is what we used to do. And I'm like well, what are you doing now? Well, this is since Gansey's company's coming, now this is what we're doing. And you go.

Speaker 1: 19:10

That's unbelievable. I can't remember what. It was just amazing. And the point is, you've got them the capital to go and deliver on it, which is, I think, one of the biggest challenges you sort of pointed it out before for public companies, and it's why it's a really interesting trend I think we've seen from data centers. There's only really sort of three or four big data center companies that are public or left public. The rest seem to be private, and actually it seems to be a massive advantage to be private, to move fast or at least to respond to the speed and the pace that things are happening. Is that a fair statement, or is it just that more things have?

Speaker 2: 19:46

moved private. You've got to have a good product. You've got to be able to form capital. That's really important. If you're going to make a big commitment of 800 megawatts, you got to back that up right. We know what that is. That's a very expensive data centers Billion, couple of billion. I think.

Speaker 2: 20:00

We've always understood that the data center business is about execution and part of the ingredients of if we were sort of baking a data center cake. One of the ingredients is capital. One of the ingredients is good design, zoning, people, customer relationships, track record right In terms of does your data center go down, does it stay up? And then the last thing is just power. Power's the new variable and it's hard, right. I mean, data centers are already hard enough. And then this conundrum around power comes along and you know, you've got aging transmission infrastructure in Europe, you've got aging transmission infrastructure in the US. You've got grids failing in Europe and the US. You've got regulators now freaked out and you've got this tsunami of demand coming right. We're only at 58 gigawatts today. We're going to 200, probably somewhere between like 150 and 300.

Speaker 2: 20:53

And so the limiting factor is no longer capital, michael. The limiting factor is can you deliver? You know, high power, density, compute at scale in a very tight geographic region where the customer ultimately needs that LLM, or they need that inference or they need whatever it is, that edge workload. So I'm now in the distributed power business. I just put like a new shingle out, which is like I'm a power guy, you know, because I'm spending an inordinate amount of time on power, and so we believe also there is an abundance of capital. But we also think investors are sort of up to here on data center exposure and you got to return capital and ultimately we've got to bring new capital into data centers, which is what we talked about. You know what I've been out on the road talking about. You know whether it was in Qatar last week on Bloomberg, or you know whether it was our earnings call. If you don't have power and you don't have the ability to recycle capital, you're in a lot of trouble in data centers. And so if you're not thinking through that conundrum carefully, you're sort of playing a yesterday's playbook. And I've always been like, look, we got to play the playbook that's in front of us. We got to play that you know not to work kind of the use an ice skating, you know ice hockey reference. You don't skate to where the puck is, you skate to where the puck is. You skate to where the puck's going. That's always the thing you need to do, and so, for us, we're super focused on distributed power, coming up with grid-independent solutions. We're doing that. We have a new strategy that's totally focused on how to power the AI economy. That's going really well.

Speaker 2: 22:16

You can imagine, people want to talk about power. They want to hear what our ideas are. Been a proven pioneer so many times. We have that credibility with investors. We can say, look, these are my ideas, here's how I look at the problem and here's how I'm going to solve it. And then here are the exact projects that we've lined up to go do it and people go. Well, that's very thoughtful. No one's come to us with that idea and that strategy in such a thoughtful way, and so we're winning.

Speaker 2: 22:39

We're creating the right power solutions for our customers, and again it's back to where I started 32 years ago. It's like I got to solve the problem for the customer, whether it's Verizon, whether it's Meta, whether it's Deutsche Telekom, you know, whether it's Apple, whoever it is, I have to solve the problem, and so, right now, the problem is power, and, as an adjunct to that, the other problem is how do we recycle capital? And so, you know, we're out with a strategy, that's a real estate strategy, to buy investment grade, stabilized data centers from, candidly, our competitors, other GPs. Why? Because I know, for this sector to flourish, we have to be a facilitator of recycling capital, even if it puts money into our competitors' pockets, where they're going to push that money back to their LPs. What it will do is fundamentally make the ecosystem work better, and we do need to do that. We need to ultimately bring real estate capital and insurance capital into data centers.

Speaker 2: 23:26

Just like 30 years ago, I was basically financed by venture capitalists, and then, in my second decade, I was financed by private equity, and then the third decade, I was financed by infrastructure capital. And now, in this fourth quadrant of the fourth decade of my career, I've got to go out and find permanent capital, whether it's private wealth, whether it's insurance capital, whatever it is, you have to keep evolving. Life is about evolving. As an investor, I have to evolve. I have to continue to be just slightly, ever so slightly, ahead of the curve because if I'm not, I'm out of a job. It's kind of a scary proposition.

Speaker 1: 23:59

It's so interesting to hear you talk about the evolution of what is the capital markets, in effect the power piece.

Speaker 1: 24:05

I find fascinating and I love we're sort of touching a point. One thing I've always looked at is whenever there's a problem, whenever there's a challenge that needs to be solved, what happens if it's a capitalistic style challenge. Ie, in this capitalistic world that we live in, if there's a problem, we can solve it using some form of capital. Get to the outcome. Now.

Speaker 1: 24:23

A great example to me is power. Power has always been government. It's never been a problem to solve. I mean, that was probably industry over many years that had needed to solve certain pieces, but for decades it hasn't been something that really needed to be solved by, I said I guess, private enterprise. And all of a sudden now it is. And so what I love about the world is that when there is a problem, the entities come together and solve it. And so what's fascinating is we're now starting to see different forms of power. Either at its very simplest piece, you guys might be getting into distribution, okay, to help distribute or get the. Maybe it's not power gen in certain places of distribution, but in some places we're now seeing power gen, and so that's a totally new, I guess, line of innovation that we'll see over the next sort of decade is small modular reactors or something like that. What are you seeing in that space, and do you invest in the companies that produce the power now? Is that another path that you could go down? I don't know.

Speaker 2: 25:28

Are we out of time? I think I have to go.

Speaker 1: 25:30

Exactly. Yeah, that's right.

Speaker 2: 25:32

Look, I'll just tell you a couple of things.

Speaker 2: 25:34

I can't get too deep into the strategy, but what I will tell you is you know we always get our best ideas from our portfolio companies.

Speaker 2: 25:41

So you know a couple of our portfolio companies. We're already building grid independent solutions to solve the problem, and so, whether it's marcos down in sao paulo, using using pure hydro, um and and building his own microgrids is powered by pure green energy and, yes, leasing his own transmission infrastructure, selling power back into the grid very innovative, but solving a problem, rightving a problem for the customers we actually sell power to our competitors in Brazil. It's kind of crazy and that's why I think, like again, if you're thinking in a sector way and not just selfishly for yourself, I've always been a big believer that I've got to bring the whole sector with me, and if I do, all boats rise with the tide and same thing, switch and vantage. They've got great ideas, great solutions, and so we've learned a lot around the power business, and what I'd say about power is you know, there is a, there is this great chance to build grid independent solutions where we can actually take a negative and turn into a positive.

Speaker 2: 26:37

And so and I think a lot of people kind of get obsessed with like a nuclear power and we're going to go build 60 gigawatts, we're going to solve the problem. You can't do that. You just can't say one technology is that silver bullet that solves the problem. We've taken a very pragmatic approach. We've looked at solar, wind, hydro, hydrogen. We've looked at CCG, we've looked at LNG, we've looked at existing grid capacity and I think for us, we have multiple solutions to the problem and we've been at it. We've been working on this for like two and a half years. Just this strategy.

Speaker 2: 27:08

Same way, when we launched our credit business, I spent three and a half years building our credit business before we launched it. So we put a lot of thought and again that word intention comes back. What are your intentions? How do you intend to be an intelligent and thoughtful investor? Anything that you do, do it with the right intention. Go do your homework, be smart about it, make good decisions, don't put your capital at risk and hire the best people. And so in Power, we've done that. We've created something that's really unique. More information will kind of come out as the year goes on, but we definitely know what we're doing and we definitely know what we're doing is differentiated versus what everybody else is doing. So that's exciting. I'm very excited about power. I mean, for me it's like one of those ideas that my 30-year career I've never seen something as big as power. It started kind of narrow, yes, and then as the problem got bigger, the aperture widened and that just got really exciting.

Speaker 2: 27:58

Well, it's cool no-transcript back into the grid. Everyone gets that wrong. So our solutions are about being sustainable, but also being a good partner to the grid and being a good partner to government.

Speaker 1: 28:39

So these conversations are awesome. I'm mindful of your time and I want to hit on a couple of other more personal things because I find them fascinating. Good, we can finish on that.

Speaker 1: 28:48

You travel, probably more than anyone I know. You go and see your customers, you see your partners, you see the companies that you own. I see you traveling. I see you presenting and actually uplifting the industry everywhere you go. I don't know how you do it in terms of time, just running those businesses, but somehow you find the time to be a very competitive polo player. Now we're not talking about water polo, we're talking about riding horses with a big mallet, swinging it around and hitting a ball, and you've been doing this for some time. How on earth do you find the time to do both of those pieces? Tell me a little bit about the polo pieces. I find it's a fascinating sport. I wouldn't call it the safe sport.

Speaker 2: 29:28

Yeah, that's been highlighted by a few of my investors. They're like that's not exactly a safe sport. Oh, there's the other one, Then you've got.

Speaker 1: 29:35

you don't like that, we'll do the motor sport.

Speaker 2: 29:44

For me it's really, really simple. The sport's been in my family for over 30 years. My dad played for a long time. I grew up in Colorado. My family was in the steakhouse business so we had a huge ranch in Colorado. I grew up riding horses, cutting cattle, so I've always had horses work around my orbit and around my life. It's always been a part of my family and a fabric of what we do as a family. It's a great sport because you can play as a family and so you know, sometimes you know for us we can get three generations of Ganzis on the polo field. That's really kind of pretty cool. My dad's retired now, so that doesn't happen. You know my kids play, which is exciting. They're both really good and they're very competitive.

Speaker 2: 30:14

And look, I think the fundamental thing about it for me is really twofold. One, I think it's important to be competitive. I think you have to have something that keeps you sharp mentally. It is a sport that requires a lot of fitness and it requires a lot of mental acuity. And also, you know, as the owner of the team, you get to pick your players. So that's a bit of a chess match. You got to figure out how you're going to build the right combination, and so I've been able to win at the highest levels there, which has been exciting. I can call myself a national champion, I'm, having won the US Open, which was really exciting and that took a lot of organization. And that's the second piece, which is the organizational piece If you want to win, you have to be super organized. It's just like business.

Speaker 2: 30:54

Polo is a bit of a sport that was played many, many, many centuries ago by Genghis Khan and it was considered an extension of the army, and so it's a very tactical game. It's a very fast game, it is a little dangerous, but ultimately it keeps me really sharp, and the organization that we've built to be competitive is a strong one, and it's indicative of what I've tried to do here at DigitalBridge, which is you build the best organization, go get the best horses, get the best people, find the best people that are expert in their positions, put everyone on the field and create a battle plan and go execute it. And so there's a lot of parallels to polo that there is to business, and you know it's taken me to some great places. Churchill once said a passport. You know, polos are your passport to the world. He's right. I've had the chance to play, you know, all around the world, which has been really exciting. Enjoy it with my family and yeah, that's kind of all I'll say about polo.

Speaker 1: 31:46

I mean, do you take your horse with you? Is that how it works?

Speaker 2: 31:48

No, no, sometimes I do. I mean I've taken my horses to England where I've competed for our country, basically the Ryder Cup of Polo. I was the captain of the US team in the Westchester Cup a long time ago, shipped a long time ago, shipped my horses to the UK with the US team competed. Wow, it was a big honor to do that.

Speaker 1: 32:05

Were they going to play? He was Prince.

Speaker 2: 32:07

Charles at the time. Now he's King Charles, but taking a trophy from him was pretty unique. So these are good moments. You know I've had a great career. I've had an amazing life. You know me, michael, really well. You've heard me say this before. I feel like I'm the luckiest guy in the world. You know I get to do what I want to do. I built a great company with some great human beings. I've gotten to travel the world. I get to do the hobbies that I enjoy doing. Again, I just, you know, I feel very privileged and very lucky.

Speaker 1: 32:32

Well, dude, you've maximized every part of it and you've also enabled yourself to both somehow have a personal life and actually build some cool. What is it? A team as well, and I know that there's another team. I won't go into it because I think that's probably well, actually, I do want to ask you one last thing before we go, because that was a good way to what's that? You got one more bullet left, one more bullet, and the only reason I want this bullet is because I love this bullet is motor racing. That's the last piece. I didn't know that about you, so that was.

Speaker 2: 33:07

I knew about the polo, but the motor racing piece that's the other piece you've managed to stitch into this thing. Is that still? It's not something that I do today. It's something that I get to watch Surreal do at a very, very intense level. So I get to sort of live that through Surreal, but I do enjoy it. I enjoy motor racing. It's really interesting. You know, if I could have a dream situation, you know, Cyril and I would own an F1 team together. That's definitely on our joint bucket list.

Speaker 1: 33:31

You know, I've always talked about that.

Speaker 2: 33:32

We looked at buying an F1 team that was in bankruptcy like six, seven years ago, and now it's apparently it's worth like five, $600 million and we just missed on it. But it's, it's again. It's a lot you know for for surreal. I think for him it's like polo, like you have to be tactical, you have to have a good organization, you have to have a good car, which is like for us, you have to have a good horses.

Speaker 2: 33:51

I think again, really, really, top CEOs, you're going to find they have a hobby, you know, and it's going to be good at it, because it's what they know. They know how to get organized, they know how to train and they know how to prepare and they know how to go win. And those are the same principles we apply, whether it's Advantage or Switch or Vertical Bridge or any of the business we own. You got to have a plan, you got to have the capital, you got to have the people and then you've got to have the know-how to go out on the polo field and execute. And I think, whether it's motor racing or polo, you've really, you know it's all the same principles. Right At the end of the day, there's no magic to this. It's preparation, hard work, practice, right people, right place, right time execution.

Speaker 1: 34:33

Yeah, I mean, the horse is almost like the product, the human is like the human. In business, the plan is like when you get together, the hustle and the drive is like when you get on the field and play together. It is there's a lot of synergies. Well, mark, I appreciate you man. You gave heaps of your time, way more than I expected. I just want to thank you for joining. Thank you for what you've done for the industry.

Speaker 2: 34:57

Thanks, michael, I appreciate it. Thank you for being a great partner with us too. You're an amazing partner and we're always delighted to work with you, so thank you.

Speaker 1: 35:02

I appreciate it. We're going to watch you close some of these exciting announcements that I suspect are going to come Really really cool. So I appreciate you. Thank you, man.