In The Trenches
The Only Podcast Dedicated Exclusively to Entrepreneurs and CEOs Running Small and Medium Sized Businesses
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BUYING A BUSINESS
Technical Debt: What it is, How Much of it You Can Live With, and How to Incorporate it into an Investment Thesis
My Guest Chris Smith is the Managing Partner of Spellbound Partners, a a company that helps acquirors with technical due diligence, fractional CTO services, and outsourced development services, among other things. Chris has over 25 years of experience building software platforms, and is an expert in cloud computing and software as a service (SaaS). He…
Should Search Funds Buy Healthcare Practices? A Deep Dive with Scott Becker
My Guest Scott Becker is a Partner in the healthcare group at McGuireWoods, a full-service U.S. law firm known for its expertise in corporate, healthcare, litigation, and regulatory matters, serving clients ranging from startups to Fortune 500 companies. He previously served on the Board of Partners of the firm and chaired the Healthcare group for…
Is the Search Fund Acquisition Rate Falling? With Jim Edmunds, Badge Stone & Kent Weaver
My Guests This week, I’m joined by three of the most experienced and respected investors within the search fund ecosystem to discuss a topic that is understandably of interest to the entire ETA community: That subject is why the acquisition rate among search funds has fallen over the past 10 years, and whether the rate…
How to Avoid Common Stumbling Blocks in an M&A Process: with Raam Jani
My Guest This week I was thrilled to welcome Raam Jani to the podcast, who is one of the most experienced lawyers in the Search Fund ecosystem, and within the small business M&A ecosystem more broadly. Raam is currently a partner at Baker Hostetler, where he works on a variety of mandates, advising private equity…
How to Get Your Exit Proceeds (Mostly) Tax Free
My Guests This week, we explore two separate mechanisms that may allow acquisition entrepreneurs and their investors to receive their exit proceeds largely free of tax. Relative to how powerful these programs can be, both are not fully understood within the Search Fund community, especially among new and prospective searchers. In the first half of…
An Investing Masterclass with Brent Beshore
My Guest Back by popular demand, for his second tour of duty on the podcast, is Brent Beshore. Brent is the Founder and CEO of Permanent Equity, a private investment firm that invests in Founder-owned small to medium sized businesses. They are a (very) long-term investor that looks to hold portfolio companies indefinitely, often without…
In Conversation with 3 Founders Who Sold Their Companies to Search Funds
My Guests Properly managing the relationship with the outgoing seller is likely to be among your most important tasks within your first 6 months as the new CEO. I say this because a non-functional (or worse, a toxic) relationship between the incoming and outgoing owners has the potential to damage a company more than customers…
From $7M to $50M via 14 Acquisitions: A Consolidation Success Story With Jay Davis & Jason Pananos
My Guests After graduating from business school in 2008, Jay Davis & Jason Pananos acquired Vector Disease Control, a company that they grew from ~$7M to ~$50M in revenue in 7 years through successfully executing on 14 bolt-on acquisitions. They were able to grow the business by a 43% compounded annual growth rate before selling…
Why You May Be Ignoring Brokered Deals at Your Peril
My Guest My guest today is Ryan Farkas, a Partner, Managing Director and the Practice Leader in M&A and Capital Markets in BDO’s Central Canada region. Ryan has successfully closed countless sell-side advisory transactions in various industries spanning manufacturing, consumer discretionary, construction, engineering, automotive and information technology. Ryan has also worked on several large performance…
The Constellation Software Playbook for Acquiring and Growing Software Companies
My Guest Constellation Software is one of the world’s most admired, well-followed, and well-respected software acquirors. Since their founding in 1995, they have acquired over 500 individual software companies, and have grown to achieve $8.4B in revenue and a $77B market capitalization. They have achieved these staggering metrics through their exclusive focus on the lower…
Royce Yudkoff & Rick Ruback: Educators, Mentors, and Leaders Within the SMB Community
My Guests Royce Yudkoff & Rick Ruback are both professors at the Harvard Business School, and co-teach two wildly popular courses called The Financial Management of Smaller Firms and Entrepreneurship through Acquisition, both of which focus on how to acquire, finance and operate your own smaller firm. In 2017 they also co-published the widely read…
Jeff Stevens & A.J. Wasserstein on The Future of Entrepreneurship Through Acquisition
My Guests A.J. Wasserstein is the Eugene F. Williams, Jr. Lecturer in the Practice of Management at the Yale School of Management. His research, writing, and teaching concentrates on search funds, entrepreneurship, programmatic acquisitions, and small businesses. In addition to his role as an educator, A.J. is also a private investor in lower middle-market businesses.…
What I’d Change if I Could Re-Do the First 90 Days of My Search: 3 Searcher Case Studies
My Guests Today’s I speak with 3 searchers, each of whom are at different stages of their respective search journeys. As I have done in the past, I will again be asking these guests only a single question. That is: “Knowing what you know now, if you could go back and re-do the first 90…
Peter Lehrman, Founder & CEO of Axial, The Largest Online Marketplace to Buy & Sell SMBs
My Guest Peter Lehrman is the Founder and CEO of Axial, North America’s #1 online platform connecting buyers and sellers of small and medium sized businesses. Axial is used by over 20,000 investors, M&A advisors and CEOs, allowing them to connect on a confidential basis to explore potential M&A, debt, buyout, and growth equity transactions,…
The State of Lower-Middle Market Credit: Two Major Bank Failures, Rising Interest Rates, and a Looming Recession
My Guests To say that it’s been an active 6-18 months in the banking sector would be an understatement: Beginning as recently as January, 2022, we’ve seen the US Federal Funds rate increase from .08% to 4.83%, which, at least in part, precipitated the rapid collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, and the rescue of First…
The Current State of the Debt Capital Markets
My Guests My guests today are Cory Kaiser and Timothy Eaton, Vice President & Associate Vice President respectively within TD’s Commercial Banking Group. Between them, they have over 40 years of experience lending to lower-middle market businesses not just to finance their acquisitions, but also to finance growth initiatives, day-to-day working capital needs, and leveraged…
Quality of Earnings Analysis: What You Need to Know Before Buying a Business
My Guest My guest today is Chris Hutchinson, a Partner in Ernst & Young’s Transaction Advisory Services Group. Chris has over 15 years of experience advising clients on M&A, financings, valuation projects, and due diligence mandates, with a specific focus on private lower-middle-market businesses. Chris and his team have completed an untold number of Quality…
MANAGING YOURSELF
Facing the Worst-Case Scenario: How Jed Morris Lost His Business and Rebuilt His Life
My Guest Jed Morris is the Founder and Managing Partner of Sunset Coast Capital, where he leads investments in U.S.-based aerospace and defence businesses. He specializes in helping acquisition entrepreneurs and independent sponsors navigate the complexities of small business ownership, diligence, and operator readiness. Jed’s career began in the U.S. Air Force, where he held…
Stress, Panic Attacks, Debilitating Anxiety, and a $170M Exit: iContact Founder Aaron Houghton
My Guest Aaron Houghton started his first business at age 17, and since then he has built and launched more than ten technology startups, scaling one to 350 employees and $50M in annual subscription revenue. He has sold two companies to private buyers and one to a publicly traded company for $169M before his 30th…
The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Keeping Your Sh*t Together: With Dr. Sherry Walling
My Guest This week, I was thrilled to welcome Dr. Sherry Walling to the podcast. Sherry is a clinical psychologist, speaker, podcaster, and best-selling author. She is also a founder and entrepreneur herself, starting a company called ZenFounder, which aims to help entrepreneurs and CEOs navigate issues of transition, rapid growth, loss, and any manner…
Dr. Daniel Crosby on How our Psychology Impacts our Spending, Investing and Risk Taking Decisions
My Guest This week I was thrilled to welcome Dr. Daniel Crosby to the podcast. Dr. Crosby is a behavioural finance expert, the Chief Behavioral Officer at Orion Advisor Solutions, a Psychologist, and a New York Times best-selling author. He has published four books, including Personal Benchmark: Integrating Behavioral Finance and Investment Management (a New…
The Link Between Money, Meaning, and Happiness
My Guest Today I am thrilled to welcome Carl Richards to the podcast. Carl has spent decades as a Certified Financial Planner, is the creator of the Sketch Guy column (which appeared weekly for a decade in The New York Times), is a best selling author (most notably of The Behavior Gap: Simple Ways to…
The Entrepreneur and the Spousal Relationship: Part 2
My Guest Today I’m joined by Dr. Jennifer Musselman, a globally-recognized Marriage and Family Therapist and Executive Coach for high-performing executives and entrepreneurs. Dr. Musselman’s clinical work focuses on the interplay of work, life, self-identity and marriage, including the common stressors that impact performance and relationship satisfaction for entrepreneurs and other business leaders. Dr. Musselman…
Dr. Bill Hudenko: Professor of Psychology at the Dartmouth School of Medicine and a 4x Founder & CEO
My Guest Today I was thrilled to be joined by Dr. Bill Hudenko, an Assistant Professor of Clinical Psychology at the Dartmouth School of Medicine. In addition to his experience as a professor and clinician, Dr. Hudenko is also a 4x CEO & Entrepreneur, having founded and sold several companies that have utilized technology to…
Can Ambition and Inner Peace Coexist? With Rob Dube
My Guest In 1991, Rob co-founded imageOne, a managed print services business based in Oak Park, Michigan. Since then, imageOne has been recognized as a Top 25 Small Businesses in America on the list of Forbes Small Giants, an Inc. Magazine Best Places to Work, a National Best and Brightest Company to Work For, one…
Conscious Leadership with Executive Coach and Best-Selling Author Kaley Klemp
My Guest Kaley Klemp is a highly sought after CEO coach, YPO forum facilitator, and best-selling author. In 2015, Kaley co-authored The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership, a book that was met with instant critical and commercial success, and followed that up in 2021 with The 80/80 Marriage, a book about how to strengthen and…
“A Guide to the Good Life”: What Entrepreneurs Can Learn From Stoic Philosophy
My Guest My guest today is Dr. William Irvine, author of the best-selling book A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy. He is the author of several other books, including The Stoic Challenge, On Desire, and You: A Natural History (among others). Dr. Irvine’s work has been featured in countless…
When Search Funds Don’t Go As Planned (Part 2): Trends & Observations With Jim Sharpe
My Guest My guest today is Jim Sharpe, somebody who I’ve been fortunate enough to call a mentor and friend for over 10 years now. This is Jim’s second appearance on In The Trenches (you can access the first episode here) In this week’s episode, we build upon the first-hand accounts presented in episode 1…
When Search Funds Don’t Go As Planned (Part 1): 3 Searcher Case Studies
My Guests If one were to attend a randomly selected group of Search Fund conferences, they’d be forgiven for thinking that every search fund is a smashing success. When I was both a searcher and a CEO, I often left these types of events with a certain sense of insecurity and self-doubt, as everybody seemed…
Mental Health for High Achievers: Anxiety, Ambition, Perfectionism, and Balancing Striving vs. Self-Acceptance
My Guest This week, I was thrilled to be joined by Andy Johns. The bulk of Andy’s career has been spent in the start-up and technology ecosystems, with growth and product-oriented leadership roles at Facebook, Twitter, and Quora, among others. Following his time at these three companies, Andy became VP of Growth, VP of Product,…
Everything You’ve Ever Wanted to Know About Working with a Partner, with Dr. Noam Wasserman, Author of The Founder’s Dilemmas
My Guest My guest today is Noam Wasserman, recognized as one of the world’s foremost experts in how to form and maintain high performing partnerships in entrepreneurial contexts. Noam is currently the Dean of the Sy Syms School of Business at Yeshiva University in New York City. Prior to this, Noam was a professor at…
Employee Burnout and The Great Resignation
My Guest My guest today is Carin-Isabel Knoop, Executive Director of the Harvard Business School Case Research & Writing Group. Carin has spent decades writing cases on managers and leaders all over the world across a wide array of functions and industries. In 2019, alongside co-author John Quelch, Carin published Compassionate Management of Mental Health…
Understanding and Managing The Psychological Toll of Being an Entrepreneur or CEO
My Guest Dr. Eliana Cohen is an entrepreneur and Clinical Psychologist who runs her own practice, integrating performance psychology, strategy, emotional intelligence, and knowledge of neuroplasticity and the brain to serve her various clients. She has worked with countless entrepreneurs, business owners, and CEOs in her practice, and is passionate about discussing the psychological realities…
CEO Coaches: What do they do, how do they work with CEOs, and why might you consider hiring one?
My Guest Warren Coughlin is both an entrepreneur and business coach, having worked directly with countless Entrepreneurs and CEOs for upwards of 20 years. His coaching practice focuses not only on the business itself, but also on the entrepreneur at a personal level, working with them to ensure that they craft meaningful values and live…
MANAGING YOUR BUSINESS
Why Most Incentive Plans Fail—and How Thoughtful CEOs Get Them Right
My Guest I’m joined this week by Stacey Carroll, who has spent substantially her entire career leading HR organizations across a wide array of companies, with a specific focus on compensation & benefits. She has also spent the past 14 years leading HR Experts on Call, a company she founded where she acts as an…
Installing an Operating System in Your Business: Lessons from Real EOS Implementations
My Guest Over the past handful of years, there has been substantial growth in the number of companies who have decided to implement formal “operating systems” to govern certain strategic and operational decisions within their businesses. I implemented EOS (or “the Entrepreneurial Operating System”) in my own company beginning in 2015, and we continued to…
How A.I. is Transforming the Acquisition and Operations of Small Businesses
My Guest You are likely aware of how much AI has already changed how we live and how we work. You’re probably also aware – at least vaguely – of how much it will continue to change the way that we live and work over the coming months and years. The process of searching for,…
Rob Markey: Creator of the Net Promoter Score and Founder of Bain’s Global Customer Strategy Practice
My Guest Rob Markey is the creator of the widely-used Net Promoter Score (“NPS”) system. Rob also leads the NPS Loyalty Forum, a group of 35 senior executives from loyalty-leading companies around the world, such as The Vanguard Group, American Express, JetBlue, TD Bank, LEGO, Progressive Insurance, PwC and Intuit. He is also the co-author…
Building Better CEOs: Lessons From a Veteran Executive Coach
My Guest Sherman Black is an executive coach that specializes in working with CEOs running small and medium-sized businesses. His coaching practice, at least in part, is based on over 35 years of experience leading and transforming companies himself. Among other things, Sherman spent 15 years as a technology CEO across public and private companies,…
Evaluating Customer Retention in Recurring Revenue Businesses: With Craig Zingerline
My Guest Craig Zingerline is a serial entrepreneur currently working as the CEO of Growth Minded, a company that helps startups and other technology companies scale their growth and retention strategies. Prior to Growth Minded, he founded Velocity Growth and scaled to 7-figures of ARR, was Chief Product Officer at Sandboxx, and the Head of…
A Finance Survival Guide for SMB CEOs: Liquidity, Hiring, Budgeting, Capital Allocation & More
My Guest Nicholas Andrews is the Founder of Aspen Consulting Group, a company that performs finance, accounting, and operations consulting for a wide range of small and medium sized businesses. Aspen’s services include technical accounting, corporate finance, valuations, operations planning and M&A due diligence, among others. Prior to founding the Aspen Consulting group, Nick was…
Is Home Services Still a Good Bet? A Veteran Operator’s Take on a Saturated Market
My Guest Collin Hathaway is the Founder of Skylight Capital, a micro-cap private equity firm investing in companies with less than $5M EBITDA. Prior to founding Skylight, Collin led the deal origination team at Alpine Investors, where he managed a team focused on locating and evaluating new investment opportunities. In addition to currently serving as…
A Playbook for Growing People-Intensive Service Companies
My Guest John Ratliff started Appletree Answers, a telephone answering service, from his apartment in 1995. After growing the company to 24 US-based locations and more than 600 employees, he sold the company to a strategic buyer in 2012. Since selling his company, John has served as CEO of Scaling Up Coaches (2018-25), worked as…
How to Raise Prices Without Losing Customers—with Casey Brown
My Guest If you have ever had to decide how to price a product or a service, or if you foresee yourself having to make such a decision one day, I implore you to listen to today’s episode, in no small part because of how many practical takeaways you’re likely to leave with. I’m joined…
The Art (and Science) of Building a High-Performance Sales Organization
My Guest One of the most common investment theses among acquisition entrepreneurs revolves around building an internal sales function where no such function has existed in the past. While this makes intuitive sense on the surface, just how easy is it to build a sales team from scratch? Do you hire the leader first, or…
Long Term Holds: With Zac Carman, CEO of ConsumerAffairs for 14+ Years
My Guest My guest today is Zac Carman, CEO of ConsumerAffairs.com since 2010, the year in which he acquired the company from its founder, Jim Hood. ConsumerAffairs is a user-review website that helps over 7 million people per month make decisions on big questions like home warranties, debt consolidation and elder care planning. Prior to…
Achieving the Entrepreneurial Dream Through Franchise Ownership
My Guest Michael is the Founder of Streetlight Capital, a firm that invests in search funds and other forms of entrepreneurship through acquisition. Through Streetlight Capital, Michael successfully acquired, operated, and exited Buckeye Restaurant Group, an operator of franchised Wingstop restaurants. Michael acquired Buckeye’s first restaurants via a self-funded search in 2018, and via new…
From Combat to Classrooms: How Jim Vesterman Went from Special Forces to a 13.5x Return in 8 Years
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…
Profit Before Anything Else: With Mike Michalowicz, Author of “Profit First”
My Guest Today I’m joined by entrepreneur, investor, and best-selling author, Mike Michalowicz. Mike is the author of nine books, most notably Profit First, which boasts ~8,700 ratings on Amazon.com with an average rating of 4.8 stars. The book outlines a deceptively simple yet highly effective system to help businesses hit their target profit numbers…
Michael Girdley on The Rise of Holding Companies
My Guest Michael Girdley is an entrepreneur and investor who has spent the past 30 years building a personal holding company boasting over $100M in annual revenue, comprised of 12 businesses across software, technology, consumer retail, and education, among others. Outside of managing his holding company, Michael is deeply involved in the North American SMB…
Dr. Victoria Medvec on the Art and Science of High Stakes Negotiations
My Guest Dr. Victoria Medvec is the Adeline Barry Davee Professor of Management and Organizations at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. In addition to her professorship, Dr. Medvec is a co-founder and the Executive Director of the Center for Executive Women at the Kellogg School and the CEO of Medvec and Associates,…
Building a $5.5B Mid-Market Private Equity Firm: Brent Belzberg, Founder of Torquest Partners
My Guest My guest today is Brent Belzberg, Founder and Senior Managing Partner of TorQuest, a middle market private equity firm that he founded in 2002 that has since grown to ~$5.5B in assets under management. Outside of TorQuest, Brent serves as a Director of The Sinai Health System, having previously acted as Chair. He…
A Deep Dive on Compensation
Listen in Your Browser Questions Asked Verne Harnish: Crafting Company-Wide Compensation Plans (3:06) Verne Harnish is the founder of the Entrepreneurs’ Organization (“EO” for short), a global network of entrepreneurs and CEOs that boasts over 16,000 members worldwide. He is the author of multiple global bestselling books including Mastering the Rockefeller Habits, and Scaling Up,…
A Deep Dive on Hiring
Listen in Your Browser Questions Asked Randy Street (3:30) Many of you will know Randy Street as co-author of the book Who: The A Method for Hiring, which introduced the now widely used Topgrading hiring method to the world. The book went on to become a New York Times, Wall Street Journal, BusinessWeek, USA Today,…
Kent Weaver: Building, Working With, and Learning from your Board of Directors
My Guest Today, I was thrilled to be joined by Kent Weaver. Early in his career, Kent was an acquisition entrepreneur, having acquired Sacramento-based Progressive Home Care. Subsequent to the acquisition, Kent ran the company for approximately 9 years before a successful exit. He has been investing in small and medium-sized businesses ever since. Kent…
The Smallest Changes That Had the Largest Impacts: 4 CEO Case Studies
My Guests This is a very special episode of In The Trenches: In today’s episode, I will be interviewing 4 different CEOs of 4 different SMBs, and asking them just a single question: “What are some of the seemingly small changes you’ve made that have had the largest impacts?” When taking over a new business,…
Mike Zani, CEO of The Predictive Index: Hiring, Personality Profiling Tools, Working with a Partner, and Other Lessons from 20 Years as a CEO
My Guests My guest today is Mike Zani, CEO of The Predictive Index. The Predictive Index serves more than 9,000 clients across 142 countries, helping businesses optimize their hiring and team composition decisions through a combination of behavioral science, software, and professional consulting from the world’s top workplace behavior specialists. Mike has been CEO of…
Brent Beshore: The “Forrest Gump of Private Equity”
My Guest My guest today is Brent Beshore, Founder and CEO of Permanent Equity, a private investment firm that invests in Founder-owned private companies. Permanent Equity is a long-term investor that typically intends to hold portfolio companies indefinitely, often without the use of any leverage. In addition to his role as an investor, Brent is…
A.J. Wasserstein: Reflections of a Founder, CEO, Investor and Educator
My Guest My guest today is A.J. Wasserstein, the Eugene F. Williams, Jr. Lecturer in the Practice of Management at the Yale School of Management. His research, writing, and teaching concentrates on search funds, entrepreneurship, programmatic acquisitions, and small businesses. In addition to his role as an educator, A.J. is also a private investor in…
All Things Finance & Accounting: Managing Liquidity, Employee Financial Literacy, Capital Allocation, Macroeconomic Uncertainty, and Hiring Your First CFO
My Guest Nicholas Andrews is the Founder of Aspen Consulting Group, a company that performs finance, accounting, and operations consulting for a wide range of small and medium sized businesses. Aspen’s services include technical accounting, corporate finance, valuations, operations planning and M&A due diligence, among others. Prior to founding the Aspen Consulting group, Nick was…
Managing a Business During Inflationary Periods & Understanding Pricing Power
My Guest My guest today is a particularly personal and a particularly special one for me: I have been fortunate to call Jim Sharpe a mentor and friend for over 10 years now, and I am thrilled that he agreed to join the podcast. In this week’s episode, we discuss the realities of running a…
Having Hard Conversations (Live Panel Discussion from 2022 MIT Sloan Search Fund Summit)
In this week’s episode, we discuss the importance of having difficult conversations, something that CEOs find themselves doing on a near-daily basis. We discuss three primary types of difficult conversations, including: Hard conversations around internal company dynamics (eg: terminations); Hard conversations about dynamics external to the company (eg: politics and global affairs); Difficult conversations that…
Aaron Ross: Author of “Predictable Revenue” and “From Impossible to Inevitable”
My Guest Though Aaron Ross wears many hats, he is perhaps best known for co-authoring the global best seller Predictable Revenue, often referred to as “The Sales Bible of Silicon Valley,” which details an outbound prospecting system that’s created more than $1 billion across Salesforce.com and other companies. Most recently, Aaron published From Impossible to…
Bob Pritchett: Author of “Fire Someone Today” and Founder & Executive Chairman of Faithlife Software
My Guest Bob Pritchett is a lifetime entrepreneur and CEO, having founded Logos Research Systems (later Logos Bible Software and now Faithlife) in 1992, and acting as its CEO for 30 years until recently assuming the role of Executive Chairman. During Bob’s tenure, Faithlife has grown both organically and inorganically from 2 employees to over…
Randy Street: Pioneer of the Topgrading Hiring Method & Co-Author of “Who: The A-Method for Hiring”
My Guest Randy Street is Vice Chairman of ghSMART, a leading global consulting firm that helps CEOs, boards, and investors build valuable companies through hiring and developing world class leadership teams. During Randy’s tenure, ghSMART has grown tenfold, and has been ranked by Forbes as one of America’s Best Consulting Firms from 2017-2020. In collaboration…
Verne Harnish: Founder of The Entrepreneurs’ Organization (EO), Author of “Scaling Up” and “Mastering the Rockefeller Habits”
My Guest Few people have done more for Entrepreneurs and CEOs than Verne Harnish: Verne is the founder of the world-renowned Entrepreneurs’ Organization (“EO”), a global network of entrepreneurs and CEOs that boasts over 16,000 members worldwide. For the past 15 years, Verne has chaired EO’s premiere CEO program, the “Birthing of Giants” held at…
“Like Changing Tires on a Moving Car”: The Unseen Realities of Managing Rapid Growth
My Guest Anthemos Georgiades (or Anth, for short), is the founder and CEO of Zumper, an apartment rental platform based out of San Francisco that he founded in his second year at Harvard Business School in 2012. If anybody knows anything about running a rapidly growing company, it’s Anth. Consider this: Despite being founded less…
How to Build a Business that will Attract a Private Equity Buyer
My Guest Rich Manders Co-Founded and led iAutomation, a Massachusetts-based machine control and automation company, and grew the business from $0 to $90M in sales with 180 employees. After selling that business to The Riverside Company (a leading global Private Equity firm), Rich stayed on with the business, and alongside his partners at Riverside, grew…
Sales: Hiring, Onboarding, Compensating, Scaling & Supporting a World Class Sales Team
My Guest Dave Prusinksi is the Chief Revenue Officer at SafeAI, a hyper-growth silicon valley company in the autonomous vehicle space. Prior to his current role, Dave spent 10 years as the Executive Vice President of Sales and Marketing at FleetComplete, a technology provider to fleet-owning businesses around the world. Under Dave’s leadership, FleetComplete grew…
MANAGING YOUR BUSINESS (SOFTWARE-SPECIFIC)
You Don’t Have an Engineering Problem, You Have a Product Management Problem
My Guest Rich Mironov is one of North America’s preeminent Product Management thought leaders. He has spent 40 years in the software industry in numerous capacities, and currently acts as a Coach, Consultant, and Interim Executive for CEOs and Heads of Product across Canada and the United States, advising them on a diverse range of…
Buy at 5X EBITDA, Sell at 8X Revenue: The On-Premise to SaaS Transition of FieldEdge
My Guests My guests today are Steve Lau and Rameez Ansari, co-CEOs of AutoLeap, a cloud-based auto repair shop platform that counts Bain Capital Ventures among its investors. Prior to founding AutoLeap, Steve and Rameez purchased, operated, and sold D’Esco (later renamed FieldEdge), a software company that helps entrepreneurs run their HVAC, Plumbing, and Electrical…
Building and Managing a World Class Product Management Discipline
My Guest Rich Mironov is one of North America’s preeminent Product Management thought leaders. He has spent 40 years in the software industry in numerous capacities, and currently acts as a Coach, Consultant, and Interim Executive for CEOs and Heads of Product across Canada and the United States, advising them on a diverse range of…
The Private Equity Perspective on Acquiring, Operating and Selling Software Companies
My Guest Jordan Bettman is a Partner and Co-founder of Radian Capital, a New York-based Private Equity firm focused on B2B software and technology-enabled services businesses. Radian has ~$500 million of assets under management, and is now investing out of their second fund of ~$315 million. Prior to co-founding Radian, Jordan was a Partner at…
SELLING YOUR BUSINESS
Lessons Learned From 400+ Post-Exit Entrepreneurs: John Warrillow, Host of Built to Sell Radio
My Guest My guest today is John Warrillow, author of the bestselling book Built to Sell: Creating a Business That Can Thrive Without You, and Founder & CEO of The Value Builder System, a sales and marketing software tool for business advisors to find, win and keep their best clients. Built to Sell was recognized…
Sell-Side M&A Advisors: How to Choose One, How Much They Cost, and The Importance of the “Fine Print”
My Guest John Carvalho is the President of Stone Oak Capital, an M&A advisory firm that focuses exclusively on middle market businesses, with a specific focus on transactions between $10 and $100 million. Among other things, Stone Oak offers acquisition, divestitures, corporate finance and valuations services for its clients. John is also the Founder of…
What M&A Lawyers Want CEOs to Know About Selling Their Companies
My Guest Mario Nigro is one of Canada’s preeminent M&A lawyers, and currently serves as a Partner in the Mergers & Acquisitions and Private Equity & Venture Capital Groups at Stikeman Elliot based out of Toronto. His practice focuses on mergers and acquisitions, financings, complex corporate reorganizations, and general business law. Mario has extensive experience…