Trilogy Search Partners

Our 5th Build Series podcast with Jake Dancyger and Cyrus Symoom, co-CEOs of Clariti is about all things talent. Recruiting, hiring, advancement, equity and comp, career pathing, board involvement in talent, and so much more. Jake and Cyrus have been extraordinarily busy, as Lindsey Gray and Aaron Perrine can attest to in the introduction -- growing from 20 to 120 employees in just five years. A couple takeaways I had from the episode: 1. Try to identify rising stars early on and build around them. 2. Sourcing talent is like sourcing acquisitions, the timing won’t always align and the relationship takes time to build and validate. 3. In recruiting, early on you sell vision and energy. Later you sell results. 4. Talented employees + results = more referrals for new talented prospective employees. 5. Make the bar for getting a promotion clear and consistent. 6. Have your board members and leadership team call prospective senior hires to help close. 7. Have equity meetings to walk team members through how their equity is valued. 8. Top talent might be 20-30% more comp, but 10x the results. 9. You cannot spend enough time career pathing across your team and making sure each person knows where their path is going. Enjoy the episode, and checkout earlier episodes of the Build Series podcast on Think Like an Owner wherever you listen to podcasts.

✨ Last Thursday night Benjamin Hallen and Collin Hathaway joined me at a UW Foster School of Business event to talk about the mighty middle and ETA. Over 140 students and alums attended! Entrepreneurship through Acquisition (ETA) is the process of purchasing an existing business and running it as the CEO. It is an accelerated path to owning and operating a business, and is an attractive alternative for entrepreneurs to minimize the risk associated with startups.✨ Ben's research theses: 1️⃣ Mid-scale outcomes can be highly rewarding for entrepreneurs 2️⃣ But less of a fit for many early-stage investors 3️⃣ Often need to be build differently – more bootstrapping; more capital constrained Then we looked at the importance of the mighty middle / eta / search for amazing talent to: 🌟 Lead and create jobs 🌟Impact the community 🌟Bet on and Build something for yourself (professional autonomy) 🌟Capture significant financial upside 🌟Produce Outsized returns feasible across average landscape Collin Hathaway shared his story and why he has focused on the mighty middle + Fun challenges + Real fulfillment + Potential financial upside… BUT Risk & Uncertainty are a central component of ETA ETA / search is more accessible than ever with backers and lending resources like our amazing supporters: Lisa Forrest, Aaron Perrine and Dylan Rebois. Alexis Gilbert supported the research. And Molly Klein and JoAnna M. pulled together an amazing event. Message us if you want to learn more!

Thrilled to have Sam Hyde and Steuart Botchford on for the 4th episode in our Build Series on Think Like an Owner to dive into identifying and executing value levers as CEOs. We explore the challenges of balancing long-term and short-term initiatives, experimentation, extensive investments in sales and marketing, and their evolved philosophies on performance evals. Thank you to Lindsey Gray and Aaron Perrine for setting the stage for the conversation in our introduction. These are my 9 key takeaways from the episode: 1. Of the value levers to pull, sales and marketing is often the most powerful. 2. Customers are frequently less price driven, join customer calls and conversations as CEO to understand their priorities. For Sam and Steu, top factors driving a purchase decision were security, certainty of outcome, and service delivery. Moving to a fixed price model removed uncertainty. 3. Run experiments with a limited budget, and add resources as it shows signs of success. Develop a culture of experimentation across the company at all levels. 4. With experimentations, normalize failure so employees don’t feel their status in the company has been compromised when experiments don’t work. 5. Hire people comfortable with ambiguity. 6. Goal should be for employees to, over the long-term, be hitting 75% of their bonus. 7. Scale performance individually on 1-5 scale, but almost nobody gets a 5. 3 should be a good score. 8. It’s a sign of a healthy organization when the CEO is only making the hard decisions and the easy ones have already been delegated. 9. Overrated value lever: changes to the way you provide a product or service. Underrated value lever: sales and marketing, can never do enough investing here. Checkout episodes 1-3 of our Build Series on Think Like an Owner wherever you listen to podcasts!

Trilogy hosts the first of summer search workshops!    Thanks to the prospective search fund entrepreneurs who joined us in beautiful Seattle for our Summer Search Workshop! The workshop focuses on industry ideation, with a deeper dive into the investing and operating sides of search. Here are some highlights:    🚀 Kick-Off with John W. Stanton: Our event began with a fireside chat with Seattle native and Chairman of the Mariners, John W. Stanton, reflecting on his own entrepreneurial experiences in the wireless space and as a CEO.  🎤 Insights from the Investment Team: Our panelists – Trilogy partners Mitch Cohen and Scott Alderman – shared what drives success in acquisitions and operating search businesses, while Trilogy's Entrepreneur-in-Residence Gelila Bekele and CTO Kevin Knoepp brought the latest on evaluating quality software deals.  👥 C-suite Perspectives: Scott Sorenson, CEO of CITTA Brokerage Co., offered lessons from his search, and Nevin Raj, Co-Founder and COO of Grata, shared reflections on entrepreneurship and how to stand out with sellers.   💡 Industry Ideation and Differentiated Search: Participants completed exercises on industry thesis development and the strategies behind running a differentiated search, including hands-on list building using Grata. 🎉And no workshop would be complete without a trip to T-Mobile Park for a Mariners victory, this time against the Twins!    Thank you to all participants for making the first of this year's summer workshop a success!