Private Equity
Control positions in operating businesses. Capital and operators, not passive cheques.
What I do
I acquire operating businesses and real estate and increase what they are worth - through capital structure, systems and marketing rather than through price.
The discipline is the same in both markets: take control of cash flow without paying full price in cash, then build the operating layer that makes it worth multiples more. On houses it is called creative finance. On companies it is called M&A. It is one skill in two markets.
Sometimes that ends in a sale. Often the better answer is to keep it. The goal was never the exit - it was the value.
Where that shows up
Mergers & Acquisitions
Buying companies, integrating them, building them up. Hold or sell - the optionality is the product.
Creative Finance
Seller financing, vendor take-backs, options and assignments. The terms solve what the price cannot.
The operating layer
Buying is the easy half. Anyone with financing and patience can buy something.
The reason most acquisitions disappoint is that the buyer inherits a business that only works because the previous owner was standing inside it. Take the owner out and the revenue goes with them. The purchase price was fair. The asset was still misjudged.
So the work after closing is always the same shape:
- Find out what the business actually runs on, which is rarely what the org chart says.
- Get the owner-held knowledge out of one head and into a system that survives a vacation.
- Fix demand generation, because owner-dependent companies are almost always referral-dependent companies with a good reputation and no pipeline.
- Put in measurement before improvement, so that the improvement is a fact and not a feeling.
- Hire or appoint an operator who can run it, and give them the seat properly.
None of that is glamorous and all of it is the return. A company that runs without its founder is worth a different multiple than the same company with the same revenue and a founder holding it up. That gap is the whole trade.
How I think about price
The instinct in most negotiations is to argue about the number. It is the most visible term, so it absorbs all the attention, and two reasonable parties will spend weeks moving it back and forth while the deal quietly dies of something else.
Price is one term. Timing is a term. Who carries the risk on the receivables is a term. Whether the vendor stays for six months is a term. What happens if a key customer leaves in year one is a term. What is secured, and against what, is a term.
When a deal is stuck it is almost never stuck on price. It is stuck because one party is being asked to carry a risk they cannot carry, and the only tool anyone has reached for is the number. Move the risk to whoever is best positioned to absorb it and the number usually stops mattering.
That is the entire method, and it works the same way on a house as it does on a company.
How I decide
A short version of what I look for, because it saves everyone time:
- Cash flow that exists today, not cash flow that appears after my assumptions come true.
- A structure where I am not the only party with something at risk.
- A business whose problems are operational. Operational problems are solvable. Structural ones - a dying category, a single customer who is really the whole company, a licence I cannot hold - usually are not, at any price.
- Terms I would still accept if the optimistic case does not happen.
And a short version of what I pass on: anything that only works if nothing goes wrong.
What I do not publish
A few deliberate omissions, because people notice and it is better to explain them once.
I do not name the companies I am involved with, and I do not publish a holdings list. Those businesses have their own brands, their own customers and their own reputations, and none of that is improved by being turned into a credibility prop on a personal site.
I do not discuss the specifics of past transactions or name counterparties. Anyone who would want to sell me their business should be able to see that I would extend them the same discretion.
I do not publish personal financial information, and I do not use dollar figures as proof of anything.
What is left is method. That is the part that is actually useful to you.
Where I work
Structure travels, and a good conversation is worth having regardless of the postal code.