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

Shaun Stimpson left a nearly 20-year career in wealth management to launch North Iron Holdings. The purpose of North Iron was to be a vehicle to acquire an industrial distribution company. After an 18-month search, he bought Mitten Fluidpower Corp., which he now runs as CEO. Shaun talks about the move, the acquisition, life as an operator, building a board and his plans for growth.

Barry Sandweiss has co-founded 7 startups, including Lenders One, a company that became the largest mortgage-banking cooperative in the U.S., which he eventually sold. Now he's with Cultivation Capital, a VC firm in St. Louis, sitting on the other side of the investment table. Barry talks about his experience as an entrepreneur, how it's informed his approach to investing, the urge to use his experience to help others and how his entrepreneurial spirit led him to co-found yet another business in 2015 — FinLocker.

John Cerasuolo leads incredibly acquisitive companies. At ADS Security, he led the business through 45 acquisitions in a direct-to-owner model that relied on relationships and an internal team to buy-up companies. Now, with Leap Partners, he's hoping to do the same in the plumbing and HVAC sectors. Already the company he's launched is off to a fast start with 5 acquisitions already complete and a pipeline that could help him realize 20 more this year. John talks about starting the business and how the industry switch and time have affected his process.

Massachusetts-based technology advisory firms ROI Communications, Blue Front Technology Group and allConnex joined forces in late 2022 to form Amplix. CEO Joe DeStefano says the three long-time, mutually respectful competitors had a familiarity with each other that made the merger a smooth process. When it took less than two hours to put together a proforma balance sheet, they knew they had a great organization.

In 1985, Sanjiv Singh worked on the first autonomous ground vehicles to operate outdoors. By 2010, he led a team that demonstrated the first autonomous full-scale helicopter flight. Now he's with Near Earth Autonomy, pushing the envelope in autonomy for aerial vehicles both manned and unmanned. He talks about the evolution of the technology, the company's fundraising and the obstacles that must be conquered in order to reach broader commercial adoption of autonomous flight technology.

Harold Green launched Chamberlain Contractors, an asphalt paving company, in 1975 and sold it to Pavement Partners, a portfolio company of Shoreline Equity Partners, in January 2022. While he always had the end in mind, he brought on a partner who didn't share the same goals. Green talks about selling the business, how he resolved the issue with his partner, and his more recent venture that he's hoping to more aggressively grow as he transitions out of Chamberlain.

Jai Shekhawat is the founder and former CEO of Fieldglass, a cloud-based vendor management software platform that grew to encompass users in 150 countries and more than $60 billion in annual spend, making it the largest such firm in the world. He sold a majority stake in the company to Madison Dearborn Partners, which helped expand the business before selling it to SAP for $1 billion in 2014. Jai talks about the experience from soup to nuts — fundraising, growth, selling and life after.

In 2022, Labcorp paid a reported $450 million to acquire Personal Genome Diagnostics, known as PGDx, a genomic testing company. Megan Bailey, who was CEO of PGDx, stops by the pod to offer a peek inside the deal — what it was like building the deal team, getting buy-in, how they chose Labcorp and why they pursued a sale after successfully raising a $103 million Series C earlier that same year.

Marc Bernstein is scaling fast and having fun at Balto, a SaaS platform designed to provide real-time guidance to contact center agents. That's even after the founder and CEO added multiple investors to the mix and recently raised $37.5 million in capital. Marc talks about launching the company, how he's maintaining the culture as he's added layers to his management team, and how the typical characterization of investors-as-bosses is all wrong.

Biju Kulathakal is the co-founder and CEO of Halo Investing, the first independent multi-issuer technology platform for Structured Notes, connecting investment advisors and their clients to the world's largest banks. He talks about launching the company, pitching to investors and growing the business from an idea to more than 200 employees working in five countries.