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.Continue reading “Jeff Stevens & A.J. Wasserstein on The Future of Entrepreneurship Through Acquisition”
Tag Archives: profitability
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 SMBContinue reading “Michael Girdley on The Rise of Holding Companies”
The 2023 SaaS CEO Survey
Listen to this Blog Post The Data Set The year in which each target company was acquired is detailed in the chart to the right. As can be seen, we were able to achieve reasonably good diversity by vintage year, with 18 of the 41 transactions taking place in 2019 or earlier, and 23 ofContinue reading “The 2023 SaaS CEO Survey”
Are You Selling to the Wrong Customers?
Listen to this Blog Post In my experience, among the countless strategic decisions that software CEOs must make, the decision of which end markets to serve doesn’t seem to command the time, attention, and level of thoughtfulness that it probably should. Leaders who run mature and established companies often take comfort in the product/market fitContinue reading “Are You Selling to the Wrong Customers?”
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 wasContinue reading “All Things Finance & Accounting: Managing Liquidity, Employee Financial Literacy, Capital Allocation, Macroeconomic Uncertainty, and Hiring Your First CFO”
Busting the Biggest Myth About Purchasing and Operating Small Companies
Listen to This Blog Post In this second edition of our “Myth Busters” series (the first one can be found here), I attempt to debunk a common misconception among prospective acquirors, particularly those looking to purchase a business for the first time. This myth states that the smaller the business in question, the easier itContinue reading “Busting the Biggest Myth About Purchasing and Operating Small Companies”
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 aContinue reading “Managing a Business During Inflationary Periods & Understanding Pricing Power”
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, grewContinue reading “How to Build a Business that will Attract a Private Equity Buyer”
Migrating Your Company from On-Premise to SaaS: Part 2
This is the second post in a two-part series on navigating the transition from on-premise to SaaS. You can read Part 1 here. Listen to This Blog Post: In Part 1 of this blog, we evaluated some of the more common challenges that companies face when attempting to migrate both their product and revenue modelsContinue reading “Migrating Your Company from On-Premise to SaaS: Part 2”
Migrating Your Software Company from On-Premise to SaaS: Part 1
Listen to This Blog Post: The overwhelming majority of software companies founded over the past fifteen years or so have never known anything other than a cloud-based, single-server-multi-tenant architecture coupled with a subscription revenue model. If you’re running a software business that fits this description, then you’ll (thankfully) never need to navigate the transition thatContinue reading “Migrating Your Software Company from On-Premise to SaaS: Part 1”