Working in PE - thinking about the family business
Hey all - short story is I'm a senior associate at a PE fund. I've been working my way up for a few years but at my current fund, upside doesn't seem great and frankly have been thinking of doing something entrepreneurial (way easier said than done) for a few years. I've got a family business in the freight forwarding space, which has done fairly well. It's got ~10 employees, doing probably ~$1M of net income a year. I've always shied away from the space since it's (i) low margin, (ii) cyclical, and (iii) quite honestly, a pretty boring space but my uncle who runs the business, is looking to retire soon. I'm thinking about dedicating some time to learning about the space and seeing how / if I can gain conviction to work on it. It's a pretty small operation at this point, fairly self sufficient, without any real business development over the years. Given the macro backdrop (ie: tariffs, lower consumer spending), not sure if it's worth it. Wanting to get any perspectives from the community here on what to think about, if anyone's taken a similar entrepreneurial path, etc.
I'm a former PE bro turned AI bro and just want to provide the data point that Freight Forwarding is one of the places where AI is actually working, full stop, some serious automation happening in certain places. If you are enterprising enough to treat the business like an owner and modernize it, and have a proclivity for action vs. analysis, then you could be an interesting owner of the business. If you are simply going to show up and continue business-as-usual, that also seems cool and I'm happy for you, but thought you should be aware of what's happening in the space vis-a-vis AI.
Wanna chat? Would love to hear more about what your seeing in terms of modernization.
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