Sometimes I wake up in the morning and get ready to start my workday when I realize that I have just sold my company of 20+ years. Theoretically, I could just stay in bed all day...but that's not me, of course.
I founded the Michael Management Corporation in 2000 and grew it into the leading provider of online SAP training and access services. In 2022 I decided to sell the company to a large private equity firm. The first few month after the big check cleared have been a lot of fun, as you can probably imagine. But now I find myself facing reality. What am I going to do with my professional life going forward? At my age, I'm too young to do nothing or play golf all day long.
So I started thinking about the things I liked best about my last business, the things I didn't enjoy much and how I would build a company if I had to start all over again now.
I also spoke to many people in my professional network about this. These are other entrepreneurs who sold their companies, too, as well as many start-up founders and investors. Together, this group of people had a wealth of tips & advice for me - I am truly grateful for their input as it had led me to this point.
I now find myself thinking about launching or buying new businesses or investing in existing businesses with some of my friends and business partners. I am most interested in SaaS businesses with a recurring revenue model and ad-supported websites with a large community. I believe that my experience and expertise in this area can add value and lead to profitable company growth.
I will document my journey in this blog and hope you will find my story valuable or at least entertaining enough to follow me on my new path.
My next steps are:
- Define my investment criteria, including company size, revenue, profit, age and industry
- Identify a few potential sites where I will focus my search on (there are so many business listing sites, I'll pick a couple that I like best)