Timing is Everything: Buying a $30m Tutoring Business

Well. But I would start with what you can bring to the table. Right. Is you have to remember, you have to replace the smartest person at the company probably. And the heartbeat of the business.

And Dave is really humble. Right. But let's remember there's survivor bias here. Like all of the Daves who aren't brilliant went out of business.

Yeah.

And so you got to remember like you are stepping into the heartbeat and the smartest person in the business. And that's not to say we don't have brilliant people, a great potential. We have an awesome team and I am incredibly grateful for the people that I.

I guess I'll use the word inherited, although it feels a little strange. But you know, I would say start with what you can bring to a company. And for me, I spent, like I said, the first six, seven years of my career on a trading floor.

I spent some time building medium latency statistical arbitrage trading models in addition to that. And I trade eyeballs on Google. I mean, I'm exaggerating a little bit, Will.

Right. But the searcher company fit is very clear and I'll say sfa, I'll plug a little bit shamelessly, does a really, really good job of that and they help coach you to that. I also want to caution people that it may not be what it sounds like or looks like from the start. Right. Like I sat on a trading floor and I bought a tutoring company.

On the face of it, that doesn't make sense. And then you dig in the weeds and you realize, oh, like the trading model and the trading skills and understanding, you know, like I said at the start, I was a quant econ poli sci major at UChicago. Understanding, you know, how a dynamic auction marketplace works in Google and other digital ad acquisition, it's been an unbelievable asset.

And you know, I don't think you would have caught that at first blush. So I guess I'd say like definitely have a thesis because it's a very bad way to raise money if you don't have one. Like, don't go out with a PPM without a thesis in it.

But my advice would be be willing to look at yourself 12 months into your search and say, gosh, like, am I really the guy that's going to be the right cultural and skills fit for a company that trims trees around power lines? And nine months in, I looked at, I mean, it was shorter than that, but I looked at other kind of similar ish stuff along the way and realized this just is not the right fit…

I emailed probably every daycare with more than three locations in the United States that didn't have, you know, Christ centered in, in the website because I'm Jewish. And so that didn't feel like a very good fit. You know Mark Andrew. Yeah, Jared.