SEMESTER: Spring 2020

This course is dual-listed with the FTMBA program.

COURSE NUMBER: EWMBA237.11

COURSE TITLE: Search Funds and EtA (Entrepreneurship through Acquisition)

UNITS OF CREDIT: 1 Unit

INSTRUCTOR: Jan Simon

MEETING DAY/TIME: 9 am – 5 pm, March 1 and April 19

Please note the unorthodox nature of this course, which meets all day on 2 Sundays. To earn a passing grade, you must attend BOTH class sessions in their entirety.

PREREQUISITE(S): None

CLASS FORMAT: Case method, panels and lectures

REQUIRED READINGS: Cases provided instudy.net via bCourses.

BASIS FOR FINAL GRADE: Class participation (40%) and project (60%). Class participation can come in the form of active case discussions (at times prompt by cold calling) as well as engagement during the panel discussions. Quality trumps quantity where the former is defined as ‘contribution the participants learning’.

As will be discussed during the first session, participants will be able to choose between a consulting project (team format) or writing a PPM (solo for solo searchers, duo for team searchers).

CAREER FIELD: This course will be helpful for people who are considering taking over a company and managing it, either right after they finish their MBA or at a later stage in their career. It will also be helpful for participants that aim to be involved in M&A.

ABSTRACT OF COURSE'S CONTENT AND OBJECTIVES:

‘Being an entrepreneur’ for many a person equates to starting a business. This is however only one type of entrepreneur. It requires specific capabilities such as ‘creating from scratch’, a high tolerance for the unknown as well as the ability to convince non-believers or predict and create the future. EtA and search funds are based on another form of entrepreneurship, namely the ability and desire to finesse, energize, scale, improve, and further shape what is already in existence. It indeed needs different skills to go from 0 to 10 than from 100 to 1,000.

During this course we will, discuss the entire EtA and search fund process, its challenging moments as well as its gratifying rewards. We will discuss some tricks-of-the-trade and some of the major pitfalls. The ultimate objective is for the participant to be able, or to be closer to be able, to answer following questions:

- Is this a career path for me?

- If so, is now the right moment to start or should I postpone (till when)?

- I’m in, what do I do next?

- What are the major stepping-stones and what are the important obstacles and drawbacks?

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH:

Jan is an Investor, Banker, and Scholar who has invested in private and public markets, advised and raised public capital across multiple industries in Europe and North America.

For over a decade he worked for Goldman Sachs International, Merrill Lynch International, and Salomon Brothers International. He co-headed the Emerging Markets Trading Desk at Salomon Brothers, set up the Continental Sales-Trading Desk at Goldman Sachs and was a member of Merrill Lynch’ Hedge Fund Advisory Group. He was a special advisor to Pacific Lake Partners, a Boston-based institutional investor in search funds and is the managing partner of Vonzeo Capital Partners, an institutional investor in search funds based in Vancouver and Barcelona.

His expertise is in the areas of: investment strategies, alternative investments and mergers and acquisitions for both European and North American markets. He has managed money in equities, fixed income and advised hedge funds in a variety of strategies.

Since 2003 Jan has been teaching at universities in Europe and North America; such as Beedie School of Business, Berkeley Haas School of Business, IESE Business School, INSEAD, NYU-Stern, Thunderbird Management School and UCLA-Anderson. He has been a Visiting Scholar at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Since 2014 Jan’s focus has been on advising, supporting and investing in young, dynamic, talented and ambitious entrepreneurs who are searching to acquire a company to manage and grow the acquired company. This has allowed him to merge both his previous passions of investing and assisting the future generation of leaders in fulfilling their dreams.

He served in the Belgian Defense Forces’ First Battalion Para-Commando as well as NATO’s Special Intervention Forces. He holds both Commando A and Parachutist A military certificates. He has a PhD in Finance, MBA, BSc in Law, LLM in Law and ICD.D.