Greetings.

I have a podcast called Wisdom.MBA where I interview business school students, professors and alums. For the first episode, I interviewed Ari Medoff who has a wealth of experience in Entrepreneurship Through Acquisition (ETA). Ari earned an MBA/MPP from Harvard Business School and Kennedy School of Government. Before that, he worked as a Venture Capital/Merchant Banking Analyst at Lehman Brothers in New York where he was part of teams investing in consumer products, healthcare services, hotels, and enterprise software. Ari founded Arosa LLC in 2011 as a self-funded searcher and completed his acquisition of Nurse Care of North Carolina, a premier provider of in-home care services, where he serves as CEO. Since that time, he has also completed numerous other acquisitions within the healthcare space.

Ari teaches a seminar on search funds at HBS and is also a board member of a number of great organizations in North Carolina. There is a lot of great advice in the podcast from a successful and experienced searcher. I think it can help provide some guidance for anyone currently doing a search.

You can checkout the podcast below as well as some of the discussion topics we cover.

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/wisdom-mba/id1526144615

Episode Discussion Topics:

(2:00) Venture Capital at Lehman Brothers.

(9:45) Being a good Operator/Investor.

(11:45) The mindset required to be a Search Fund Entrepreneur.

(16:23) Why search funds are growing in popularity.

(23:18) Tenacity, loneliness and the challenges of searching for a business.

(33:30) Post-acquisition and the transition phase.

(40:29) Building trust and setting a vision for your new business.

(44:29) The wisdom of long-term business focus.

(48:34) Pivoting a healthcare business during COVID-19.

(53:37) Volunteering in the community as a business leader.