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

Since 2014, Life Remodeled has invested more than $35 million into blighted Detroit neighborhoods to spur economic opportunities, job creation, community centers and business growth. Founder and CEO Chris Lambert talks about the non-profit's progress, its successes, fundraising and its future.

Having sold his super successful Dayton-based Orthodontics practice, Dan German has set out on a new venture. Orthobrain brings him up to Cleveland to help general practitioners through a digital venture get the training they need to introduce orthodontics in their businesses. German talks about how his former business is informing his current one, building with the end in mind, what he's learning about fundraising, building a board, and more.

United Cutwater CEO Chris Riley has more than 30 years' experience owning and operating more than a dozen businesses in numerous industries. His personal experiences buying and selling companies, negotiating transactions, overseeing dozens of accountants, attorneys and other professionals allowed him to fine-tune a creative deal construction in the volatile industry of mergers and acquisitions. Chris sat down with Smart Business Dealmakers to discuss the current M&A landscape and how business owners can maximize business value before selling.

Bill Fox launched GoIndustry.com around the time the dot-com bubble burst and managed to not only take the online machinery and equipment sales site public, but grow it to 47 offices in 27 countries and some 600 employees. Now, Bill is back with Rextar, an online real estate marketplace that does business as Homesale.plus. The company recently raised its first seed round and Bill expects a more substantial round could follow in 2022. He talks about his GoIndustry experience and how that's informing the way he's building Rextar and Homesale.plus.

Nadyli Nuñez has guided hundreds of early-stage entrepreneurs through her incubator, co-working programs and numerous early-stage investments to position them for add-on capital as part of their growth journey from scale-up to the middle market. She has a detailed, hands-on approach to ensure the success of her clients.

Andrew Barnell is the CEO of Geneoscopy, a life sciences company he co-founded with his sister to develop diagnostic tests for gastrointestinal health. The company recently raised $105 million and was ranked the 5th-largest biotech or agtech firm in St. Louis. Andrew talks about the formation of the business, operating a company with family, fundraising and how they'll use their latest round of capital.

Archangel Protective Services started out with just three people. Today, it has more than 270 employees. Founder and CEO Ken Thomas attributes that exponential growth to his work with the Nashville Business Incubation Center. Now he's paying it forward as an Entrepreneur in Residence at NBIC, sharing the lessons he's learned to help the next generation of business owners unlock their potential.

Having a relationship before the start of the pandemic helped a lot of deals get done, and that was the case when Vytalize Health acquired MedPilot back in February 2021. Vytalize Health CFO Kevin Murphy and MedPilot founder Matt Buder Shapiro, now CMO of Vytalize, talk about the transaction, doing the deal during a pandemic, and what they learned through the process.

Great Day Improvements has executed a series of deals that put it among the fastest-growing private mid-market companies in Ohio. It's grown from 12 market locations at the beginning of 2018 to over 115 locations in 77 US markets and over 2,200 employees today. Ed Weinfurtner, chairman of Blue Olive Partners, discusses the initial acquisition and its growth through the years, including two major acquisitions it closed near the end of 2021.

412 Venture Fund has only been around a few years, but its founders and managing partners bring decades of experience to investing in early-stage ventures that have a Pittsburgh connection. In this episode, Managing Partner Ilana Diamond talks about the fund, its first exit, the advantage of launching during the pandemic and some of the lessons she passes on based on her years of management, advisory, chair and investor experience.