Buy, Integrate, Repeat: Tim Hart on the Playbook Behind Arc's Roll-Up

Tim Hart is President of the Americas at Arc, the EagleTree-backed B2B events, data, and media platform that has done nine acquisitions in four years and now generates roughly $130 million in revenue across HR, education, financial services, and agriculture. In this conversation, Tim walks through how Arc is organized — a three-layer structure of platforms, communities, and shared services — and makes the case that the post-COVID value in B2B media has permanently shifted away from events-only toward a year-round content and connections model. He gets specific: Arc's revenue is 60% events, 30% marketing services, and 10% memberships and subscriptions, with the subscription line as the fastest-growing segment and a target to double it. Tim breaks down the Touchpoint Markets deal — an unusual intra-PE transfer that brought first-party data and lead gen capabilities into Arc and pushed marketing services revenue from 20% to 30% — the economics of geo-adapting HR Tech Conference from Las Vegas to Amsterdam, Singapore, and Abu Dhabi, and the real P&L behind a $500K hosted buyer summit running at 60–65% gross margin. He also explains why, after running M&A at UBM through the "Events First" era and the £4 billion Informa merger, he believes that strategy was a moment in time — and why Arc is deliberately building the opposite.

Timestamps:

00:00:00 — Intro

00:01:50 — Tim's career thread: UBM, Informa, Emerald, and why he joined Arc

00:04:13 — Arc's thesis: why these verticals belong together and how the platform is organized

00:14:44 — The subscription bet: DA+, ThinkAdvisor, Credit Union Times Pro, and the push from 10% to 20%

00:18:23 — Inside a hosted buyer summit: $500K revenue at 60–65% gross margin

00:22:06 — Geo-adapting HR Tech from Las Vegas to Amsterdam, Singapore, and Abu Dhabi

00:28:18 — Deal-making lessons from UBM, the Informa integration, and what goes wrong

00:36:30 — Evaluating acquisitions: pricing, founder expectations, and what changes post-close

00:40:35 — The Touchpoint deal: intra-PE mechanics and what the capabilities actually brought to Arc

00:51:13 — Organic growth, launches, and why Arc hasn't done a deal in a year

00:56:35 — Arc by the numbers: $130M revenue, mid-20s EBITDA, and where AI is driving margin

01:02:03 — The exit thesis, the "clean story" question, and why Events First was a moment in time

01:09:39 — Advice for operators and what Tim is obsessed with right now