My Guest
My guest today is Jim Vesterman, currently a lecturer at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. Prior to joining the faculty at Wharton, Jim was the CEO of Raptor Technologies between 2012 to 2020, where he grew the company from serving 7,000 schools in the United States to serving over 40,000 schools with an integrated suite of K-12 safety software. Jim sold the company to JMI Equity, an $8 billion software-focused private equity fund, which returned a 13.5x MOIC and 53% IRR to his search fund investors.
Jim began his career at Monitor Group, a global strategy consulting firm, and Monitor Clipper Partners, a middle market private equity fund. Jim also served in the United States Marine Corps in the Special Operations forces and was awarded the Combat Action Ribbon and the Navy and Marine Corps Achievement medal for his service in Iraq in 2004. Jim graduated from Amherst College with his bachelor’s degree in Economics and Spanish and earned his M.B.A. from the Wharton School in 2006.
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From Combat to Classrooms: How Jim Vesterman Went from Special Forces to a 13.5x Return in 8 Years – In The Trenches
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Questions Asked
Introduction
- Tell us a bit more about the arc of your life & career, and what has led you to what you’re doing today
- In retrospect, did your stints in consulting, private equity, and operations make you more prepared to be a first time CEO?
- What compelled you to join the military after spending 7 years in Consulting & PE, roles that many of your business school peers would classify as their “dream job”?
- Why does pushing yourself to your outer limits seem to be such a fundamental part of your personality?
- In what ways have your ambition and relentlessness acted as a hindrance for you, either personally or professionally?
Raptor Technologies
- Please tell us a bit about the company that you acquired, including a high-level overview of the path that led you to that acquisition.
- How did you think about the decision to extend your search process into a third year?
- Your deal generated a 13.5x MOIC and 53% IRR to your investors between 2012 to 2020. What handful of major decisions most explain that success?
- When you decided to re-write the product from scratch, how did you balance the needs of the “old” versus the “new” products? Did the same engineers write both?
- When evaluating the product & code base of a SaaS target: How much “hair” is too much? Are there certain types of issues that are more acceptable than others?
- After the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012, Newtown Public School District chose Raptor technologies as a part of its security enhancements. Talk to us about that experience, including what it might have taught you
- It seems like almost any difficult experience might seem trivial when directly compared against an experience in the military. Can you talk to us about the extent to which you think that is true or false?
- What ultimately compelled you to pursue a sale of the company?
- What elements of selling a company are under discussed within the search fund community?
Concluding Questions
- What might people not understand about the idea of “making it”? Once you achieved all of these incredible feats, how did your actual experience compared to what you had originally anticipated?
- In what areas of your professional life do you still feel less sure of yourself?
- What is the most meaningful lesson that you have learned over the past 12 months?
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Thanks to our Sponsors
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