In this episode of The Bear Roars, Dan sits down with Horace Zona—longtime investment banker and now Managing Director at DigitalBridge—for a wide-ranging conversation on dealmaking, discipline, and the evolution of digital infrastructure.
Horace recounts his front-row seat to some of the industry’s most pivotal transactions, from AboveNet and RCN to Zayo’s rise, and the hard-earned lessons behind them. He shares why price discovery is both art and science, how curiosity shaped his career, and what really went down in boardrooms and dinners that nearly derailed deals.
They dig into the financial chess match of buying fiber in the wake of the telecom crash, the strategic tensions with rival bidders, and how relationships with investors like Charlesbank and Providence shaped outcomes. Horace also opens up about career milestones and explains why today’s AI, quantum, and robotics revolutions remind him of the late ’90s infrastructure boom.
Learn more about DigitalBridge: https://www.digitalbridge.com/
Order Dan’s Book – Bandwidth: The Untold Story of Ambition, Deception, and Innovation that Shaped the Internet Age and Dot-Com Boom: dan-caruso.com/book
To nominate a founder or yourself as a future guest speaker, email: contact@loudbearproductions.com
