So the first thing we saw was we were both professors, still are professors, but we're looking for something that was going to change the trajectory of our, our teaching and really make an impact. And we were scouring around and, and Derek came across a case on how to buy a business from the folks over at hbs, did a little more research, and it's like, okay, wow, that's kind of interesting. This…
Acquiring Minds
The Flywheel of Buying Businesses in a Single Region
Excerpts · 289 segments · ~1:21:50 long
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You know, the most popular class at HBS at the time was, was eta. Right. And that was before we understood what ETA was and, and search. And we looked at the case, and what's interesting was there's a little footnote that said the author of this case, who was a, it was an HBS case, was a professor, but was also an investor.
And so we thought, well, that's, that's kind of interesting. Like professor investor, like that's a, an interesting hybrid. And then you look at the thesis there and it's Silver Tsunami and it's, you know, baby boomers retiring and a massive TAM and everything else.
And, and so that, that made sense. And then we looked out and we said, okay, that's, that's going to happen here in West Michigan. And so what, what could we do in West Michigan that would be relevant and appropriate here and adapt that, that model here?
And then we also had these same conversations that we just had around higher ed and saying, okay, well, it's putting practice and doing, learning by doing, learning through practice is where the future is going to be if you can get knowledge and information. So, you know, we were, we were thinking about, well, how do we take a reinvented view of higher education and, and look at this trend in…
And you know, we kind of realize that, well, if we want to really advance teaching at an undergraduate level and if you want to have a really legit ETA course, you need capital, you need a business, you need, you can't just talk about it and teach it. If you're going to tell somebody to take a life changing opportunity, then it's like, okay, well there's no capital around.
You go figure this out with some SBA loans and some banks and kind of go off on your own. We realized that if we had a fund, we could both empower folks to follow this path and do that in West Michigan. And then we realized, well, if we had a portfolio of 7, 15, 20 companies, all of a sudden we have an ecosystem for training undergraduates and really blurring that line between higher education…
And so it was, it was kind of a confluence of those things that we then thought, okay, we need to, to try to raise a fund. And that kind of journey went, went from there. Looking for an SBA loan to buy a business.
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New owner of a business, go to pioneer capitaladvisory.com or click the link in the notes. Let's now hear what Sleeping Giant is today. And then we'll, we'll, we'll really, we'll start to unpack it.
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