Introduction
Discover how Alex Glasner successfully acquired WorkPace, a UK-based workforce training firm generating over $1M+ EBITDA, through a self-funded search. In this interview, Alex shares his journey from working in finance to becoming an entrepreneur through the search fund model, despite conducting his entire search from the US while targeting UK businesses. Learn about the challenges, strategies, and decisions that led to acquiring a profitable business in the workforce training industry.
Founder Success Story QnA
Tell us about yourself and how you arrived at the decision to go out and buy a business.
Yeah, so really it begins with my father. He’s an accountant and runs a small practice in London. My sister and I always used to say that my father has three children – me, my sister, and his business. From a very young age, I wanted to be an entrepreneur and run my own business. When I went to business school, that was honestly my aim. Most of my career before business school was in finance, with a bit of politics. When I went to business school, I thought I would come out with the job title “entrepreneur,” but that didn’t happen. Instead, I was working in banking. At business school, I saw people doing something called a search fund. I discovered the book by those Harvard professors, read it, and thought, “This is what I want to do.” This would allow me, someone who doesn’t have a clear idea of what kind of business I want to run but knows that’s what I want to do, to actually do it. That’s what led me on the path to search.
Did you take search fund courses at Harvard Business School, or how did you learn about this model?
No, I massively regret not taking those courses. I think it’s Professors Yudkowsky and Vance, right? They’re like the godparents of this. I wish I’d known about it. When I was at business school, I wasn’t quite sure what I wanted to do, so I took a bit of everything. I also have a big interest in politics, so I took a lot of political courses. The guys who were doing it at business school started running their search while they were still in their first year. They were acquiring lots of vet practices across the middle of the US. But I didn’t know what they were doing. I thought this was only something that people whose parents gave them money to buy a company could do. Obviously, that’s not the case.
What did you learn about the viability of doing a search fund, especially regarding the financial mechanics?
Every single page of that book is gold dust. I must have kept that book on my table while I was running Constant Peak, the name of my search fund. I referenced it at every single stage – before I sent my first IOI, before I sent my first LOI, and even on the day I acquired WorkPace, I reread the last few chapters. The book lays out how much it costs. I also did my own calculations to work out how much money I needed and how much runway I would give myself. I knew that a general search takes about 26 months on average, so I made sure I had enough money for at least 36 months. I gave myself three years, at which point I thought if I wasn’t successful, maybe I’d give up. I just worked out how much money I had in my bank account and how much I needed to spend, and was very careful. On the other hand, I was very lucky – my partner works in private equity, we met at business school, so I didn’t spend as much money as if I was renting by myself in a place like Manhattan.
You did a self-funded search. How did you make that decision, and did you consider a traditional search?
Yes, it was actually a really interesting process. I thought about every single permutation – whether to do a partnered search, whether to do it in the US or the UK, whether to do traditional or self-funded. Ultimately, I spoke to a lot of people while thinking about doing this search, and the feedback I was getting was that doing a self-funded search gives you a lot more flexibility. That was the key decision for me. I didn’t need the money given that I had already saved from my current job in investment banking, where I was working pretty hard and had no time to spend any money. Also, I had my partner Andrew who, if worse came to worst, could support me. So I didn’t need the money, and I also realized the flexibility that doing a self-funded search gives you in terms of the sort of companies you’re looking at and the fact that you’re not constrained geographically. That made it a no-brainer for me.
You spoke to about 50 people during your journey. What key insights emerged from those calls that structured your search?
I have copious notes from every single call. I was trying to look at trends for things that would work and things that wouldn’t work. I spoke to a number of different people – a couple of investors, people who were searching, people who had found a company, and most importantly, people who had not been successful. Understanding why they weren’t successful was really influential for my search. There were a couple of themes I noticed. The most prevalent one was a lot of indecision. Making sure to be as decisive as possible was really important. Secondly, almost as importantly was making sure you have a really good structure to run your search fund. Even though I set the search fund up in mid-November, I didn’t reach out to the first company until December 27th. I spent over six weeks setting up all my materials, how I was going to run the search, coming up with a list of companies, making various presentations I would send to people, and even creating a script. All those were things I had been told previously on the calls.
Were those six weeks of preparation time well spent?
Yes, 100%. I actually did my search pretty quickly. From sending out the first email on December 27th to speaking to the first company in early January to acquiring the company was about nine months, which is pretty quick. I think that came purely because of that first six weeks where I was setting everything up. One thing I noticed when I spoke to people is that being a searcher is very binary – you’re either successful or you’re