I am Compound248 and today we are pleased to announce and kick-off a Business Breakdowns mini-series focused on Digital Infrastructure. Over the coming months, we will breakdown a handful of companies that are key players in the digital infrastructure asset class. An asset class that undergirds and powers all modern digitally connected experiences. Everything from streaming video to business collaboration tools, to crypto mining, to your everyday internet experience.Our hope with this mini series is to give you an understanding of the businesses that underpin our modern lives, giving us an almost magical, ubiquitous connected existence. How is it, for example, that Netflix, based in Seattle, is able to deliver a perfect streaming experience to your phone in the back seat of a New York City taxi cab? Digital Infrastructure powers that experience. 
 
This inaugural episode of the Digital Infrastructure Business Breakdowns mini series will begin with one of the broadest, most important companies in the industry, DigitalBridge. A company that is part private equity firm, part asset owner, and part infrastructure operator of assets across the digital infrastructure spectrum.
 
For the full show notes, transcript, and links to the best content to learn more, check out the episode page here.
 
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This episode is brought to you in partnership with Roundhill Investments, the advisor to the Roundhill IO Digital Infrastructure ETF – BYTE - which trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol BYTE. The fund tracks the BYTE Index, which measures the performance of 40 leading global digital infrastructure businesses, such as towers and mobile communications, fiber and fixed line connectivity, and data centers. For a prospectus and more information, please visit roundhillinvestments.com/etf/byte.
 
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Business Breakdowns is a property of Colossus, LLC. For more episodes of Business Breakdowns, visit joincolossus.com/episodes.
 
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Show Notes
[00:04:22] - [First question] - What digital infrastructure means and how it came to be
[00:09:58] - The nuance of digital infrastructure and how big the addressable opportunity set is
[00:12:47] - How DigitalBridge became the company it is today 
[00:19:06] - How he thinks about portioning the fee and value creation economics between shareholders and employees
[00:23:15] - The differences between their earlier funds and current funds from how the economics split within the team and owners
[00:25:53] - A look into their balance sheet today between funds and operating assets
[00:28:39] - How big the digital infrastructure space could be in the future from an IM standpoint 
[00:30:41] - Their US and non-US opportunity set and how towers and mobile infrastructure compare and contrast across their verticals
[00:34:03] - How DigitalBridge professionals operate with portfolio companies and how they add value to them
[00:38:47] - Changes in standard growth and the slow downs in the Hyperscale or Telco side of the business
[00:40:37] - If Edge competes with their core assets and how it works across all of their portfolio companies
[00:42:21] - Where we are on the 5G rollout and how it touches their businesses
[00:43:39] - His view on building out Edge and data center capacity from a DigitalBridge standpoint
[00:45:35] - How the competitive environment and risk and return profiles have shifted 
[00:46:33] - How inflation affects the business and how he manages lease renewal
[00:50:19] - If Elon Musk building Starlink is a threat or an opportunity 
[00:52:12] - How DigitalBridge thinks about consumer facing digital infrastructure 
[00:54:48] - What could happen to lead to their success and business evolution in the future 
[00:56:28] - Two key lessons he’d give as advice to someone looking to build and lead a company