In this episode of the Full Throttle Leaders Podcast, host Michael Falato interviews Ben Gaddis, a veteran of the mobile marketing industry and founder of the private equity firm Superstep Capital. Gaddis recounts his early work in mobile text‑message programs, his role in scaling a mobile agency that built apps for brands like UPS, Coca‑Cola, and 7‑Eleven, and the eventual sale of that agency. He explains Superstep Capital’s focus on majority buyouts of digital services firms with $15‑40 M in revenue, targeting companies that implement enterprise software (Snowflake, ServiceNow, Anaplan) and help clients maximize those tools. Gaddis shares a core career lesson: the importance of “raising your hand” to seize emerging opportunities, a mindset he looks for in founders he partners with. He discusses how the next five years will be transformative for digital services as AI, automation, and AI‑driven agents reshape service delivery, and he positions Superstep as an investor‑partner helping firms adapt. The conversation also includes anecdotes about early mobile testing with a massive phone collection, and Gaddis provides contact details, personal website, book title, and upcoming events (Databricks Summit, Anthropic/OpenAI gatherings, ServiceNow conferences) where listeners can connect with him.
Chapters
All right, everybody, we have a good friend of mine since 2007, maybe.
Oh, don't say it, don't say it, that's too long.
Or Ben was just, I think, starting out, right?
Yeah, well, yeah, I've been in the, I've been in the, the, uh, mobile game for a little while, but I think that was pretty early on. But yeah, it's been too long now.
This guy was leading companies. He started his own, um, private equity company called Superstuck Capital. But I want to introduce you to, uh, Ben Gaddis. Ben, what have you been doing? Who are you now? What are you— what have you done to get to where you're at today?
Oh man, that's a, that's a long story. I, uh, so we met back in the early days of mobile. I mean, if you remember, we were working on like text message programs and it was just, it was, it was wild. So, um, I was working, yeah, mobile marketing. I mean, I, I started, uh, my career at a traditional advertising agency, um, and then somehow ended up on a team that was working on this new thing called Google. And we, uh, started working with American Airlines and I'll never forget I think they made like $100 million their first year and they were like, this is, this is pretty good. And then I think the next year we made $1 billion and they're like, this is, this is really good. And then I think the next year it was like $2 billion and it was kind of off to the races. And somehow the CMO one day wanted to start sending out text messages to all the customers. I became the guy, kind of raised my hand to say, hey, you know, I don't know anything about this, but I'll figure it out.
And this is at American Airlines?
This is, uh, I was at a company called Timmerland McLean, and American Airlines was our biggest account.
Okay.
And so, um, we were figuring it out, and, um, we started doing that, and I just kind of fell in love with, with mobile. I just felt like this was going to be a big thing. And I remember you and I, we, like, we'd have to convince people that, that people were going to buy smartphones and that there were going to be a lot of smartphones out there, and then they were going to use text messaging and then apps.
And so What was the, what was the thing on deck? Like when you, when you were on the menu, 'cause there wasn't smartphones. What was that called?
Yeah, it was, yeah, there was, there were on-deck apps. So if you could get, if you could get a carrier to put you on deck and you were like, you know, you were on a flip phone and they had these like terrible little apps. We called them thin clients or, or BREW apps. So we built a bunch of that stuff and, and then the iPhone came out and the rest is history. You know, all of a sudden I, I was, We weren't convincing people this was a big thing. We were really showing them how they could take advantage of it and how they could build entirely new businesses. And so I had a family business that was an advertising agency in Austin, and I went back there and just kind of had this theory that we could transform that into one of the leading mobile agencies in the world. We got really lucky with the iPhone coming out right about that time, and we built, you know, a UPS mobile app and Coca-Cola and 7-Eleven, and the business took off. And I did that for about 15 years. Along the way, sold it to private equity and learned what that was. And then we sold it again and had a great exit. But I just felt like this is something I love. It's all I know and wanted to figure out what to do next. And so, I started Superstep Capital with my partner, Stuart Coleman. And now we help founders who are running similar businesses, and we're really helping them figure out how to get ready for this AI era in a new kind of world where services is changing so fast. And yeah, so it's really exciting.
And what's your ideal customer profile for you to put money, your private equity into? And is it infusing money or buying a company or both?
So we do majority buyouts. So we're buying, you know, more than 50% of the business. We want to partner with founders who have a vision and can really kind of see the space that they're servicing slightly different. Typically, these are consulting firms, digital services firms. So, you know, think of like the traditional agency model that I started at, but most of our companies are actually implementing a software. So we have a business in the Snowflake ecosystem. We have a ServiceNow business. We have a business that's focused on Anaplan. But what these companies do is they help their enterprise clients get the most out of the software and then use it to make the business better as they go. So they're doing ongoing strategic services around that. We typically look at companies that have about $15 million of revenue up to, call it, $40 million of revenue. We think that's a really nice sweet spot. Um, and, you know, they're growing, uh, but they maybe are looking for a partner who can help them take that next step. And that's, uh, that's our core focus.
And what's the lesson learned story, TEDx story, you could say, where, hey, I learned that I did this, it completely failed, but I learned from it, or I did this and it completely won or completely did something really good that I want to Tell folks about?
Well, so our whole Superstep Capital business is based on all the things that I screwed up, uh, and that we learned along the way. And so there's, there's plenty of those. Um, but I think that the, the thing that, the thing that I learned in my career, and I actually just did, uh, I was lucky enough to do this commencement speech the other day. Um, and, uh, you know, the thing that I've learned in my career is that there are people who raise their hands for new opportunities and there are people who sort of sit back and wait for those opportunities to pull up and they wait and they wait and they wait and they get passed by.
Yeah.
And so, in my career, that mobile that right when I was on American Airlines, I was in a meeting, I raised my hand and I got this opportunity And my whole career trajectory changed. And at way too early of an age, I, I got way too much responsibility and I got way too lucky, but I was put in all these rooms. And so the thing that I talk about a lot with our team members, with, you know, with people who are just coming outta school, like just saying yes to these opportunities and raising your hand. Like when I did that, it changed my life. And I think that the people who do that are the people that we're attracted to. And a lot of these founders who are running businesses that we've partnered with, they did that. They saw technology early. They took a risk. They went in, they said, I'm gonna be great at this. And maybe they screwed up a couple times, right? Maybe they had to iterate and pivot, but they were first. And, and then they kept at it. And that's like a mentality that I see in people who are pretty successful across the board.
Yeah, it's not waiting for a good time. You make the time. Exactly. To be that good time, there's no try. It's either you do or you don't.
That's Yoda, right? Yeah, it is.
But I was reading something about good entrepreneurs or founders are not waiting for the right time. You build that time. Otherwise, you're going to be passed over or you're just going to be waiting. Or I'm fixing, like the Texas, I'm fixing to get ready. Just do it, man. Yeah.
Well, and things are moving so fast that like they're If you were waiting for a time, um, and, and you're just waiting 6 months ago, I mean, think about the business you would've built 6 months ago. If you're trying to get a business plan in place and make sure it's perfect. And then, I mean, there's a, you know, there's a new Anthropic model that came out yesterday that I'm playing with. It's like blowing my mind. It's just showing all these new things I can do. It, it, the only way that you can actually, I think, be a part of it and be kind of in the arena is by doing that, by being in the arena and by trying it. And in today's world, just the iteration, being okay with that, it's like, it's the only way that you're going to be successful. You can't wait for anything today.
It's similar to my Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt journey, right? It's like, you don't, you don't get in shape by getting in shape to do jiu-jitsu. You do jiu-jitsu to get in shape and also learn chess on a mat, not checkers. And if you lose, you learn, right? So you kind of just got to start doing it. And most people, like I, when I met you, I was working at TechStation, got the NFL, USTA, UFC. I got great clients. AT&T was because I did something with Obama's campaign straight with the 2 guys, Chris Erts and some other guy in I remember that. Yeah. And that's the only reason why I got in there. I just did start doing it and then I started building that. Then sports took off and I went to the National Sports Forum and SPJ. It's just all these things. Momentum breeds success. So, you know, I saw that in your space too, where you were working. I'm like, man, this guy's just killing it. Now he has his own agency. I was just, man, I want to get to where you're at. And never did, but I started my own company and I grew it to like 90 $100,000 a month. I'm like, okay, way better than, than making $250,000, which is good money, you know.
So congrats, man.
Awesome.
It's awesome. But I think you're, you're right. It's the focus. Um, and, you know, every, every one of those journeys, as I've watched you sort of evolve, it's like building on top of the other one, right? And now, you know, you're at the place where you can kind of decide what you want it to be. Um, which is a— it's a fun place to be.
So what's, what's, what do you, what's going to happen in the next 5 years for your business, you think? I mean, that's a big question with AI and everything, but, um, are you going to be doing private equity for the next 5 to 10 years, or, um, are you going to be starting another company on your own that's completely, completely like, hey, I'm going to build an AI company and develop it and use some sort of Anthropic or, or AI to build it?
I mean, never say never, but I, I really like what we're doing right now. And I think that, um, the next 5 years for digital services companies are gonna be the most interesting time ever. I've been doing this for 20 years. Like, the next 5 years are gonna be amazing. Like, look at the number of new— there's agencies that are getting killed, there's digital services firms that are just going away, but then there's entirely new categories that are popping up. I mean, like, Anthropic or Claude partners.
Yeah.
There's hundreds of them. There's hundreds being created every day. There's OpenAI, there's Databricks, there's all these new partners. But what's more exciting to me is the way that the services are delivered. You know, companies like T3 or our companies, you know, they— the only way to grow was to just add more bodies. Like, that's kind of how it was. And now, building models or building agents or building entirely new ways of servicing customers. Like, I know you've built a lot of, built a lot of automations that enable you to do things without adding 50, 100 people, right?
Yeah.
That model in our space is still pretty nascent. And so I'm super excited about helping companies build that. And I think I'll do that as a, as an investor and a partner versus doing it on my own.
What's that behind you? Is that all the phones?
These are all the phones. Yeah. So these are like, you know, the old BlackBerry. That was like a big one back in the day. I've got— these are, these are a few, you know, my— I had a collection at one point of like, I don't know, 500 to 1,000 phones, like all these test phones that we had.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. We were doing—
Yeah, you had to test them all.
Yeah. You and Brad from IT were We were testing the carriers and making sure that the bounce backs— oh my God, we know we could do this. We had to buy a phone from the carrier.
You had to have an AT&T phone and then you had to have an AT&T model of this version. And then it was— so these are, these are some of my favorites.
Yeah. So what's the best way? What's the best way to reach you? Who should reach out to you at this point?
Well, supertoughcapital.com is our website. You can go check out kind of what we're doing there. I also have a personal website, bengaddis.com, where I write a lot about AI and innovation. I wrote a book called Embracing Irrationality a couple of years ago about how people inside big corporate enterprise companies can act more like founders of startups and why that's important. And yeah, companies that are looking for their kind of next step in the digital services space, in that $15 to $40 million range, we always love to talk to them. And at a minimum, I think we can share— we have hundreds of conversations every year with these companies. And so we get to see some patterns and build some relationships. And at a minimum, we're usually able to point them in the right direction for a partner or, you know, a client or something like that. So we'd love to—
What events are you going to where people can meet up with you?
We'll be at the Databricks Summit. We'll be at any of the sort of Anthropic or OpenAI AI events. We go to Google Cloud, we go to all the ServiceNow events. And so any of the technology platforms that we operate in, we're, we're usually at those, those big yearly events that they have.
What's the best email to reach out to you with?
ben@superstepcapital.com.
Thanks for your time, Ben. Good seeing you, brother.
