Why Choose Ownership Over Being a CEO

So I think what Katherine and I agree on is we'd rather own more of a smaller outcome than a very tiny fraction of a big outcome.

Great, thank you. Okay, so Katherine, you're back at business school. That's where you discover search.

I don't have like great billion dollar ideas that I want to sell to people. And so they said, hey, you know, go to business school and make sure if there's a class on search funds and eta, take it. And so when I was at Duke, they actually were piloting the first round of an ETA class that they'd ever offered and they were supposed to only offer it to second years.

But I emailed Ben Thomason and David Robinson at Duke and said, hey, I've heard about this search fund thing. I've read, you know, the, the books you're supposed to read. The HBR Guide to Buying a Small Business.

I'm really interested, can you let me in? And they were nice enough to let me in. And I think I very quickly realized that that was again the space I wanted because I wanted to be in a small business.

I really don't like bureaucracy. I frankly don't love businesses. I've never worked in a business that has more than 30 or 40 employees.

I did my one summer internship at a growth equity fund where I was one of thousands of people and again quickly realized that I was like, I don't like large enterprises. I like small business. I like where there's a lot more direct impact that you can have and you get to know your whole team better.

And so ETA felt like a much better fit for me than, you know, a venture backed tech firm or even going into the investing side where again, you're advising people but you're not actually able to make a direct impact in a business.

And I, and so I tested out the consulting before business school I tested out the investing side while in business school and just kept coming back to search funds and ETA while I was at Duke as the path that I wanted to be on.

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