The Smart Startup

So, Who Am I?

What are my qualifications to teach this course?

First, I have been self-employed since the late-1980s, mostly in the technology and online sectors. During the past 20-plus years I have started and built companies, raised venture and angel capital, spent ten years as an business broker advising owners and buyers on the topics of selling and buying businesses, taken one company from concept through IPO and beyond, and participated in an industry consolidation. Oh, and I have bought companies on my account too.

Second, I'm engaged in the activities covered by the course. Putting the course down on paper helped me to organize almost three decades of business experience, college study, and personal research. I'm not doing this to run seminars. I'm doing it to attract a small number of like-minded and driven individuals. If you take the course, you may not end up participating in the same industry as I am, but at least you will have someone to bounce ideas off and ask for a second opinion. This is not a field with a lot of competition. Most people mistakenly believe that you need a Wall Street investment banking background to get started in this. Nothing could be further from the truth.

So why don't I call it a "how to buy a lot of businesses" course? What's the billionaire part? Well, at the risk of repeating myself here, this is about learning from the best in the game. I started following some of the billionaires we cover when my family was in an extended vacation in Europe. I quickly ran out of school books and comic books to read, so I started reading BusinessWeek, Newsweek, and the like. Back then conglomerateurs such as the great James Ling were hot news. Since then I have never come across a better way to make money. Certainly no one has more prestige in the business world than the deal-makers. 

If you join me, you will be amazed by the secrets of these tycoons. Keep in mind that all of them had to figure out how to acquire cashflows by themselves. You will have a huge head start because you will have their aggregate lessons made available to you.

One you complete the course you will see that all the deal-makers use variants of the same basic strategy for growth through acquisition. As they say, you will not have to reinvent the wheel. 

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