ETA: Entrepreneurship Through Acquisition Conference

Hear from:

Matthias Riechert, EMBAG 2012, is the founder of P&R Investment Management Ltd. He launched his own investment fund in 2013 and manages a concentrated long-term portfolio. Matthias has analysed and invested in roll-up strategies in several sectors. He runs the value investing mentorship at LBS.

Steffen von Bünau, founder of Ookam Software GmbH. Ookam is a search partner of MEDIQON Group AG. Steffen has acquired six B2B software companies in 18 months. He has experience as a manager of an Internet of Things company and in strategic consulting. He has extensive experience in search processes.

Jan Mohr, Chairman of Grafenia plc (a search sponsor), Member of the Executive Board of MEDIQON Group AG is the founder of JMX Capital GmbH, a long-term oriented investment firm. Jan previously worked at Investmentaktiengesellschaft für langfristige Investoren TGV, McKinsey & Company and Hauck & Aufhäuser. He has been appointed to the board of MEDIQON Group AG since March 2020, after having been a shareholder for several years. Jan has extensive experience in capital allocation and board leadership.

Chris Fuller is a Partner at Searcher Fund Accelerator, the first and most advanced accelerator in the search fund world. At SFA, Chris works extensively with SFA entrepreneurs to evaluate acquisition targets and with CEOs as a board member and thought partner. Prior to SFA, Chris worked at Checketts Partners Investment Fund, sports media and entertainment growth equity firm, and at Credit Suisse in the Mergers & Acquisitions Group. Chris is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Business School.

Hear our panellists talking about what happens after search - both good and bad!

A. J. Wasserstein is the Eugene F. Williams, Jr. Lecturer in the Practice of Management at the Yale School of Management. Additionally, he is a private investor with a long-term orientation, interested in lower middle-market businesses and philanthropic organizations, where he can be positively impactful by using his experiences, time, and capital. Mr. Wasserstein was the President of Onesource Water, the third-largest bottleless water service business in the U.S. Onesource Water was sold to Water Logic, a U.K. based strategic acquirer, in 2016. Previously, A.J. was the founder and CEO of ArchivesOne, the third largest records management company in the U.S. ArchivesOne was sold to Iron Mountain (NYSE: IRM) after 17 years of operation. The U.S. Small Business Administration has recognized A. J. as the Small Business Person of the Year in Connecticut. A. J. wrote a book on young adulthood that was a gift to his three children. The book’s title is What Matters Most: A Young Adult’s Roadmap to Life.

Rafael Alfonzo is an entrepreneur and attorney with more than 20 years' experience operating, investing in, and representing startup and growth businesses. Rafael is currently a Managing Partner of Radien Legacy Partners, an investment group focused on acquiring small, growth businesses. He previously served as CEO of Datum Technologies, an IT services company focused on the multi-unit restaurant industry. He also co-founded and operated Distributed Sun, a commercial solar energy developer and independent power producer. Rafael is a graduate of the University of Michigan, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Sloan School of Management, and The George Washington University Law School.

Jim Vesterman was the CEO of Raptor Technologies, the nation’s leading provider of integrated school safety technologies, from 2012 – 2020 and now sits on the Board of Directors. Jim grew Raptor from 7,000 K-12 customers to nearly 40,000. Prior to Raptor, Jim was the founder and Managing Director of Liberty Place Capital, a private equity Search Fund used to find, acquire, and manage a single operating entity. Jim began his career at Monitor Group, a global strategy consulting firm serving Fortune 500 firms, and Monitor Clipper Partners, a $650 million middle market private equity fund. Jim 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. Jim earned his bachelor’s degree from Amherst College and his M.B.A. from the Wharton School.

Ritz Steytler is co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Axora, a B2B digital solutions marketplace for industrial companies. He has over 28 years’ experience in technology-driven growth and transformation of complex multinational businesses in the Fintech, Retail, Telecoms, Healthcare, Government, Mining and Energy industries. In 2011, he led the acquisition of omnichannel payment processor PXP by Abacus Partners, a UK-based search fund that he founded in 2008. He was Chief Executive Officer of PXP up to its acquisition by Kalixa in 2014. Before co-founding Axora, he was the Chief Operating Officer of Featurespace, the world leader in adaptive behavioural analytics and AI-based fraud detection. Ritz is an active private investor and a board member of several charities. He holds a Bachelor of Commerce degree in Computer Science from Stellenbosch University and an MBA with Distinction from London Business School.

Hear about the fundamentals from stalwarts in the ETA space.

Bill Egan is founder and General Partner of Alta Communications and Marion Equity Partners, Massachusetts-based venture capital firms. He founded Alta's predecessor firm, Burr, Egan, Deleage & Co. in 1979, and has identified and backed several of America's leading growth companies in the information technology, life sciences, and communications industries including Fedex, Continental Cablevision, Cephalon and Asurion. Prior to founding Burr, Egan, Deleage & Co., Bill was a Partner at TA Associates. He began his career as a Manager of Venture Capital for New England Enterprise Capital Corporation. Bill is an owner of the Boston Celtics professional basketball team and the Worcester Red Sox, the Triple A affiliate of the Boston Red Sox. He is past President and Chairman of the National Venture Capital Association, a former trustee of Fairfield University and the University of Pennsylvania and a former member of the Board of Overseers of The Wharton School. Bill received a degree in Economics from Fairfield University and an MBA from The Wharton School.

Mr. Thorndike founded Housatonic Partners in Boston in 1994 and has been Managing Director since that time. Currently, Housatonic Partners manages over $1 billion in capital. Prior to that, Mr. Thorndike worked with T. Rowe Price Associates and Walker & Company, where he was named to the Board of Directors. He is a Director of Access Information Management; Alta Colleges; Continental Fire & Safety Services, LLC, Carillon Assisted Living, LLC; Liberty Towers, LLC; OASIS Group Ltd.; QMC International, LLC; White Flower Farm, Inc., a Trustee of Stanford Business School Trust, the College of the Atlantic (Chair) and a founding partner at FARM, a social impact investing collaborative. He is the author of The Outsiders. Mr. Thorndike is a graduate of Harvard College and the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Hear from:

Simon Webster, is an LBS alum and lecturer in ETA at LBS. He raised the first search fund outside of the US (a form of ETA). He acquired a business and grew it by a factor of 10x over a 10 year period. He now invests, mentors and lectures on entrepreneurship through acquisition.

Marc Bartomeus founded Ariol Capital, the first search fund in Spain, and acquired Repli in Spain and Pentapackaging in Italy. He grew the businesses as a CEO and successfully sold them to a strategic buyer in 2020. Marc serves as a non-executive director of several private companies and is co-founder of Albira Investments, a private firm that makes long-term investments in healthy businesses sourced and managed by search fund entrepreneurs. Marc holds an industrial engineering degree from the Technical University of Catalonia (UPC) and an MBA from MIT Sloan School of Management.

Tobias Raeber successfully raised the first partnered search fund in Europe in 2013, focusing the search on Switzerland/Germany. Prior to this, he worked in management consulting, in real-estate, and in hospitality. In early 2015, his search fund acquired Herchenbach Industrial Warehouses. Until his partial exit in 2019, the business doubled both revenue & EBITDA, realising outstanding returns for investors during his tenure as CEO. Today, Tobias is committed to growing businesses, is a professional Board Member to SMEs, and is an active investor in various fields. He also is a serial Search Fund Investor. Tobias is Swiss and lives in Switzerland and London, holds a MSc in Economics from Bocconi University, and a BSc from Ecole hôtelière de Lausanne (EHL).

Raja Prasanna is the CEO of Infonetica, a UK based Research focussed SaaS company with customers in 14 countries. Raja did his MBA at London Business School. He raised a traditional search fund in January 2018 and acquired Infonetica in August 2019.

Hear as fund investors and private investors across geographies share their perspectives on the Search Model to Entrepreneurship.