Timing is Everything: Buying a $30m Tutoring Business

He says, you know, well, what's the downside of searching with sfa? And says, there is no downside. And I said, well, this guy's totally full of it.

There's a downside to everything in life. And then I got to know Tim, and he really is who he says he is. He walks the walk. And I think it's really important you believe that if you want to search with Search Fund Accelerator or any of the accelerators that are out there.

Right? And so for me, I looked around and said, well, this is already really risky. You know, the Stanford study I know, is, you know, traditional focused, but the statistics are what they are. And, you know, the idea of a personal guarantee was really scary to me, to be totally honest.

I mean, I. I think it's unbelievable, the bravery some people have signing a PG with an SBA loan. So I. I knew that I wanted to take money at least my first go round for this. You know, I think that led me to the second decision was who do I want to take it from?

And, you know, I looked at the traditional model and the accelerated model. I met with, you know, great firms and in both camps, and ultimately, you know, like I said, I came from a trading floor and I started to think about incentive alignment and you know, if you look at the traditional model, right, they're backing 30, 40 people a year. And portfolio theory says there's two ways that you can…

You can increase the number of uncorrelated assets, aka invest in 30, 40 searchers a year, or you can increase the quality of your assets. And as the asset, right, as the searcher, it was very clear to me that the incentive alignment with SFA is, you know, second to none. They bet on five, that they invest in five searchers a year and they have to get them all.

Right? Right. And so to me, that was what pushed me over the line. Obviously I got to know, you know, Tim Bovard and Matt Parker, who's the, the lead partner on, on my deal and, or our deal, I should say Dave and Sean and John o'. Neill. You know, the entire team is awesome.

But you know, to me, the incentive alignment was night and day better from my personal point of view. Does that make sense, Will? Is that helpful?

Yeah, no, that's a really interesting perspective. So traditional searchers invest, have a more of a portfolio approach. They invest in many more deals with the idea that some are not going to go well and some are going to be do great and it'll shake out in a really good way.

But, but from, from you, the one receiving that capital, you want them to be a little bit, have more incentive for every, for you, your particular deal to go well. And so because SFA is doing just five a year, they're not going to let one Sink because that's 20% of their portfolio or their, their deployed, their deployment that year. There is also, isn't there a lot of, a lot more involvement by…

I'm, I don't. So, so tell us about what kind of additional services, if you will, are on offer.