When Search Funds Don’t Go As Planned (Part 2): With Jim Sharpe

In The Trenches

This episode is brought to you by ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Symphony⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Symphony not only performs technical due diligence engagements for search funds, Private Equity firms, and strategic acquirers, but they also partner with those buyers on an ongoing basis on all things product (outsourced development, team augmentation, new product prototyping, UI refreshes, QA professionalization, and so on). Symphony is offering a full 15% off of any of their services for listeners of In the Trenches. Just go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠the ⁠⁠⁠⁠Contact form on their website⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and tell them that you’re a listener of the podcast to receive this discount! * This episode is brought to you by ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Oberle Risk Strategies⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, the leading insurance brokerage and insurance diligence provider for the search fund community. The company is led by August Felker⁠⁠⁠⁠ (himself a 2-time successful searcher), and has been trusted by search investors, lenders, searchers and CEOs for over a decade now. Their due diligence offering (which is 100% free of charge) will assess the pros and cons of your target company’s insurance program, including any potential coverage gaps, the pro-forma insurance pricing, and the program structure changes needed for closing. At or shortly after closing, they then execute on all of those findings on your behalf. Oberle has serviced over 900 customers across a decade of operation, including countless searchers and CEOs within the ETA community. * Today’s episode is the second in a two-part series on when search funds don’t go as originally planned. On last week’s episode, we spoke with four entrepreneurs to get a first-hand account of how and why their paths deviated from their original plans. In today’s episode, we look to compliment those first-hand accounts with reflections from Jim Sharpe, a highly respected search fund investor of almost 20 years, and himself a former Searcher and CEO. Today we ask Jim to discusses the trends, commonalities, and themes that he has observed among searchers who failed to consummate an acquisition, and also those who did consummate an acquisition, but failed to "thrive" thereafter, either commercially or personally. Please enjoy!