Self Study Curriculum and Reading List for Prospective Search Fund / ETA
Let's assume you've drank the cool aid and decided to dive into the deep end to pursue a search fund / ETA as an associate. You have 0 entrepreneurial experience and hell maybe even your finance chops kind of suck because all you do is make slides all day.
What would be the mandatory curriculum / reading list for this risk taker who wants to increase his odds of success in the search fund / ETA world?
I've been meaning to write a post about this topic, but I'll go ahead and provide a brief overview of some books I've found helpful below. This assumes you'll also be operating the business yourself rather than just overseeing an existing management team. Start off by reading the Stanford Search Fund Primer. Then:
Double your Profits in 6 Months or Less-- Straight and to the point, "chapters" are no more than a page or two long, tangible ways to raise revenue and cut costs. A little outdated, ie the author recommends to not use computers because they're too expensive haha
The Great CEO Within-- Again, short and very practical. Meant for VC-backed software startups, but besides the few chapters that are only relevant for those types of companies, the book can be modified to fit with any type of company
Winning Moves-- Written by a PE operator on ways to increase margins from both sides. Less tactical than the previous two, but still a helpful framework. Meant for B2B businesses.
Lessons from Private Equity-- Tiny book like 100 pages long, walks through examples of some of the typical PE value creation plan, such as scrutinizing business strategy, measuring important metrics, and aligning incentives.
Marketing That Works-- Only marketing book I've really read, but seems like a reasonably practical survey on marketing techniques
Traction-- The book itself is not great but stresses the importance of having an operating system in place. I've never read it, but I think the book Scaling Up is similar
There might be more but that's all off the top of my head. Reading those books is a good starting point, but realize there is nothing that can really prepare you to run a business. The search/acquisition is the easy part, but even that will be different (worse) than what you're used to in an institutional seat.
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