The Globe and Mail reports in its Saturday, Jan. 20, edition that Canadian investment fads come and go, but one trend never goes out of fashion: the roll-up. The Globe's Sean Silcoff writes that there have been many successful sector consolidators, such as Constellation Software. The latest serial acquirer to rise to prominence is Valsoft. It is led by Sam Youssef and Steph Manos, who aim emulate Constellation's successful playbook. Valsoft has bought up dozens of small, slow-growing but stable software vendors around the world that dominate a range of modest industry subsectors. Valsoft owns nearly 100 companies, generates upward of $450-million (U.S.) in revenue and earns about 25 per cent to 30 per cent operating profits, the company says. Mr. Youssef and Mr. Manos are two of the original co-founders of Pornhub. After selling Pornhub in 2010 Mr. Youseff immersed himself in the world of investing. He put his money to work in the stock market. One of the companies he bought into was Constellation. He loved Constellation's model and figured buying small, successful but modest software companies with few or no competitors "was like the stock market but 10 times better because there are 30,000 of them."