Podcasts about accel kkr

Welcome back to the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast.Today's conversation dives into the current state of private markets through the lens of one of the leading GP stakes firms in the industry.We sat down with Partner and Global Co-Head of the Petershill Group at Goldman Sachs Robert Hamilton Kelly. Petershill takes minority equity stakes in established and newly-established alternative asset managers. Across its different investment vehicles, Petershill participates in the fee income from over 200 underlying funds from alternative asset management firms that are diversified across asset class, investment strategy, and investment lifecycle.Petershill's Partner firms have well in excess of $340B in aggregate AUM and they've partnered with a number of the top firms and some of the industry's most recognizable names in the middle market and upper end of the market, including Clearlake, Francisco Partners, Permira, Accel-KKR, General Catalyst, Kayne Anderson Real Estate, Kennedy Lewis, and more.Rob and I had a fascinating conversation on GP stakes and the evolution of alternative asset management. We discussed:The what, why, and how of GP stakes.The benefits and drawbacks of GP stakes investing for GPs and LPs.What makes a great GP.The question of liquidity in GP stakes.Why Petershill has generally focused on middle-market alternative asset managers.How private markets will continue to evolve and the growing importance of the wealth channel in the evolution of asset management.Thanks Rob for coming on the show to share your wisdom and expertise in private markets and GP stakes. We hope you enjoy.A word from AGM podcast sponsor, Ultimus Fund SolutionsThis episode of Alt Goes Mainstream is brought to you by Ultimus Fund Solutions, a leading full-service fund administrator for asset managers in private and public markets. As private markets continue to move into the mainstream, the industry requires infrastructure solutions that help funds and investors keep pace. In an increasingly sophisticated financial marketplace, investment managers must navigate a growing array of challenges: elaborate fund structures, specialized strategies, evolving compliance requirements, a growing need for sophisticated reporting, and intensifying demands for transparency.To assist with these challenging opportunities, more and more fund sponsors and asset managers are turning to Ultimus, a leading service provider that blends high tech and high touch in unique and customized fund administration and middle office solutions for a diverse and growing universe of over 450 clients and 1,800 funds, representing $500 billion assets under administration, all handled by a team of over 1,000 professionals. Ultimus offers a wide range of capabilities across registered funds, private funds and public plans, as well as outsourced middle office services. Delivering operational excellence, Ultimus helps firms manage the ever-changing regulatory environment while meeting the needs of their institutional and retail investors. Ultimus provides comprehensive operational support and fund governance services to help managers successfully launch retail alternative products.Visit www.ultimusfundsolutions.com to learn more about Ultimus' technology enhanced services and solutions or contact Ultimus Executive Vice President of Business Development Gary Harris on email at gharris@ultimusfundsolutions.com.We thank Ultimus for their support of alts going mainstream.Show Notes00:00 Introduction and Sponsor Message01:18 Podcast Opening and Theme02:06 Guest Introduction: Robert Hamilton Kelly03:32 Rob's Boat Racing Experience03:45 Parallels Between Boat Racing and Private Markets04:57 Current State of Private Markets05:14 Impact of Policy Changes on Private Markets06:53 Growth of the Private Markets Industry07:09 Early Days of Petershill07:26 Goldman's Role in Alternative Asset Management09:26 Valuing GP Stakes and Alternative Asset Managers10:01 Insights on Alternative Asset Managers12:36 Valuing GP Stakes13:22 Data-Driven Investment Strategies15:34 Management Fees and Performance Fees16:28 Growth and Evolution of Firms23:16 Strategic Imperatives for Growth26:15 Managerial Skills and Industry Dynamics30:55 Commercialization in Platform Management31:07 Challenges and Opportunities in Capital Raising31:53 Industry Consolidation Predictions32:29 Growth and Consolidation in Private Markets33:31 The Role of Mid-Market Firms34:15 GP Stakes and Wealth Channel Access36:12 Goldman's Unique Platform and Services37:57 The Importance of Strategic Advice39:39 Common Challenges for GPs40:33 Evolving LP and GP Stakes Dynamics40:44 Why LPs Invest in GP Stakes42:00 Income Generation and Capital Growth42:49 Diversification in GP Stakes43:05 Private Markets Exposure44:01 Entry Points into Private Markets45:07 Long-Term Exposure and Portfolio Construction47:00 Investing in Private Credit48:10 Evaluating GP Stakes Investments49:38 Data and Performance in GP Stakes52:04 Growth Path of Private Markets52:23 Valuing Alternative Asset Managers55:41 Liquidity in GP Stakes57:09 Structural Changes in GP Stakes57:35 The Evolution of Private Markets58:11 Future of Venture and Growth Sectors58:56 Private Credit Products and Market Share59:29 Maturation of Private Markets59:52 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

Sean Hoban was co-founder and former CEO of Kimble Applications, a leading professional services automation (PSA) software for organizations to manage their professional services business's entire operational and financial lifecycle. Sean and his co-founders had already started, grown, and sold a pro services organization before creating a PSA product and building a SaaS business.  With a little funding from the founders and a few angel investors, Kimble started efficiently and grew steadily, eventually raising a practical minority funding round from private equity investors Accel-KKR in 2018. The company grew to $30M ARR before selling most of the company to Accel-KKR in 2021, which merged two PSA companies to create Kontata.  In this episode, Sean discusses some of their deepest strategic opportunities: Learning to grow a SaaS business versus a professional services organization Building on the Salesforce platform and working in that ecosystem Starting in the UK and expanding to Germany and the US Quote from Sean Hoban, former CEO and co-founder of Kimble Applications “One of the most powerful ways I learned as a CEO is to find and talk to other founders in London who were in a similar situation. We would meet for beers, share ideas, and chat on WhatsApp.  “If you have a specific problem, it was valuable to talk to other founders in the same growth stage. And these were founders, not hired CEOs. “It's a lonely job as a CEO. And being able to talk to somebody else who is in a similar position can be cathartic and very helpful.” Links Sean Hoban on LinkedIn Kantata on LinkedIn Kantata SX (formerly Kimble Applications) website Accel-KKR website The Practical Founders Podcast Tune into the Practical Founders Podcast for weekly in-depth interviews with founders who have built valuable software companies without big funding. Subscribe to the Practical Founders Podcast using your favorite podcast app or view on our YouTube channel. Get the weekly Practical Founders newsletter and podcast updates at practicalfounders.com.

The 30th episode of ‘Everyday Business with Aidan Donnelly' is a little different to the norm! We recently staged the first in our ‘Next Step' series of events in the magnificent surroundings of the old trading floor of The Irish Stock Exchange (Euronext) Building in Dublin, to an audience of business owners and entrepreneurs. Every entrepreneur reaches a point in the evolution of their business when they are faced with the crucial decision of the ‘Next Step' on its growth pathway and how that will be funded. For some, selling the business to a larger company makes the most sense, but for others, taking on external capital to scale up the business is more appropriate – in some cases, that external financing comes in the form of taking the company public on the stock market. There is no one right answer, so with this event, we hoped to provide insights into each route from business people who have done it before. We had an excellent panel comprised of Dermot Crowley, CEO of Dalata Hotel Group plc, the largest hotel operator in Ireland and with a presence in the UK and continental Europe; Leo Mac Canna, CEO and Founder of Ocuco Ltd, a thriving multinational software company with thousands of customers worldwide, who recently had Accel-KKR invested €60m in the company to help fuel its global expansion; and Mark Little, founder and successful seller of the Storyful and Kinzen media businesses. This podcast brings you insightful conversation between Aidan Donnelly and entrepreneurs and business owners/management with their own unique story to tell. If you like what you hear, please like, share and subscribe.

As Tyson Begly was wrapping up being CFO of Delta Data, after a Accel KKR transaction to Terminus Capital Partners, he was asked to complete the final year of a City Council seat, provided he would not run for reelection. Tyson readily agreed - he wanted to give back to his community.  Tyson shares his thoughts on: How serving as a Company Executive helps him be a good public servant Corporate skills and experiences that he is able to utilize as a City Council member Shared thoughts to those who are interested in serving their community Tyson served as COO/CFO for Delta Data until a change of control in early 2023. Prior experience includes management consulting for Accenture, Morgan Stanley, Diamond Management and others.  Tyson holds an MBA from Duke University.  Thank you to ACG Denver for being a sponsor of CXO Conversations Podcast.  Association for Corporate Growth in its role as the hub of the middle market business community for quality networking, education and events. Connections are made, deals are formed and thought leadership is exchanged.     Enjoy the show? Review us on iTunes- thanks!  Thank you Jalan Crossland for lending your award-winning banjo skills to CXO Conversations.

Według Goldman Sachs obniżka stóp % w Polsce możliwa już we wrześniu; wydatki na podróże w 2022 wzrosły o +50% r/r; MidEuropa sprzedała większościowy udział w Symfonii do Accel-KKR; a WSA w Łodzi orzekł, że lokal mieszkalny nabyty przed 2022 może być amortyzowany. Wersja tekstowa z linkami do źródeł (newsletter) na www.businessupdate.pl Disclaimer:  Business Update to subiektywny zbiór wiadomości. Dokładamy wszelkich starań aby przedstawiane informacje były rzetelne, jednak nie bierzemy odpowiedzialności za ich prawdziwość i zgodność z faktami. Każda z informacji powinna być zweryfikowana samodzielnie przez słuchacza. Przedstawiane informacje nie są poradą prawną, nie stanowią doradztwa podatkowego, nie są poradą inwestycyjną, nie stanowią oferty w rozumieniu kodeksu cywilnego. Wydania Business Update powstają na podstawie ogólnodostępnych informacji, które nie stanowią przedmiotu praw autorskich. #biznes #finanse #prawo #rynki

On BDO's new Private Equity PErspectives podcast episode, Michael LeTourneau, finance resource partner at Court Square Capital Partners, and Steve Siwinski, senior finance leader at Accel-KKR, join host Todd Kinney to discuss why PE CFOs need a “money-making gene” and “love of controlled chaos.” Tune in to hear their insights on: Talent challenges: How the current labor market headwinds play into fund and portfolio strategies, and what solutions they're deploying The first 100 days: What's most important now in the first 100 days of owning an asset Scaling the approach: How scaling your approach is top of mind for LPs today, and how to do it

“I would like to see FP&A drive the planning process for go- to-market just because I think they will have a better natural understanding of what it means to actually build a plan.” Scott Stouffer, a former engineer, is a serial entrepreneur and founder. Currently he is CEO and Founder at scaleMatters, the world's first Go-to-Market Optimization Platform. Previously, he executed the sale of Salsa Labs, a non profit CRM to PE firm Accel-KKR at a period of $12MM annual revenue and 70 employees. In this wide-ranging interview he reveals the real impact he believes CEOs, such as himself, are looking for in choosing CFOs and building a finance team. He also argues for  a bigger role for FP&A – including leadership of a company's go-to-market strategy incorporating how an organization can engage with customers to convince them to buy their product or service.  This interview covers Scott's roadmap for growth leading fast-scaling companies Why many CFOs are “glorified controllers” (and why that is a problem) How FP&A can prevent sales and marketing teams “from winging it” by bringing the “analytical brain power” to the  The power of a good plan in a fast-scaling business Should Rev Ops and Data be owned by the CFO How FP&A should be the first port of call in building a companies Go-to-Market strategy  How finance teams can work better with sales teams and better modeling sales capacity Why in 60% of cases companies have too many sales people by failing to do proper modeling Why you need to hone self-confidence as a skillset Read the full transcript and blog Follow Scott Stouffer on LinkedIn Follow Paul Barnhurst on LinkedIn Follow Datarails on LinkedIn FP&A Today is brought to you by Datarails. Datarails is the financial planning and analysis platform that automates data consolidation, reporting and planning, while enabling finance teams to continue using their own Excel spreadsheets and financial models. Get in touch at www.datarails.com For AFP FP&A Continuing Education credit please complete the course via the Earmark Ap, must pass the quiz with 80% accuracy and send the completed certificate to pbarnhust@thefpandaguy.com for issuance of 1 hour of credit toward your AFP FP&A Certification. 

Phil Cunningham is currently Managing Director at Accel-KKR, a company focused on partnering with mid-market software and tech-enabled service businesses to generate grow at a considerable high level. Phil started in sales with a large Fortune 500 company, transitioning to leading sales teams in private equity space, eventually having complete responsibility for a PE-owned company. Today, he leads Accel-KKR's emerging growth companies sector. Join us as Phil describes his career path, great insights on leadership and the importance of his Notre Dame MBA to his career.

Aleks Gollu is the co-founder and CEO of 11Sight. Aleks is a serial entrepreneur and CEO with a successful track record of building innovative solutions from idea to exit and has been granted 8 patents. Aleks started his career at Oracle and Sapient. However, being in the San Francisco Bay Area in California, he rapidly realized his passion for entrepreneurship and co-founded his first startup, O'TelNet, a pioneer of SMS-based cell phone applications that was acquired by a competitor.  Subsequently, Aleks co-founded PINC, a supply chain technology company helping the largest shippers in the world move inventory as efficiently and cost-effectively as possible using IoT technologies. In 2020, PINC was acquired by the leading private equity firm Accel KKR. More recently, based on his frustrations managing revenue generation as CEO of a SaaS company, Gollu saw an opportunity to eliminate friction from sales cycles, offer customers a more personalized digital experience, and accelerate revenue generation, and co-founded 11Sight. In this episode, he shares how we can reduce sales friction and the sales cycle length to easily drive growth.

The local market followed the global market sell-off overnight to close Thursday's session down 0.07% as investors fled REIT stocks, sending the sector down 1.87%, while piling into the banks and lifting the financial sector 1.4%. The story of the day and winning stock of the day was Australia's national carrier Qantas (ASX:QAN) releasing a group market update outlining strong demand has accelerated the airline's recovery. The flying kangaroo expects first half profit before tax of between $1.2bn and $1.3bn, which is a sharp recovery from the $1.9bn loss before tax reported for FY22. Qantas also said operational performance continues to improve to expect operations to be back at or around pre-COVID service levels in first half of October, and annual wages for around 20,000 employees will be increased following a two-year wage freeze. Other winning stocks today included Kelsian Group (ASX:KLS) and St Barbara (ASX:SBM) which added 6.3% and 4.1% respectively. Software company ELMO (ASX:ELO) soared 22% today after the HR tech company confirmed it has received takeover approaches from a number of parties including Accel-KKR, which ELMO has said it is in discussions with some parties in the context of maximising shareholder value. On the losing end of the market, NIB Holdings (ASX:NHF) tanked almost 12% today following the completion of the company's $135m institutional placement. Graincorp (ASX:GNC) fell 6.3% today and Allkem (ASX:AKE) also fell 5.56% to end Thursday's session.Medibank Private shares entered a trading halt today after the health insurance provider reported a cyber incident, specifically it ‘detected unusual activity on its network yesterday'. The company has engaged specialised cyber security firms to assist with containing and investigating the attack. Tonight's big focus is the release of US core inflation data for September which is out at 10:30pm AEDT, with the market expecting US core inflation to drop slightly to 8.1% in September from 8.3% in August. The Australia dollar is buying 62.78 US cents, 56.60 British Pence, 92.19 Japanese Yen and 1 New Zealand dollar and 12 cents.

I've known angel investor, advisor and entrepreneur Larry Augustin since his days as CEO of SugarCRM, and have had him as part of this series a couple times (2011 and 2016). SugarCRM grew from $10M in annual revenue and a $15M loss to $100M in revenue and $7.5M in EBITDA. Accel-KKR acquired SugarCRM in August 2018. And after nearly a decade as Sugar's CEO, Larry spent a couple of years at Amazon Web Services (AWS) as vice president responsible for their applications services businesses – including their contact center offerings. Currently Larry is focusing on angel investing and advising a number tech startups. And with his varied experiences and background, my CRM Playaz co-host Paul Greenberg and I were excited to catch up with Larry for a long overdue LinkedIn Live conversation.

In this episode, hear Olly Belcher, President of the St Edmund Hall Association, in conversation with Paisley Kadison, a one year visiting student to Teddy Hall from the States in 2005. Paisley came to Teddy Hall when she was just seventeen and tells us her journey to get there as well as what it was like visiting for just one year. Today, she is General Counsel at Accel-KKR and involved with the St Edmund Hall Association in the States. Spirit of the Hall podcast is produced by the St Edmund Hall Association, the voluntary alumni body independent which represents all Aularians. The views and opinions expressed in the podcast are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Association, St Edmund Hall or the University of Oxford.

The Janitor Strategy for Developer-led Sales, also, The School of the Philosophy of Rocks and Time This week, Coté and Matt define three sales model for doing developer-led sales. Also, we know that clown fish are optional, but do rocks need to exist? Register here to be invited to future Software Defined Meetups (https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1HabWg2nxKf2-qAavMSihlHbACjpr-qVDJFeBTKAJZJQ/edit). Mood Board: How many of you watch streaming? hotdogheadexplosion37 - “I'm your host, exploding hotdog.” hotdogheadexplosion37 solves agile financing problems. I'm your host, ExplodingHotDogMan What if rocks didn't exist? I didn't take “Philosophy of Rocks 101 in college, but I did take hydrobiology 379.” This is what happens when Brandon's not here Legal week B to D sales The Janitorial Sales Model - vendor creates mess, drives uncontrolled/ungoverned/decentralized viral spread. The Mary Poppins Model Graffiti Proof Paint Model ## Rundown Rocks. The End of Daylight Saving Time? (https://twitter.com/senatecloakroom/status/1503797632745025542) Dell Striving To ‘Embrace Developers In A Big Way': Michael Dell (https://www.crn.com/news/data-center/dell-striving-to-embrace-developers-in-a-big-way-michael-dell) ## Relevant to your Interests Congratulations to The Cloudcast, 600 Shows! (https://twitter.com/thecloudcastnet/status/1504070851376910341?s=20&t=g_261CFiP9bXnIgAxGhG6A) Death by PowerPoint: the slide that killed seven people — mcdreeamie-musings (https://mcdreeamiemusings.com/blog/2019/4/13/gsux1h6bnt8lqjd7w2t2mtvfg81uhx) Birdeye Raises $60M Series C Funding Led by Accel-KKR to Help Local Businesses Grow (https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/birdeye-raises-60m-series-c-funding-led-by-accel-kkr-to-help-local-businesses-grow-301499886.html) Commercial satellites test the rules of war in Russia-Ukraine conflict (https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/03/10/commercial-satellites-ukraine-russia-intelligence/) Google Cloud and VMware expand partnership with focus on cloud migrations (https://siliconangle.com/2022/03/16/google-cloud-vmware-expand-partnership-focus-cloud-migrations/) The Conversation: Twitter Trends 2022 (https://marketing.twitter.com/en/insights/the-conversation-twitter-trends-2022-btc) Google's domain name registrar is out of beta after seven years (https://www.engadget.com/google-domains-beta-201056792.html?src=rss) Amazon just introduced a bizarre metaverse-like game to train people how to use AWS (https://www.cnbc.com/2022/03/15/amazon-launches-metaverse-like-game-to-train-people-how-to-use-aws.html) The first RISC-V portable computer is now available (https://lunduke.substack.com/p/the-first-risc-v-portable-computer) Launching Valid Capital (https://zachholman.com/posts/launching-valid-capital) Veracode Announces Significant Growth Investment From TA Associates | Veracode (https://www.veracode.com/blog/security-news/veracode-announces-significant-growth-investment-ta-associates?mkt_tok=NzkwLVpLVy0yOTEAAAGDLUxgknNx2RnwA_RGOOCwibpdAPgKpM0oYFV4AIIlXQjBpYcPVvt3195gmAPK_qM8s9R_biDaz_muNzwGiEN1PbUqWtqKcfbsXiZDkm14z9aOAg) Canonical bullish on OpenStack (https://www.theregister.com/2022/03/14/canonical_bullish_on_openstack/) Facebook's Parent Company Will Make Employees Do Their Own Laundry (https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/11/technology/facebook-meta-perks.html) The next big SaaS player will be the company that solves enterprise billing (https://www.protocol.com/enterprise/enterprise-saas-billing-market-sequoia#toggle-gdpr) The long-term strategy behind IBM's Red Hat purchase (https://www.theregister.com/2022/03/11/ibm_redhat_strategy/) HashiCorp beats expectations in first quarterly earnings report since going public (https://siliconangle.com/2022/03/10/hashicorp-beats-expectations-first-quarterly-earnings-call-since-going-public/) Oracle's cloud business seen as 'the driver,' of Q3 results (https://seekingalpha.com/news/3811176-oracle-q3-results-on-tap-cloud-still-the-driver-moness-crespi-hardt-says) ## Nonsense Facebook Libra: the inside story of how the company's cryptocurrency dream died (https://www.ft.com/content/a88fb591-72d5-4b6b-bb5d-223adfb893f3) Winamp joins LimeWire in the emerging "legacy software comes back from the dead to do NFTs" trope (https://web3isgoinggreat.com/?id=2022-03-16-0) One of the greatest videos in all of sports (https://twitter.com/CJToledano/status/1502095289628332034) The time Vladimir Putin stole Robert Kraft's Super Bowl ring (https://twitter.com/kendallbaker/status/1304007930975457280) ## Sponsors strongDM — Manage and audit remote access to infrastructure. Start your free 14-day trial today at strongdm.com/SDT (http://strongdm.com/SDT) Postlight — Postlight co-founders Paul Ford and Rich Ziade talk tech, business, ethics, and culture. Subscribe to the Postlight Podcast: https://postlight.com/podcast ## Conferences .Net Beyond conference (https://tanzu.vmware.com/developer/tv/dotnet-beyond?utm_source=cote&utm_medium=podcast&utm_content=sdt), March 30–31, 2022, online. THAT Conference comes to Texas (https://that.us/events/tx/2022/), May 23-26, 2022 Discount Codes: Everything Ticket ($75 off): SDTFriends75 3 Day Camper Ticket ($50 off): SDTFriends50 Virtual Ticket ($75 off): SDTFriendsON75 THAT Conference Wisconsin (https://that.us/call-for-counselors/wi/2022/), July 25, 2022 DevOps Days Birmingham AL, (https://www.papercall.io/devopsdays-2022-birmingham-al), April 18 & 19th, 2022 Spring Tour Chicago (https://tanzu.vmware.com/developer/springone-tour/2022/chicago/), April 26th to 27th. DevOpsDays Austin 2022 (https://devopsdays.org/events/2022-austin/welcome/), May 4 - 5, 2022 DevOpsDays Chicago 2022: (https://sessionize.com/devopsdays-chicago-2022/), May 10 & 11th, 2022 Splunk's ,conf (http://Splunk's ,conf June 13-16, 2022), June 13-16, 2022 SpringOne Platform (https://springone.io/?utm_source=cote&utm_medium=podcast&utm_content=sdt), SF, December 6–8, 2022. ## SDT news & hype Join us in Slack (http://www.softwaredefinedtalk.com/slack). Get a SDT Sticker! Send your postal address to stickers@softwaredefinedtalk.com (mailto:stickers@softwaredefinedtalk.com) and we will send you free laptop stickers! Follow us on Twitch (https://www.twitch.tv/sdtpodcast), Twitter (https://twitter.com/softwaredeftalk), Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/softwaredefinedtalk/), LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company/software-defined-talk/) and YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCi3OJPV6h9tp-hbsGBLGsDQ/featured). Use the code SDT to get $20 off Coté's book, (https://leanpub.com/digitalwtf/c/sdt) Digital WTF (https://leanpub.com/digitalwtf/c/sdt), so $5 total. Become a sponsor of Software Defined Talk (https://www.softwaredefinedtalk.com/ads)! ## Recommendations Coté: Amazon Fresh store in London Matt: The Kubernetes Podcast 170 (https://kubernetespodcast.com/episode/170-kubernetes-the-documentary/): The Kubernetes Documentary (https://kubernetespodcast.com/episode/170-kubernetes-the-documentary/)

On this episode, hosts Adam and Chris speak with Ed Hallen, who is the co-founder of Klaviyo, a leading customer data and marketing automation platform. Klaviyo has raised over $670M in funding, and reached coveted unicorn status in 2020. Ed is also the co-founder of Team Engine, a text-first HR and Operations platform for industrial SMB's. Prior to Klaviyo and Team Engine, Ed held roles at Applied Predictive Technologies, Google and Accel-KKR, and received his MBA from MIT Sloan School of Management. Check out more about what we're up to at Range.vc Connect with Adam and Chris and the Range VC team on LinkedInSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Welcome to another episode of The Action and Ambition Podcast! Joining us today is Frank Song, Private Equity Investor at Accel-KKR. Accel KKR, with $2.3 billion under management, is one of the only private equity firms dedicated exclusively to pursuing investments in mid-market technology companies. Frank grew up seeing his parents fighting for money and decided to end that, hence taking his first entrepreneurial step. It has never been the same again! He now increases enterprise value by implementing a large, sustainable competitive advantage into the business, such as increasing operating sophistication and pursuing a strategic acquisition. Don't miss a thing. Tune in to learn more on this!

Investors have pumped capital into emerging markets since the beginning of civilization. Egyptians explored basic mathematics and used their findings to build larger structures and even granaries to allow merchants to store food and serve larger and larger cities. Greek philosophers expanded on those learnings and applied math to learn the orbits of planets, the size of the moon, and the size of the earth. Their merchants used the astrolabe to expand trade routes. They studied engineering and so learned how to leverage the six simple machines to automate human effort, developing mills and cranes to construct even larger buildings. The Romans developed modern plumbing and aqueducts and gave us concrete and arches and radiant heating and bound books and the postal system.  Some of these discoveries were state sponsored; others from wealthy financiers. Many an early investment was into trade routes, which fueled humanities ability to understand the world beyond their little piece of it and improve the flow of knowledge and mix found knowledge from culture to culture.  As we covered in the episode on clockworks and the series on science through the ages, many a scientific breakthrough was funded by religion as a means of wowing the people. And then autocrats and families who'd made their wealth from those trade routes. Over the centuries of civilizations we got institutions who could help finance industry.  Banks loan money using an interest rate that matches the risk of their investment. It's illegal, going back to the Bible to overcharge on interest. That's called usury, something the Romans realized during their own cycles of too many goods driving down costs and too few fueling inflation. And yet, innovation is an engine of economic growth - and so needs to be nurtured.  The rise of capitalism meant more and more research was done privately and so needed to be funded. And the rise of intellectual property as a good. Yet banks have never embraced startups.  The early days of the British Royal Academy were filled with researchers from the elite. They could self-fund their research and the more doing research, the more discoveries we made as a society. Early American inventors tinkered in their spare time as well. But the pace of innovation has advanced because of financiers as much as the hard work and long hours. Companies like DuPont helped fuel the rise of plastics with dedicated research teams. Railroads were built by raising funds. Trade grew. Markets grew. And people like JP Morgan knew those markets when they invested in new fields and were able to grow wealth and inspire new generations of investors. And emerging industries ended up dominating the places that merchants once held in the public financial markets.  Going back to the Venetians, public markets have required regulation. As banking became more a necessity for scalable societies it too required regulation - especially after the Great Depression. And yet we needed new companies willing to take risks to keep innovation moving ahead., as we do today And so the emergence of the modern venture capital market came in those years with a few people willing to take on the risk of investing in the future. John Hay “Jock” Whitney was an old money type who also started a firm. We might think of it more as a family office these days but he had acquired 15% in Technicolor and then went on to get more professional and invest. Jock's partner in the adventure was fellow Delta Kappa Epsilon from out at the University of Texas chapter, Benno Schmidt. Schmidt coined the term venture capital and they helped pivot Spencer Chemicals from a musicians plant to fertilizer - they're both nitrates, right? They helped bring us Minute Maid. and more recently have been in and out of Herbalife, Joe's Crab Shack, Igloo coolers, and many others. But again it was mostly Whitney money and while we tend to think of venture capital funds as having more than one investor funding new and enterprising companies.  And one of those venture capitalists stands out above the rest. Georges Doriot moved to the United States from France to get his MBA from Harvard. He became a professor at Harvard and a shrewd business mind led to him being tapped as the Director of the Military Planning Division for the Quartermaster General. He would be promoted to brigadier general following a number of massive successes in the research and development as part of the pre-World War II military industrial academic buildup.  After the war Doriot created the American Research and Development Corporation or ARDC with the former president of MIT, Karl Compton, and engineer-turned Senator Ralph Flanders - all of them wrote books about finance, banking, and innovation. They proved that the R&D for innovation could be capitalized to great return. The best example of their success was Digital Equipment Corporation, who they invested $70,000 in in 1957 and turned that into over $350 million in 1968 when DEC went public, netting over 100% a year of return. Unlike Whitney, ARDC took outside money and so Doriot became known as the first true venture capitalist. Those post-war years led to a level of patriotism we arguably haven't seen since. John D. Rockefeller had inherited a fortune from his father, who built Standard Oil. To oversimplify, that company was broken up into a variety of companies including what we now think of as Exxon, Mobil, Amoco, and Chevron. But the family was one of the wealthiest in the world and the five brothers who survived John Jr built an investment firm they called the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. We might think of the fund as a social good investment fund these days. Following the war in 1951, John D Rockefeller Jr endowed the fund with $58 million and in 1956, deep in the Cold War, the fund president Nelson Rockefeller financed a study and hired Henry Kissinger to dig into the challenges of the United States. And then came Sputnik in 1957 and a failed run for the presidency of the United States by Nelson in 1960.  Meanwhile, the fund was helping do a lot of good but also helping to research companies Venrock would capitalize. The family had been investing since the 30s but Laurance Rockefeller had setup Venrock, a mashup of venture and Rockefeller. In Venrock, the five brothers, their sister, MIT's Ted Walkowicz, and Harper Woodward banded together to sprinkle funding into now over 400 companies that include Apple, Intel, PGP, CheckPoint, 3Com, DoubleClick and the list goes on. Over 125 public companies have come out of the fund today with an unimaginable amount of progress pushing the world forward. The government was still doing a lot of basic research in those post-war years that led to standards and patents and pushing innovation forward in private industry. ARDC caught the attention of a number of other people who had money they needed to put to work. Some were family offices increasingly willing to make aggressive investments. Some were started by ARDC alumni such as Charlie Waite and Bill Elfers who with Dan Gregory founded Greylock Partners. Greylock has invested in everyone from Red Hat to Staples to LinkedIn to Workday to Palo Alto Networks to Drobo to Facebook to Zipcar to Nextdoor to OpenDNS to Redfin to ServiceNow to Airbnb to Groupon to Tumblr to Zenprise to Dropbox to IFTTT to Instagram to Firebase to Wandera to Sumo Logic to Okta to Arista to Wealthfront to Domo to Lookout to SmartThings to Docker to Medium to GoFundMe to Discord to Houseparty to Roblox to Figma. Going on 800 investments just since the 90s they are arguably one of the greatest venture capital firms of all time.  Other firms came out of pure security analyst work. Hayden, Stone, & Co was co-founded by another MIT grad, Charles Hayden, who made his name mining copper to help wire up the world in what he expected to be an increasingly electrified world. Stone was a Wall Street tycoon and the two of them founded a firm that employed Joe Kennedy, the family patriarch, Frank Zarb, a Chairman of the NASDAQ and they gave us one of the great venture capitalists to fund technology companies, Arthur Rock.  Rock has often been portrayed as the bad guy in Steve Jobs movies but was the one who helped the “Traitorous 8” leave Shockley Semiconductor and after their dad (who had an account at Hayden Stone) mentioned they needed funding, got serial entrepreneur Sherman Fairchild to fund Fairchild Semiconductor. He developed tech for the Apollo missions, flashes, spy satellite photography - but that semiconductor business grew to 12,000 people and was a bedrock of forming what we now call Silicon Valley. Rock ended up moving to the area and investing. Parlaying success in an investment in Fairchild to invest in Intel when Moore and Noyce left Fairchild to co-found it.  Venture Capital firms raise money from institutional investors that we call limited partners and invest that money. After moving to San Francisco, Rock setup Davis and Rock, got some limited partners, including friends from his time at Harvard and invested in 15 companies, including Teledyne and Scientific Data Systems, which got acquired by Xerox, taking their $257,000 investment to a $4.6 million dollar valuation in 1970 and got him on the board of Xerox. He dialed for dollars for Intel and raised another $2.5 million in a couple of hours, and became the first chair of their board. He made all of his LPs a lot of money. One of those Intel employees who became a millionaire retired young. Mike Markulla invested some of his money and Rock put in $57,000 - growing it to $14 million and went on to launch or invest in companies and make billions of dollars in the process.  Another firm that came out of the Fairchild Semiconductor days was Kleiner Perkins. They started in 1972, by founding partners Eugene Kleiner, Tom Perkins, Frank Caufield, and Brook Byers. Kleiner was the leader of those Traitorous 8 who left William Shockley and founded Fairchild Semiconductor. He later hooked up with former HP head of Research and Development and yet another MIT and Harvard grad, Bill Perkins. Perkins would help Corning, Philips, Compaq, and Genentech - serving on boards and helping them grow.  Caufield came out of West Point and got his MBA from Harvard as well. He'd go on to work with Quantum, AOL, Wyse, Verifone, Time Warner, and others.  Byers came to the firm shortly after getting his MBA from Stanford and started four biotech companies that were incubated at Kleiner Perkins - netting the firm over $8 Billion dollars. And they taught future generations of venture capitalists. People like John Doerr - who was a great seller at Intel but by 1980 graduated into venture capital bringing in deals with Sun, Netscape, Amazon, Intuit, Macromedia, and one of the best gambles of all time - Google. And his reward is a net worth of over $11 billion dollars. But more importantly to help drive innovation and shape the world we live in today.  Kleiner Perkins was the first to move into Sand Hill Road. From there, they've invested in nearly a thousand companies that include pretty much every household name in technology. From there, we got the rise of the dot coms and sky-high rent, on par with Manhattan. Why? Because dozens of venture capital firms opened offices on that road, including Lightspeed, Highland, Blackstone, Accel-KKR, Silver Lake, Redpoint, Sequoia, and Andreesen Horowitz. Sequoia also started in the 70s, by Don Valentine and then acquired by Doug Leone and Michael Moritz in the 90s. Valentine did sales for Raytheon before joining National Semiconductor, which had been founded by a few Sperry Rand traitors and brought in some execs from Fairchild. They were venture backed and his background in sales helped propel some of their earlier investments in Apple, Atari, Electronic Arts, LSI, Cisco, and Oracle to success. And that allowed them to invest in a thousand other companies including Yahoo!, PayPal, GitHub, Nvidia, Instagram, Google, YouTube, Zoom, and many others.  So far, most of the firms have been in the US. But venture capital is a global trend.  Masayoshi Son founded Softbank in 1981 to sell software and then published some magazines and grew the circulation to the point that they were Japan's largest technology publisher by the end of the 80s and then went public in 1994. They bought Ziff Davis publishing, COMDEX, and seeing so much technology and the money in technology, Son inked a deal with Yahoo! to create Yahoo! Japan. They pumped $20 million into Alibaba in 2000 and by 2014 that investment was worth $60 billion. In that time they became more aggressive with where they put their money to work. They bought Vodafone Japan, took over competitors, and then the big one - they bought Sprint, which they merged with T-Mobile and now own a quarter of the combined companies. An important aspect of venture capital and private equity is multiple expansion. The market capitalization of Sprint more than doubled with shares shooting up over 10%. They bought Arm Limited, the semiconductor company that designs the chips in so many a modern phone, IoT device, tablet and even computer now. As with other financial firms, not all investments can go great. SoftBank pumped nearly $5 billion into WeWork. Wag failed. 2020 saw many in staff reductions. They had to sell tens of billions in assets  to weather the pandemic. And yet with some high profile losses, they sold ARM for a huge profit, Coupang went public and investors in their Vision Funds are seeing phenomenal returns across over 200 companies in the portfolios. Most of the venture capitalists we mentioned so far invested as early as possible and stuck with the company until an exit - be it an IPO, acquisition, or even a move into private equity. Most got a seat on the board in exchange for not only their seed capital, or the money to take products to market, but also their advice. In many a company the advice was worth more than the funding. For example, Randy Komisar, now at Kleiner Perkins, famously recommended TiVo sell monthly subscriptions, the growth hack they needed to get profitable. As the venture capital industry grew and more and more money was being pumped into fueling innovation, different accredited and institutional investors emerged to have different tolerances for risk and different skills to bring to the table. Someone who built an enterprise SaaS company and sold within three years might be better served to invest in and advise another company doing the same thing. Just as someone who had spent 20 years running companies that were at later stages and taking them to IPO was better at advising later stage startups who maybe weren't startups any more. Here's a fairly common startup story. After finishing a book on Lisp, Paul Graham decides to found a company with Robert Morris. That was Viaweb in 1995 and one of the earliest SaaS startups that hosted online stores - similar to a Shopify today. Viaweb had an investor named Julian Weber, who invested $10,000 in exchange for 10% of the company. Weber gave them invaluable advice and they were acquired by Yahoo! for about $50 million in stock in 1998, becoming the Yahoo Store.  Here's where the story gets different. 2005 and Graham decides to start doing seed funding for startups, following the model that Weber had established with Viaweb. He and Viaweb co-founders Robert Morris (the guy that wrote the Morris worm) and Trevor Blackwell start Y Combinator, along with Jessica Livingston. They put in $200,000 to invest in companies and with successful investments grew to a few dozen companies a year. They're different because they pick a lot of technical founders (like themselves) and help the founders find product market fit, finish their solutions, and launch. And doing so helped them bring us Airbnb, Doordash, Reddit, Stripe, Dropbox and countless others. Notice that many of these firms have funded the same companies. This is because multiple funds investing in the same company helps distribute risk. But also because in an era where we've put everything from cars to education to healthcare to innovation on an assembly line, we have an assembly line in companies. We have thousands of angel investors, or humans who put capital to work by investing in companies they find through friends, family, and now portals that connect angels with companies.  We also have incubators, a trend that began in the late 50s in New York when Jo Mancuso opened a warehouse up for small tenants after buying a warehouse to help the town of Batavia. The Batavia Industrial Center provided office supplies, equipment, secretaries, a line of credit, and most importantly advice on building a business. They had made plenty of money on chicken coops and though that maybe helping companies start was a lot like incubating chickens and so incubators were born.  Others started incubating. The concept expanded from local entrepreneurs helping other entrepreneurs and now cities, think tanks, companies, and even universities, offer incubation in their walls. Keep in mind many a University owns a lot of patents developed there and plenty of companies have sprung up to commercialize the intellectual property incubated there. Seeing that and how technology companies needed to move faster we got  accelerators like Techstars, founded by David Cohen, Brad Feld, David Brown, and Jared Polis in 2006 out of Boulder, Colorado. They have worked with over 2,500 companies and run a couple of dozen programs. Some of the companies fail by the end of their cohort and yet many like Outreach and Sendgrid grow and become great organizations or get acquired. The line between incubator and accelerator can be pretty slim today. Many of the earlier companies mentioned are now the more mature venture capital firms. Many have moved to a focus on later stage companies with YC and Techstars investing earlier. They attend the demos of companies being accelerated and invest. And the fact that founding companies and innovating is now on an assembly line, the companies that invest in an A round of funding, which might come after an accelerator, will look to exit in a B round, C round, etc. Or may elect to continue their risk all the way to an acquisition or IPO.  And we have a bevy of investing companies focusing on the much later stages. We have private equity firms and family offices that look to outright own, expand, and either harvest dividends from or sell an asset, or company. We have traditional institutional lenders who provide capital but also invest in companies. We have hedge funds who hedge puts and calls or other derivatives on a variety of asset classes. Each has their sweet spot even if most will opportunistically invest in diverse assets. Think of the investments made as horizons. The Angel investor might have their shares acquired in order to clean up the cap table, or who owns which parts of a company, in later rounds. This simplifies the shareholder structure as the company is taking on larger institutional investors to sprint towards and IPO or an acquisition. People like Arthur Rock, Tommy Davis, Tom Perkins, Eugene Kleiner, Doerr, Masayoshi Son, and so many other has proven that they could pick winners. Or did they prove they could help build winners? Let's remember that investing knowledge and operating experience were as valuable as their capital. Especially when the investments were adjacent to other successes they'd found. Venture capitalists invested more than $10 billion in 1997. $600 million of that found its way to early-stage startups. But most went to preparing a startup with a product to take it to mass market. Today we pump more money than ever into R&D - and our tax systems support doing so more than ever. And so more than ever, venture money plays a critical role in the life cycle of innovation. Or does venture money play a critical role in the commercialization of innovation? Seed accelerators, startup studios, venture builders, public incubators, venture capital firms, hedge funds, banks - they'd all have a different answer. And they should. Few would stick with an investment like Digital Equipment for as long as ARDC did. And yet few provide over 100% annualized returns like they did.  As we said in the beginning of this episode, wealthy patrons from Pharaohs to governments to industrialists to now venture capitalists have long helped to propel innovation, technology, trade, and intellectual property. We often focus on the technology itself in computing - but without the money the innovation either wouldn't have been developed or if developed wouldn't have made it to the mass market and so wouldn't have had an impact into our productivity or quality of life.  The knowledge that comes with those who provide the money can be seen with irreverence. Taking an innovation to market means market-ing. And sales. Most generations see the previous generations as almost comedic, as we can see in the HBO show Silicon Valley when the cookie cutter industrialized approach goes too far. We can also end up with founders who learn to sell to investors rather than raising capital in the best way possible, selling to paying customers. But there's wisdom from previous generations when offered and taken appropriately. A coachable founder with a vision that matches the coaching and a great product that can scale is the best investment that can be made. Because that's where innovation can change the world.

“Start thinking about how your content is created and stop thinking about it as a replacement.”   Listen & Learn: Why a Subject Matter Expert is the most important asset a business has. The Natural Language Generation tools that improve AI content. The difference between Natural Language Processing and Natural Language Generation. Understanding content sentiment. The power of combing sentiment, intent, and content formats. The risks of antiquated content. Jeff Coyle is a cross-disciplined, data-driven inbound marketing executive with 20+ years of experience managing products and website networks and in helping companies grow. Before he helped co-found MarketMuse, Jeff was VP of Search at TechTarget where he built a 30-person content optimization team. As MarketMuse's Chief Product Officer, Jeff leads his team of content and AI veterans in using machine learning to enable their clients to gain authority in their topical domain. Jeff is all about creating the kind of content search engines love and helping content marketers, search engine marketers, agencies, and e-commerce managers establish and build topical authority, improve content quality, and get the most out of every dollar spent on content. Jeff is also a sought-after speaker at conferences and has also advised Accel-KKR portfolio companies on lead generation.   Content marketing strategies that elevate your brand. Call LORI JONES today to learn more. 303-678-7102. TO LEARN MORE ABOUT MARKETMUSE, CLICK HERE. TO FIND JEFF COYLE ON LINKEDIN, CLICK HERE.  

Frank Song is currently managing $20 million in committed capital to pursue buyouts of, partnerships with, and/or building highly profitable businesses in unsexy markets. Frank increases enterprise value by implementing large, sustainable competitive advantages into the businesses, such as: increasing operating sophistication, pursuing strategic acquisitions or partnerships to create a national oligopoly or local/regional monopoly dynamic, implementing technology advantages, and increasing performance marketing returns.   Additionally, Frank currently works as a confidential advisor to business with at least $10mm in revenue and politicians to advise on how to implement an art of war campaign in their markets or campaigns to defeat competitors who are larger or better resourced.   Previously, Frank worked at Accel-KKR, one of the top private equity funds (based on returns), where we helped manage the $4.0 billion fund by completing buyouts and growth equity investments of $20mm - $1bn technology companies.   He has contributed capital to:   HighJump (sold for $750 mm) Zinc Ahead (sold for $130 million) PageUp (sold – amount undisclosed)   Listen to ILAB 177 on iTunes here or subscribe on your favorite podcast app.     Where we are: Johnny FD – Ukraine / IG @johnnyfdk Sam Marks – Thailand / IG @imsammarks Derek Spartz - Los Angeles / IG @DerekRadio   Sponsor: Indeed Receive a free $75 sponsored job credit to boost your job post at Indeed Support Invest Like a Boss: Join our Patreon Discussed: Find Frank Song on Instagram: @Franksong Forbes article on Frank Song www.franksong.com  Like these investments? Try them with these special ILAB links: ArtofFX – Start with just a $10,000 account (reduced from $25,000) Fundrise – Start with only $1,000 into their REIT funds (non-accredited investors OK) Betterment – Get up to 1 year managed free Wealthfront – Get your first $15,000 managed free PeerStreet – Get a 1% yield bump on your first loan *Johnny and Sam use all of the above services personally. Time Stamps: 11:19 – Why did you choose to live in the suburbs of Ukraine? 13:46 – Tell us a little about your story from how you grew up to now? 15:30 – Explain the “I slept in a Walmart” time of your life 17:50 – How did you make it to Ukraine? 19:37 – How did you get started in investing? 26:12 – What do you traditionally invest in? 29:19 – What are some of the businesses you have invested in? 34:50 – How do you manage all of the businesses? 36:43 – Can you talk about your recent business trip to Dubai? 37:49 – What is your general philosophy on where to invest? 46:50 – Johnny and Derek review If you enjoyed this episode, do us a favor and share it! Also if you haven’t already, please take a minute to leave us a 5-star review on iTunes and claim your bonus here!  Copyright 2021. All rights reserved. Read our disclaimer here.

This episode's topic is The Big Pitch. And it’s a discussion of one of the most important presentations you may ever give. It has a definitive and measurable impact. It’s rarely shared with a large audience. And while the audience may be small, they are a critical one. Because their interest and reaction to the presentation may change the future of a company. And in fact, that’s actually the point. Today, we’re going to talk about “pitch” presentations. Those opportunities when a start-up, mid-size or even a large corporation wants to be acquired. The Big Pitch is a different kind of storyline with huge expectations and potential disappointments. And when you’re the communicator, it’s a crash course in how to position your company in a story that will resonate and attract a buyer. In our podcast today, you’ll hear a lot about those expectations and some best practices on how to think about The Big Pitch. More about Rachel Spasser Rachel Spasser is a Managing Director and Chief Marketing Officer at Accel-KKR Consulting Group. Rachel provides strategic guidance as well as sales and marketing leadership across Accel-KKR’s portfolio. Prior to joining Accel-KKR’s Consulting Group, Rachel was the Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer for Ariba, Inc., an SAP Company. With over 25 years of experience in marketing, business development and general management, Ms. Spasser has spent the past 20 years focused on the business-to-business technology space and speaks frequently on topics such as marketing strategy, demand generation and management and customer adoption marketing. Show Notes What are Pitch Presentations? Rachel Spasser Managing Director and Chief Marketing Officer at Accel-KKR What is the market like today after an unprecedented year? Q2 of last year was quiet. Companies that were going into investment during Q2 pulled back to wait and see what the market was going to be like going forward. Q3 through the end of the year was very busy. A lot of capital in the market and investment firms need to deepen that capital. Acquisition has become an essential part of the growth strategy. Listeners and the buyers are financial backers and sponsors. Listeners are the deal teams Strategic side Development department and functional leaders interested in acquiring that business. Make sure you understand who the listeners are going to be prior to the pitch. What are people listening for? Expertise Metrics of their business Leadership and the team dynamics Common mistakes in storytelling. People fall short on the presentation itself by rambling or going deeper than the listener can comprehend and not reading signals well. Data is important and should support the story you’re telling. Telling the rearview mirror story rather than the forward story. Backstory is great color and great context but there has to be context of what the future looks like.   Seller can make the story real with good examples and buyer can have a vision for tomorrow. The deal makers and the bankers - most knowledgeable about the situation. What role do they play? The best bankers are the ones that can coach and bring the team along and develop a compelling way to bring the story along. Communicator - or the seller. Typically not a normal sales process. Pitch is high pressure environment. Salespeople are the most prepared for pitches. The pitch team should consist of: Key functional leaders CEO and CFO and senior leadership team CTO Head of Marketing Chief Customer Officer What do you do when your Chief Operating person or Executive is not comfortable in this space? Don’t bring them into the room. Hire a coach to help them feel comfortable presenting even a small part. Investor is looking at the team asking “can these people get me to where I want to go?” and sometimes the CEO doesn't want to go there. Team showing up and showing well is important. If the numbers don’t add up, it doesn’t matter how great the story or the pitch is and the numbers alone aren’t enough, you need both. Having a good presentation where the investors can believe that the team can take the investment to where they want to go. Investors are partners - It’s challenging to create this partnership virtually. Have informal interactions, virtual drink online, relationship building Third parties are important, references, customer calls, and we've adapted to Zoom and become better at it. Video is important if you're going to make it through. Make sure to have assigned parts in a Zoom presentation to avoid speaking over each other. The big pitch, does it make or break a deal? Red flags will make the deal more difficult. Use stories to bring your product to life - help the buyer understand why customers want to continue to work with your company. Data can support those stories but without those stories data is easy to forget. How do you make the story stick in a way that makes you and your company memorable?  

Phil Cunningham is an Operating Executive at Accel-KKR with special focus on the firm efforts in the emerging growth companies sector. Cunningham delivers more than twenty years of demonstrated accomplishments in all phases of business development and sales leadership, with a proven track record in exceeding sales objectives, developing long-term strategic planning of the organization,... The post Phil Cunningham appeared first on FPG Maestro.

Chris Savage is the co-founder and CEO of Wistia, a web-based software solution that helps marketers turn viewers into brand advocates to grow their businesses. After graduating from Brown University, Chris and his co-founder Brendan Schwartz, started Wistia in Brendan’s living room in 2006. They founded the company with the goal of helping businesses effectively market their products or services more creatively through video. Recently, Savage and Schwartz turned down an offer to sell Wistia and took on $17.3M in debt instead, which allowed them to buy out their investors, gain full control of Wistia, and take the path less traveled in the tech industry. Now, more than 500,000 businesses across 50 countries depend on Wistia's products to build their brands and their businesses, including HubSpot, MailChimp, Sephora, Starbucks, and Tiffany & Co.

In this episode, we speak with Rachel Spasser, Managing Director/CMO of Accel-KKR. Accel-KKR is a technology-focused investment firm with $9 billion in capital commitments. The firm invests in software and IT-enabled businesses well-positioned for topline and bottom-line growth.

In this episode of Everyday M&A, we hear from Krista Endsley, who has served as CEO of companies backed by private equity, including Accel-KKR. In that role she has bought (as both a financial and strategic acquirer), sold, and scaled companies (one of her last companies was voted the best place to work for in Austin 5 years in a row). This is one episode you won’t want to miss! Krista shares with us: The benefits of working with an experienced buyer How due diligence differs between financial and strategic buyers The biggest mistake buyers make during an acquisition The biggest part of an M&A process Red flags that can kill a deal The first thing Krista recommends when working with a company What due diligence business owners should do of their potential buyers Potential consequences of when earn-outs don't turn out as planned The Rule of 40 and how to maximize your company's exit value If you liked today’s episode, please Like and Comment below who you’d like to see as a future guest! If you need a startup attorney or private equity lawyer, contact the team at Thorsen Legal. Their securities counsel was previously an examiner at the SEC, and their business attorneys have proven success representing businesses small and large.

Sanjay Shah is the founder and CEO of Vistex which is an enterprise software company, providing solutions to drive customer growth and partner relations. The company was bootstrapped to $250 million in revenue without outside investment. Recently the company raised $65 million from Accel-KKR.

Sanjay Shah is the founder and CEO of Vistex which is an enterprise software company, providing solutions to drive customer growth and partner relations. The company was bootstrapped to $250 million in revenue without outside investment. Recently the company raised $65 million from Accel-KKR.

Accel KKR makes a 9 figure investment in SugarCRM. Some of the other potential compatible AKKR companies. Sugar's redesign and re-architecture. Sugar's one-clickedness. Mitch Lieberman's take on the investment and his advice, including going all in on the cloud. How the sales team needs to be more consultative and real. The idea of conversational engagement. The Gartner Magic Quadrant for Sales Force Automation and some of the positional changes since last year. A close pack in the Leader quadrant. bpm'online is alone in the Challenger's quadrant. ProsperWorks rebrands to Copper. Copper's win percentage vs Salesforce. Salesforce and Google are cozying up. Will Google acquire a CRM vendor? Google's Hangouts Meet as a viable online meeting app.

In this week's episode, Becky and Laird discuss ITC's major equity investment from the private equity firm Accel-KKR and what has us excited about ITC's future. We also discuss the industry's opportunity for change. ITC Receives Majority Equity Investment from Accel-KKR (https://www.getitc.com/release/2018/04/04/itc-receives-majority-equity-investment-from-accel-kkr#.WxqaU4onaHs)

Mike Dickerson is the Chief Executive Officer of ClickDimensions, the leading marketing automation solution for Microsoft Dynamics 365. Mike joined ClickDimensions from PGi, a global provider of web conferencing software and collaboration technology, where he served as Executive Vice President of Strategy and Business Development. In that role, he developed partnerships with some of the […] The post Mike Dickerson with ClickDimensions and Rachel Spasser with Accel-KKR appeared first on Business RadioX ®.

Peach New Media was launched in 2001 by Dave Will, who carried the title “Chief Peach” until he sold the business in 2015. Will had built his learning-management software company up to 40 employees when he received an offer from the private equity group Accel-KKR that he simply could not refuse. In this interview, Will shares his wisdom on: - How to create a company acquirers will want to buy. - How to figure out when to sell. - How to look at your business as an investor would. - Cup-holder ideas and how they impact your company’s value.