How Investors and Family Offices Find and Scale Businesses
At a Family Office Club panel, investors discuss ways to source and scale businesses.
The panelists explain how they source deals, build founder-led companies, and assess growth through current financials, customer engagement, and recovery capacity.
In this video: Richard C. Wilson (Panel moderator), Panelist (Works with family offices to deploy funds directly into corporations), Neil (Facilitates for family offices), Kyle (Founder and investor), Lane (Real estate operator and multifamily office representative)
What they said
- Panelist on established businesses. The first panelist says the lower middle market includes companies with enterprise values from $20 million to $100 million. In his view, some established companies are attractive because owners want to exit and the businesses remain profitable.
- Kyle on founder led businesses. Kyle says he looks for founder led businesses that have outgrown their owners. He recommends keeping the founder involved while adding a leadership team and giving employees clear weekly targets.
- Lane on relationship based deal flow. Lane says his deal flow comes from people he has worked with, including general partners, vendors, and brokers. He describes relationships built through earlier work as a source of introductions to family office portfolios and deals.
- Neil on recovery capacity. Neil says he looks for managers with a long record of success and an asset base large enough to withstand disruption. He says recovery time matters because some assets can take five or six years to return to even.
- Kyle on customer engagement. Kyle says families assessing a company should look at customer enthusiasm and ask how many customers would stay if prices rose 50%. He views customer engagement and interest in sustainability as relevant to the next generation.
In their words
"The truth is you need to invest in the person and you need to invest in systems that will grow and scale."
"I invest off of P&Ls and financials, right?"
Why it matters if you are building or preserving great wealth
The $50 million California HVAC company, where the owner was the sales team, gives a concrete example of how adding sales capacity could create room for growth.
From Richard's exclusive Billionaires.com interviews
Lessons from Richard C. Wilson's one-on-one interviews, as published on each interview page.
- Anu Aga: Focus on one main cause. Her family found its giving more satisfying and impactful once it chose primary education for the underprivileged in India.
- Binod K. Chaudhary: Never chase a deal out of desperation. Stay cool and look at every part of the deal. Have your advisers and your finance team review it critically. Your counsel should review it too.
- Larry Connor: Learn from every mistake. Larry's team owns its failures and makes no excuses. They learn, change quickly, and keep getting better.
See the data
Frequently asked questions
What did Lane do before apartment syndication?
Lane said he worked as an engineer and bought rental properties early in his career before moving into real estate syndication.
How did Kyle describe his start in manufacturing?
Kyle said he started his manufacturing company in his basement and later founded other companies, including some he called expensive pieces of education.
Sources
Quotes are copied from the video captions and checked against the transcript. Timestamps link to the moment in the video. General information only, not legal, tax or investment advice.