Joe Surber, Principal
Corporate development and enterprise strategy at Cummins, Honeywell, and Diversey under Bain Capital. General management roles in between, running a P&L in Europe with a union factory and five hundred people, because it is hard to advise on acquiring a business if you have never had to run one.
At Honeywell we closed more than one transaction a week. That volume forces a documented, repeatable process. You cannot do a deal a week on instinct.
More than ten billion dollars in transactions across that career.
After leaving corporate I did freelance corporate development work, mostly helping private equity acquire and integrate.
What I noticed is who was actually getting rich. Not the operators. The GPs took their two and twenty, which is fine work if you can get it. The real money went to LPs who never met the company, never met the people, and never took a risk they could not diversify away.
The owner who built the business over thirty years got a check and a handshake.
LPs have plenty of people in their corner. Business owners have almost nobody. That is what BluGrowth is for.
Buyers lose deals over pride and call it discipline. Sometimes walking is right. Usually the three months it takes to find the next one cost more than the point you were arguing over.
A price gap that looks fatal is usually a structure problem. Most of the deals I have seen die did not need a different number. They needed a different arrangement.
If your business is worth five million today and could be worth fifty in five years, that difference belongs to you. It exists whether or not you capture it. Somebody is going to.
Marine Corps. Charlotte, North Carolina. Iowa State, and an MBA. I play golf badly but often, which turns out to be how most real business gets done.
