Smart Business Dealmakers: The Middle-Market M&A Podcast

It may have been out of necessity, but Frank Venegas Jr. began the succession process at a very young age for daughter Linzie and son Jesse. Linzie said she was in a playpen in her father's office, because they didn't have the money for sitters and her parents worked long hours. It may have been a hardship then, but its paying dividends today as both Linzie and Jesse have taken over leadership of the company.

As supply chain issues continue to wreak havoc for businesses both large and small, Chain.io Founder and CEO Brian Glick hopes to alleviate the problems with its cloud-based integration platform, which lets all the different entities in the chain share data between all their systems. In this episode, he discusses how Chain.io is addressing the problem as well as the company's recent capital raises.

The Desire Company matches and retailers with the right experts to trial, test and review products, producing video reviews for use at the point of sale and across digital marketing channels. These partnerships are proving to drive an increase in conversions, time on site and an increase in marketing effectiveness. Co-founder and CEO Eric Sheinkop discusses the creation of The Desire Company, his experience raising capital for the startup and place for the future.

Kit Needham directs Project Olympus, Carnegie Mellon University's incubator that helps students, faculty and alums turn their ideas into viable businesses. She discusses the very earliest stages of entrepreneurism, what tends to trip folks up at this stage and how her experience as an investor informs her approach to coaching the next generation of entrepreneurs.

Ralph Della Ratta has had a remarkable career that spans four decades, hundreds of public and private M&A deals, and — despite two attempts at retirement — is still going. Ralph talks about his career, his recent retirement from Citizens Bank where he headed up its M&A division and chaired its investment banking committee, and his most recent move to join private equity firm Kirtland Capital Partners.

Petra Capital Partners recently completed fundraising on its Peta Growth Fund IV, which gives it $208 million of capital to invest, primarily in the health care space. David Fitzgerald, a partner at Petra, discusses the fund, the fundraising process and investment competition in a still-hot deal market. He also shares a bit of his firm's investment philosophy as well as his outlook on how the remainder of the deal year could play out.

Royal Capital Group Founder and CEO Kevin Newell discovered that when living conditions improve, so do the mental and physical health of those living in the neighborhoods he's developed. This approach opened a new capital stream through UnitedHealthcare, which is now the largest private investor, providing $5.4 million in equity funding for one of his latest endeavors.

Samantha Ory's firm Ouroboros Group is growing. The independent sponsor is building its first fund as it looks to approach sellers with unique strategies catered to the company's goals. She talks about the evolution of her firm, the effects of increased buy-side competition, and how buyer and seller misalignment is affecting deals and what's being done to bridge that gap.

Former NetJets CEO Jordan Hansell has launched Tradepost, an investment platform that provides growth capital to mid-market firms. Hansell talks about how the firm approaches the M&A market, as well as how he's coupling his experience in the c-suite with his experience as an investor to help guide the CEOs who lead his portfolio companies.

Lu Alleruzzo, a bioengineer with a MBA, had an opportunity early in his career to understand innovation and immediately apply it to society for the benefit of all. That opportunity — and $88 million in venture capital — fueled him and his biotech company, Immunophotonics, to pioneer a field of cancer care called Interventional Immuno Oncology.