Smart Business Dealmakers: The Middle-Market M&A Podcast

Michael Pearson launched Union Packaging in 1999. Over nearly 20 years, he grew it to employ some 100 people, many of which he hired from what he calls non-traditional sources. Recently he sold that business to LBP Manufacturing, and became a partner at Iron Stone Real Estate. In addition, he's giving back to the community through board participation at many Philadelphia organizations. Mike shares...

Nick Mirchef and his son-in-law, Chris Pflanz, went through the trails and tribulations of early-stage capital raises with their company SmartWitness, a pioneer in video telematics. They found a big payday at the end of it all. Today, they offer others advice using their experience as a guide.  

In four short years, Detroit-based startup Airspace Link went from a couple founders and a few employees to recently raising $23 million in a Series B to aid its global expansion. It started with a $100,000 convertible note, a $3 million pre-seed, a $10 million Series A and now the global expansion raise. Michael Healander, co-founder, president and CEO, is a drone pilot enthusiast who envisions t...

Rocco DiLillo has lived the entrepreneurial experience. He's operated 10 companies — five he founded and five he acquired, taken a company public, rescued struggling businesses and realized successful exits. His passion for building businesses compelled him out of his first retirement in his mid-40s. And even today — many years later as he begins to divest himself of his business holdings — he fin...

Boon Logic, developer of machine-learning based anomaly detection algorithm, is completing its second funding round over the last four years with a nearly $40 million pre-money valuation to support the commercialization of two disruptive services. CEO Grant Goris sits down to discuss how the company was born, how it has grown, and what he's learned about raising capital along the way. 

Mike Moran is the CEO and Managing Partner of Walnut Ridge, multigenerational family office managing investment activities and controlling interest in a number of operating and start-up companies. He stops by to talk about the family office perspective — what they look for in potential acquisition targets, how they differ from other buyer types, and why and in what circumstances a family office is...

Late in 2020, Updox, a software collaboration platform for out-of-hospital healthcare providers, was acquired by EverCommerce. That year, the pandemic had created for Updox conditions that would make it the busiest time in the company's history as telehealth became a critical channel for both patients and service providers. Former Updox CEO Mike Morgan talks about laying the groundwork for that ev...

Dr. Shante Williams has had a remarkable career, one that started as a Research Associate studying how tumor cells migrate to founding two investment firms. Now, as the founder and CEO of Black Pearl Global Investments, she's focused on health care companies with investments that create long-term, sustainable growth while also backing several initiatives that seek to create more successful black,...

Michael Schreiber knows something about disruption. He was on the team that founded and launched Hulu and led some of the media industry's first digital distribution deals. Now he's leading PlayFly Sports, a full-service sports marketing company managing multimedia rights for universities, state high school associations and other properties, including esports. The fledgling company, with significa...

Is it the best of times or is it the worst of times? With market signals suggesting both economic strength as well as indications that a recession is coming — or that we're in one, or that one isn't coming — uncertainty is the only certainty and it's gripped the investor mindset, shaping perspectives that are driving real changes in where they're putting their dollars, which, of course, has entrep...

Park Place Technologies' Kelly Greene has helped the company write its M&A playbook. From director of human resources to VP of Mergers and Acquisitions and now VP of Corporate Development, she's completed more than 20 deals for the company, including the recent acquisition of Park Place's largest competitor. She talks about how the M&A process has evolved over her seven years with the company, off...

From Faith Voinovich's position as principal at Ohio Innovation Fund, she's seeing an increase in new blood via internships interested in entrepreneurship, eager to work with or start new ventures that can make an impact through meaningful work. Illustrating that change, she says applications for internships with the Fund have gone from a couple hundred to nearly 5,000 in a few years for just five...

It may have been out of necessity, but Frank Venegas Jr. began the succession process at a very young age for daughter Linzie and son Jesse. Linzie said she was in a playpen in her father's office, because they didn't have the money for sitters and her parents worked long hours. It may have been a hardship then, but its paying dividends today as both Linzie and Jesse have taken over leadership of...

As supply chain issues continue to wreak havoc for businesses both large and small, Chain.io Founder and CEO Brian Glick hopes to alleviate the problems with its cloud-based integration platform, which lets all the different entities in the chain share data between all their systems. In this episode, he discusses how Chain.io is addressing the problem as well as the company's recent capital raises...

The Desire Company matches and retailers with the right experts to trial, test and review products, producing video reviews for use at the point of sale and across digital marketing channels. These partnerships are proving to drive an increase in conversions, time on site and an increase in marketing effectiveness. Co-founder and CEO Eric Sheinkop discusses the creation of The Desire Company, his...

Kit Needham directs Project Olympus, Carnegie Mellon University's incubator that helps students, faculty and alums turn their ideas into viable businesses. She discusses the very earliest stages of entrepreneurism, what tends to trip folks up at this stage and how her experience as an investor informs her approach to coaching the next generation of entrepreneurs.

Ralph Della Ratta has had a remarkable career that spans four decades, hundreds of public and private M&A deals, and — despite two attempts at retirement — is still going. Ralph talks about his career, his recent retirement from Citizens Bank where he headed up its M&A division and chaired its investment banking committee, and his most recent move to join private equity firm Kirtland Capital Partn...

Petra Capital Partners recently completed fundraising on its Peta Growth Fund IV, which gives it $208 million of capital to invest, primarily in the health care space. David Fitzgerald, a partner at Petra, discusses the fund, the fundraising process and investment competition in a still-hot deal market. He also shares a bit of his firm's investment philosophy as well as his outlook on how the rema...

Royal Capital Group Founder and CEO Kevin Newell discovered that when living conditions improve, so do the mental and physical health of those living in the neighborhoods he's developed. This approach opened a new capital stream through UnitedHealthcare, which is now the largest private investor, providing $5.4 million in equity funding for one of his latest endeavors.  

Samantha Ory's firm Ouroboros Group is growing. The independent sponsor is building its first fund as it looks to approach sellers with unique strategies catered to the company's goals. She talks about the evolution of her firm, the effects of increased buy-side competition, and how buyer and seller misalignment is affecting deals and what's being done to bridge that gap.

Former NetJets CEO Jordan Hansell has launched Tradepost, an investment platform that provides growth capital to mid-market firms. Hansell talks about how the firm approaches the M&A market, as well as how he's coupling his experience in the c-suite with his experience as an investor to help guide the CEOs who lead his portfolio companies.

Lu Alleruzzo, a bioengineer with a MBA, had an opportunity early in his career to understand innovation and immediately apply it to society for the benefit of all. That opportunity — and $88 million in venture capital — fueled him and his biotech company, Immunophotonics, to pioneer a field of cancer care called Interventional Immuno Oncology.  

Checkpoint Surgical, a privately held U.S.-based medical device company with proprietary neurostimulation technology for nerve protection and repair, raised $16 million of growth capital in August of 2021. One year later, with those investments in place, the company is shifting into growth mode, a move that comes with substantial changes. Executive Advisor Len Cosentino talks about the raise, his...

Forrest Tefft, head of corporate finance at Northwest Bank, has, more than four decades in banking. He has raised more than $14 billion in bank capital and was the originator of more than 70 transactions. Tefft discusses some of the hurdles businesses face in a near post-pandemic world and the things they should consider before making any M&A transactions.  

Melissa Sherman went from a MOBILion investor to its CEO. She has lead the still-young company that's focused on developing lab instruments that improve the prediction, diagnosis and treatment of disease through more than $100 million in fundraising to propel it to its next phase. She talks about her transition into the business, what she's learned being on the other side of the fundraising table,...