#95 Jake Sloane: A Serial Entrepreneur & Co-Founder of Crete Mechanical Group/Alliance Animal Health
In the past month, CompanyRoots interviewed Mr. Jake Sloane, the Co-Founder of Crete Mechanical Group and Alliance Animal Health. Crete Mechanical Group is a national platform of mechanical service businesses, and Alliance Animal Health works as a multi-site owner, operator, and business partner to veterinarians across the United States.
Sloane grew up in New York City where he attended Horace Mann School then moved on to Harvard where he graduated with an MBA and B.A. in political science. Out of college, Sloane recalls feeling uncertain about what he wanted to pursue. Looking to his friends and siblings who were in finance, he decided to intern at The Blackstone Group, an investment management company based in New York City. Sloane later became a full-time Blackstone employee, aware of the fact he did not want to “sit in front of a computer screen his whole life” but instead “travel the world and meet new and small business owners” to expand his network and knowledge. At Blackstone, Sloane also met Frank Zhang, a Wharton graduate who had a joint degree in finance and mechanical engineering, and soon-to-be future business partner. At the age of 24, Zhang and Sloane were aware of their ambition and desire to start their own company in the future but decided that they both needed time to garner more experience.
After Blackstone, Sloane went on to work at the Carlyle Group, and Zhang went on to work at Apollo Investment Corporation, both private equity, and alternative asset management service corporations. At 26, Zhang and Sloane reunited and attended Harvard Business School where they initiated their ideas for Alliance Animal Health. They started with one veterinary practice outside of Omaha in Crete, Nebraska with $600,000 in revenue — and have now expanded to over 90 practices and make $180 million in revenue. Sloane chose to leave the company at the end of 2020 but continues to maintain an ownership stake. He also brought on a professional management team for Alliance. His third partner, Matt Sussman, runs the company while Sloane and Zhang left to create Crete Mechanical Group, which is in the process of including a residential platform as well, named Crete Home Services.
Through all his endeavors, Sloane names Zhang to be his biggest motivator and mentor for success. “I have more problems than solutions day to day and it’s really important to have a great partner like Frank, who helps deal with those problems,” Sloane said, “Hard work brings luck and that’s what I like to assume as a huge determining factor to really scale-out and have your business be really successful.”
In both Crete Mechanical Group and Alliance Animal Health, the concept of providing independence to the client, as well as resources, is emphasized. For Alliance specifically, the team mostly provides recruiting, finance, HR, accounting, and operational support for veterinarians that allows them to practice independently while staying connected to a larger community and receiving business assistance. For Crete, Sloane refers to their engagement as the “back office approach” which is more applicable to their own skillset, like general business analytics. Additionally, he notes that keeping stable relationships with the founders is extremely important since they need the knowledge from the founders to understand how to operate their business. Therefore, “If you keep the local partners on the ground and involved, it just makes for a much smoother transition… They know a lot more about their business than we could ever know due diligence on it.” The main way Sloane differentiates Alliance and Crete from other competitors in the field is their adherence to the “partnership versus acquisition” method. Therefore, instead of acquiring 100% of the veterinary practice or business, they acquire a majority stake which keeps a mutual balance of trust and work between the partners.
Alongside Alliance and Crete, Sloane is also a co-founder of ZBS Partners. It is a capital investment firm, which he calls a “holding company” that works as an “entity” through which they fund Alliance and Crete while also constantly looking for new assets to invest in. In other words, Sloane refers to ZBS as “personal net worth [of] dollars” to make personal investments and start companies in which they can invest and regain profit.
Sloane ends the interview in a full circle by explaining how his inspiration to get involved in the healthcare and social impact industry stemmed from experiencing his family’s work for the Heckscher Foundation for Children. His father ran the foundation, which aimed to launch small programs and businesses to attract more money from larger organizations like the Gates Foundation or Robin Hood. As a kid, Sloane was also involved in various education-related initiatives across New York that would give catalysis grants, which ended up augmenting his passion for the industry as he grew older.
Continuing on the importance of passion, Sloane advises the current generation of high school students that would want to make a positive mark on society to “Go with what you care about instead of what you think others care about.” He recalls how he was once asked: 10 years from now, if he knew he was going to be successful, what would he do? Propelled by this question, Sloane knew that he would definitely follow his own interests and instead of easily pointing to a “passion”. He would urge himself and others to reflect on what they genuinely care about — while also knowing that pursuit of such ideals with drive requires a lot of hard work to be successful. And although Sloane notes how everyone’s nervous about failure and that everyone’s ambitions person desires success he says, “I think there’s a lot of ways to achieve success… and one needs to truly understand that every industry has a different version of [defining success]” — and having that understating and vision can be the key.
You can watch the full interview here.
Interviewer: Rahul Kavuru
Author: Neha Jampala
Editor: Afia Lateef
Graphic: Sraavya Penumudi
Video Editing: Chinmay Korapati