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Guy Solomon left investment banking to buy a small business.
After years at Barclays and Wells Fargo, he went deep into the world of Search Funds and Entrepreneurship Through Acquisition (ETA) in Israel — a market filled with profitable, often overlooked SMEs that nobody was really institutionalizing yet.
But this wasn’t a straight-line success story.
Guy screened more than 8,000 companies, met with 150+ owners, acquired Dublo, and then had the business stress-tested almost immediately. COVID hit. Revenue dropped roughly 90%. A major database corruption nearly took the company down. Suddenly, the work wasn’t about models or deal structure anymore it was about customers, cash flow, leadership, and keeping a team steady when the pressure got real.
Years later, the company was successfully sold to a TA Associates-backed buyer.
This conversation is a grounded look at what buying and operating a business actually feels like once the acquisition closes:
• How Search Funds and ETA work in practice
• What makes an owner-operated business worth buying
• Why “boring” businesses are often much harder than they look
• How to lead when revenue disappears almost overnight
• What customer obsession looks like operationally — not just philosophically
• Why EOS and core values only matter if they hold up under stress
• And what changes when you go from advising companies to carrying payroll yourself
If you’re an entrepreneur, operator, investor, or someone thinking about buying a business instead of starting one from zero, this episode gets into the parts people usually leave out.
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