Think Like an Owner

My guest on this episode is Michael Girdley who is chairman and head of strategy of Dura Software, a holding company that acquires small software companies based in San Antonio. Michael is also a co-founder of Geekdom Fund, a small venture firm, and a co-founder of Codeup, a coding bootcamp in San Antonio.  I've had guests from software on the show before but this episode was particularly good and...

My guest on this episode is Will Schoeberlein. Will started his career in investment banking and private equity before taking a leap to Southeast Asia to work on startups and software. He finished his time in Asia in Japan where he met his wife and he has since developed a small company acquisition thesis on the Japanese market.  In the episode we discuss his thoughts about investing in private co...

My guests on this episode are Lui Pangiarella and Akram Sabbagh from Second Squared, an emerging search fund accelerator looking to bring the search fund model to Australia for the first time. The three of us discussed educating the marketplace, the mindsets of investors and owners in Australia compared to other countries, how they view themselves compared to counterparts in the U.S., and more. As...

My guest on this episode is Sam Rosati who, along with his brother Joey, ran a search fund called Pursuant Capital in the Tampa area and acquired a waste management broker called Alpha Dumpsters. There are a couple pieces about Sam and Joey's story that are unique. For one, it's one of very few search funds I've seen run by two searchers instead of one. And two, they are continuing to look for fur...

My guest, Mikel Berger, is the co-founder and partner of Little Engine Ventures, along with co-founder Daryl Starr. Little Engine Ventures is a very unique investment firm in the already unique world of small company investing. They have a strong regional focus of companies within a 2 hour drive of Lafayette, IN and are building a firm, brand, and community that resonates with small, midwest busin...

My guest on this episode is Tim Ludwig, managing partner of Ohana Capital in San Diego. Tim is a search fund investor through Ohana and has extensive experience, having invested in 75 deals over his career. More recently, Tim has been investing in companies directly rather than investing in searchers through a fund. During our conversation, we cover topics like being a search fund investor vs inve...

My guest on this episode is Andy Ellis, a managing partner of Localize Capital in Pittsburgh which, as the name suggests, focuses on investing in companies and entrepreneurs around the Pittsburgh area. Little known fact about me, I used to live in Pittsburgh as a young kid and was extra excited for this conversation because of that. Andy grew up in Pittsburgh, worked in Southern California, and ev...

My guest today is Kevin Graham, an Australian native living in Thailand running a web hosting company called Site Arrow, which he uses as his acquisition vehicle to buy other web hosting companies. The topic of software in micro private equity has come up more and more often and has been a recent focus of mine to learn more about, and Kevin was very helpful to that goal. While a great deal of the...

This space has some of the most unique backgrounds and my guest on this episode is no exception. David Krock joined a band as their drummer coming out of high school, did not go to college, and wound up starting a recording studio which led him on a path to entrepreneurship and micro PE investing, which he does today through his firm Sunset Coast Capital. David is your quintessential outside-the-c...

This episode is unique and is a joint episode with Karen Spencer from Searchfunder, Walker Deibel, and myself, and is something I'm calling "Author's Chat." I recently sent out a survey to see what content listeners and readers might enjoy hearing most and many of them said that conversations with authors of books relevant to micro PE would be interesting to them. This is one conversation along th...

My fifth guest of the show is Nick Haschka, an MIT graduate living in San Francisco focused on buying small private companies through his firm Cub Investments, along with two other partners. Together, they recently purchased a business called The Wright Gardner which provides interior plant leasing and maintenance services to companies in the bay area. One thing that is interesting about Cub's app...

Today I'm chatting with Peter Bell and Justin Turner from Traction Capital Partners in Tacoma, WA, just south of Seattle. Peter and Justin both reached out over Twitter and the more I learned about their firm, the more interesting to me it became. Traction is a small private equity firm that blurs the lines between a private equity fund and a permanent capital vehicle, which is what made them so i...

This is my first conversation on this podcast with more than one person. I'm meeting with the team from Searchfunder.com, an online community dedicated to search funds and the various parties involved. A search fund is the smallest form of micro private equity I've found thusfar and is typically one entrepreneur seeking out a company to buy and run as the CEO. The team consists of the two co-found...

My conversation today is with Mike Boyd. Mike is originally from Brisbane, Australia and currently lives in Singapore where he runs one of the leading car rental comparison websites in the world - Vroom, Vroom, Vroom, among other portfolio companies. He has been an entrepreneur for virtually his entire life, starting at a very young age. Mike built on his experience starting businesses and has evo...

For the first conversation of the podcast, I'm meeting with Trish Higgins who, along with her husband James Higgins and brother-in-law Palmer Higgins, run Chenmark Capital in Portland, Maine. Chenmark Capital acquires and operates small companies for the long term using their own capital, with no intention of selling - a perfect example of permanent equity. What makes Chenmark unique is they look...