How I Bought 7 Small Businesses and Had One Exit That Returned a 35x MOIC | Dev Shah Interview
How I Bought 7 Small Businesses and Had One Exit That Returned a 35x MOIC | Dev Shah Interview  
Podcast: Buyers and Builders
Published On: Fri Jun 27 2025
Description: 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 - Intro00:01:56 - Discovering acquire.com and the first acquisition00:03:04 - Overview of Pocket Fund's portfolio and team structure00:07:08 - Sponsor: Scalepath00:10:08 - Building and managing a team in India to run the portfolio00:11:03 - How he finds operators and builds systems to scale to 20+ companies00:17:14 - His buying criteria and approach to value creation00:17:26 - Sponsor: Spacebar Studios00:21:52 - Deal sourcing00:36:55 - Deep dive into his 35x MOIC case study (Sourcely.ai)00:43:47 - How does Dev manage a portfolio of six companies00:47:56 - Why he is rejecting VC and fund money for now01:00:37 - Long-term vision and building a new Constellation-like model in India01:05:24 - Hiring global talent----------------------------------------------Subscribe on Spotify:https://open.spotify.com/show/6lr5bE3SNZF2uEE7Nb0DHhSubscribe on Apple Podcasts:https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/holdco-builders/id1695713724Follow Mikk/PrivatEquityGuy on Twitter: https://x.com/PrivatEquityGuy⁠⁠⁠Dev on Twitter: https://x.com/devlikesbiznessThis podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions.