Mission
The purpose of ETA@Kellogg is to educate, equip, and inspire Kellogg MBA students to pursue Entrepreneurship Through Acquisition upon graduation or within 5 years of graduating from KSM through community, alumni, and professional support.
The purpose of ETA@Kellogg is to educate, equip, and inspire Kellogg MBA students to pursue Entrepreneurship Through Acquisition upon graduation or within 5 years of graduating from KSM through community, alumni, and professional support.
Active in the vibrant ETA community, regularly attending events, and contributing thought leadership.
Highly connected in the ETA ecosystem, both as entrepreneurs and investors
Drawing high-impact investors and former operators to campus to share their wisdom and insights.
Jan 8 | 12:15pm - 1:15pm
Thinking about a self-funded search, but wishing you had traditional search-style investors and mentorship? Shareholder Ventures helps self-funded searchers by providing capital, back office support, resources and community to support acquisitions in the $3M-12M enterprise value range leveraging SBA7a loans. Join the ETA club for a virtual discussion with Andrew Hippert, Principal of Shareholver Ventures, on SHV's model, and all things self-funded search.
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Jan 9 | 12:15pm - 1:15pm
Join the ETA club in welcoming Ryan Farnan'12 for a virtual chat regarding his recent acquisition of LuckyPaws, a boutique pet grooming and bathing business with 8 locations across the NYC area. Ryan will discuss his jump into ETA later in his career, his experience self-funding the deal, navigating co-ownership along with his successful career at Google, as well as partnership with his wife, Pin.
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Jan 12 | 12:15pm - 1:15pm
Bruce & Trevor have walked every step of the Searcher's journey: searching, acquiring, operating, selling and transitioning leadership. As such, not only have they experienced the inevitable challenges Searchers will face, they have the empathy and patience needed to be a supportive partner.
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Jan 22 | 12:15pm - 1:15pm
Come hear from Dan Burseth, who has been buying, running, and selling franchises and businesses in the industrial services space for the past 10 years.
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Feb 17 | 12:15pm - 1:15pm
Steve Divitkos is the Founder of Mineola Search Partners, a firm that invests in Search Funds, the entrepreneurs who run them, and the companies that they acquire. Prior to Mineola, Steve was the CEO of Microdea, a document management and workflow automation software company serving the transportation and logistics industry. Steve acquired the business from its original founders in 2014, and successfully sold the company to a strategic acquirer in 2020 after having served as its CEO for approximately seven years. During Steve’s tenure as CEO, Microdea’s equity value quadrupled, providing his investors with a 20% compounded annual return on their original investment. In his first 5 years as CEO, Steve doubled company revenue, achieving a ~15% compound annual growth rate, leading to Microdea being named as one of Canada’s fastest growing businesses for four consecutive years between 2014 – 2017. Since that point, he led the company’s transformation towards a subscription revenue model, growing revenue from recurring sources from ~40% of total revenue in 2014 to ~80% in 2020. He helped grow the company’s customer base to include 80% of Canada’s largest trucking companies, and one third of North America’s largest logistics companies. Under his leadership Microdea was ranked as one of Canada’s best places to work for 4 consecutive years between 2017 – 2020, when the company was named as the 46th best place to work in Canada for all companies with fewer than 100 employees. Upon his departure from the company in 2020, Steve had a 100% CEO approval rating on glassdoor.com. Prior to his time at Microdea, Steve served as the Founder and Managing Principal of RedLeaf Management Partners, a private equity firm focused on acquiring small to medium sized private Canadian businesses. Prior to that, Steve worked in both Private Equity and Private Debt at the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB), the $456B independent investment management organization charged with investing the assets of Canada’s national pension fund, supporting over 20 million working Canadians. Steve received his MBA from Harvard Business School, and his BBA from Wilfrid Laurier University, where he graduated with distinction. Steve lives with his wife and two daughters in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
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Feb 19 | 12:15pm - 1:15pm
Our first love is operating businesses. We have owned and built enduring enterprises for the past 40 years. Our second love is working with search fund entrepreneurs. We've been best friends since middle school and we bought our first business together in our twenties. We build great businesses together because we have FUN doing it. We've been active search fund investors since 1992 and are currently invested in 55 operating businesses in our portfolio that were acquired through a search fund.
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Mar 3 | 12:15pm - 1:15pm
Paltus Capital was founded by two former search fund entrepreneurs, Ramiro Alfaro and Juan de Dios Aguilar, who pioneered the Search Fund model in Central America. After living the full cycle of the model, we are true believers that a fundamental component of the ETA model’s success comes from the tight-knit community that surrounds and supports it. As participants of this ecosystem for almost a decade, and having benefited tremendously from it, we seek to continue paying it forward through the Paltus Capital platform, as investors with “skin in the game”. We joined the ETA world at a time when it was still not “an asset class for your portfolio”, but a collegiate, high-touch community with a great spirit of collaboration and mentorship – one for all and all for one. In that spirit, we strive to resemble the best of the investors that we admired during our journey, and, with a “searcher-first” investment philosophy, we look forward to contributing to the success of the entrepreneurs we get the honor to partner with and further propagate the ETA model into the future.
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