The Journal

Insights

Perspectives on acquiring, operating, and growing founder-led businesses — written by the people doing the work.

The Operator's Advantage

In the smallest corner of the private markets, the scarce resource isn't capital. It's competent, committed operating attention.

The most common under-managed asset in a founder-led business is the price list. Most have not been meaningfully reviewed in years.

Great acquisitions are made at the point of selection, long before the point of improvement. Four things matter most to us.

What a new owner does in the first hundred days sets the tone for the next decade. Our playbook is deliberately unheroic.

Growth stalls in founder-led businesses not from lack of ambition, but from accumulated complexity. Subtraction is the first lever.

A generation of founders is approaching retirement without successors. What happens to their businesses will shape local economies for decades.

The unglamorous infrastructure of management — reporting, cadence, hiring discipline — is what allows a small business to grow without breaking.

If you own a business with strong fundamentals and untapped potential, we would like to hear from you.