Disclaimer: Unless noted otherwise, views and analysis expressed here are the author's own and based on public sources. The article is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. This is not financial advice. Please consult a professional for investment decisions.

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Regular readers of this newsletter will be familiar with Simago: a French radiology rollup formed in 2019 by two 29-year-olds with no medical background. Coming off stints in Private Equity and Consulting – and De Gaulle-sized chutzpah – in 3 years Charles-Henry Beglin and Clément Martin built a business solid enough for Tier 1 PEs to jostle for. Ardian prevailed, shelling out €525M (enterprise value). 

This much you know if you’ve read our primer. But what happened next? As we discovered in a recent interview with Charles-Henry, A LOT. 

On the one hand, Simago has roughly quadrupled in size. It is now France’s largest private medical imaging group (No.2 in Europe), with more than €400M in revenue. 

On the other hand, Charles-Henry and Clément teamed up with other rollup entrepreneurs to form Builders Associés, an investor in rollups, with the contribution of Marouane Bahri – the doyen investor of rollups and Simago’s first backer. The particularity of Builders Associés : no institutional LP money, only investment from existing and former rollup entrepreneurs. 

Inter alia, Charles-Henry and I discussed:

You can also listen to this episode on Spotify.

Alex Prokofjev (AP): Charles-Henry, let’s talk about Builders Associés (BA). After the Simago exit, you could have done anything. Most people in your position would pile on AuM and do bigger deals. You chose to stay small. Why?

Charles-Henry Beglin (CB): With Simago, we developed a specific skill for doing small deals and building a group. At the same time, we were honest with ourselves that succeeding in the lower mid-market did not automatically qualify us to compete in large-cap PE or in venture capital. These are very different businesses. We know exactly what we can help other acquisition entrepreneurs with. 

AP: Let’s go back to Simago’s early days. You and Clément strike me as having different personalities and backgrounds. How did you meet, and how did you arrive at the idea of creating Simago?

CB: Clément and I have known each other since business school (HEC Paris). After graduation, we went our separate ways: him in consulting (Roland Berger), me in Private Equity (Permira). After 4-5 years, we witnessed many of our friends embark on entrepreneurial pursuits the “traditional way”: creating products or services and building from scratch. A fellow HEC alumnus, Grégory Declercq, established what is now Eureka Education, a chain of training centres for beauticians (among others). It was the first “accelerated rollup”, as we call it at Builders Associés. Grégory is also an investor at Builders Associés. 

We didn’t have the skills to build a piece of software, or the next Facebook. But between consulting and investing, we had enough to analyse a sector, acquire companies and arrange the financing. So we said: let’s try. We spent 6 months searching for the right sector, and landed on radiology.

AP: At the time, in Europe the whole rollup and Independent Sponsor movement wasn’t a thing. Why did you take the risk – instead of staying put and accumulating carry?

CB: After 5 years in the same job, the work began to feel repetitive. We both realised we were working for someone else. We also realised that microcap deals and rollups were too small for Private Equity, even for small-cap funds. It was an overlooked asset class, and yet the strategy had been proven in the US. On just about everything, the US is 5-7 years ahead of us. We took a tried-and-tested strategy from the US and replicated it at home. 

AP: At our conference in November 2025 you talked about researching vet practices and scaffolding. And yet you landed on radiology – not the easiest industry to consolidate. Also, why didn’t you launch several platforms, Independent Sponsor-style?  

CB: Regarding your second question, this comes up a lot in my conversations with emerging rollup founders. I do not believe you can build momentum if you are not focused. 

On radiology, having worked in Private Equity, I knew that the business case would appeal to financial buyers. PE wants organic growth where long-term trends are working in your favour. Western European populations are aging. This means more scans. Meanwhile technological changes, such as teleradiology and AI, are pushing volumes up and costs down, improving EBITDA.

Ultimately, you need to build a company that is attractive for a mid-cap or large-cap private equity house, meaning attractive sector, seasoned management, integration / post-acquisition improvements. 

AP: In 2019, you had no track record and no deals of your own. Yet you convinced Marouane, then at Entrepreneur Invest, to write your first cheque. Two people approaching an industry they didn’t know much about, saying this is the future – what did the pitch look like?

CB: You are right: we had no credibility – and our investor funnel showed it. Clément and I had 13 investor meetings. 11 funds said they weren’t interested. Their rationale: you are just ex-employees of good firms, with no entrepreneurial experience and no experience in radiology. Why would we back you? One fund made us a bad offer. And then there was Marouane, the most seasoned rollup investor in France, and perhaps in all of Europe. 

Marouane asked himself 3 questions:

One, do these founders know what they are talking about when it comes to M&A? 

Two, is radiology a good sector?

Three, will these founders be able to convince radiologists? 

The third question was the toughest. Our first deal took 6-8 months to sign, then another 6 months to close. The second came 6 months later. So 18 months in, we only had 2 deals done. 

In radiology in France, there are as many shareholders as there are radiologists, meaning more people to convince to sell than for a traditional rollup. Even today, the time to convert a first conversation into a deal is 18-24 months. But you multiply the number of conversations in parallel and then they start to turn into actual transactions, leading to the €35m of EBITDA acquired in 2.5 years.  

AP: A nice segue to my next question! Many PE folks I meet struggle with storytelling. They are used to competitive auctions, needing to convince a banker or another sponsor. Small business owners don’t care which firm you used to work for. Pardon my candour, but you were two Parisians with impressive backgrounds and nothing to do with radiology. Tell me about the first meeting.

CB: This takes me back to 2019, to a small medical centre south of Paris. First, you walk into a place you don’t understand. You can’t look lost or ask naive questions, because no one wants to sell their business to someone who doesn’t understand what goes on there. 

We sat down with the two radiologists who owned the practice and we said: we are not radiologists, and we are not going to do your job. You will keep leading your people: this is a core principle of Simago’s strategy and now also BA’s. However, everything that isn’t core to your business – HR, IT, investment in new technology – we can help with. And all your suppliers are national or global players, we can get better terms and service level by negotiating as a national player.

And you are right that they don’t care where we used to work. We didn’t mention it at all. At least in France, and I’m sure elsewhere, saying you worked for a big-name consultancy or PE is a negative. Instead, we talked about which sectors we covered.

AP: Unlike other rollup investors, BA is not content with €10-15M EBITDA at exit. Why such a high bar, and what makes you confident your teams can get there?