“They’ve seen what others have done, and candidly, the path is open for them also to grow organically and through acquisitions,” he said. 

As Chemistry scales, it will focus on investing in talent and expanding to the West Coast. It will also focus on growing areas like social media, multicultural marketing, production, and technology.  

“This is a human capital business. The people with the best talent win,” said Show. “We want to be the place where people build their career.”

The PE-backed agency wave

Chemistry follows a spate of independent agencies that have recently taken investment from or been acquired by PE firms like BarkleyOKRP, Huge, and R/GA. 

Agencies are increasingly turning to PE backers to scale as an alternative route to selling to the big holding companies—and finding success.

“There’s not many great stories about, ‘We joined a holding company. It turned out fantastic.’ It just doesn’t happen,” said Smith. “But all the folks that we talked to [who sold to PE] were like, ‘We are enjoying this. This is working for us. It’s giving us options.’”   

Show added that Chemistry was looking to accelerate its growth, whereas holding companies are often about “the art of subtraction.”

“How can we build efficiencies across our media department? How can we do the creative in a different part of the world, because we can save 17 cents doing it there?’” he said. “We weren’t interested in a bunch of accountants trying to make $1 to $1.05. We’re trying to build something at scale.”