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A quick note before we jump in:

I hope my recent fundraising experience teaches you more than your last semester at your local university.

At least that has been the case for me.

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I started fundraising in Geneva, Switzerland - with the aim of investing capital in niche manufacturing companies in Northern Europe - Finland, Estonia, Latvia.

Although while traveling to Estonia, I very quickly began to gather the attention of Estonian investors, who asked me not to involve foreign capital

"We have enough, we don't need them." as they said.

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What exactly were they interested in, or what was I presenting to them at all?

I have been selling various products and services for almost ten years (I turned 30 in April):

People (investors) want to make a "no-brainer" deal: great profits with decent growth potential; all this without risking too much risk

At least the ones I've interacted with.

So my job was to find such deals.

I bought a database of companies.

For example, the following sites are good in Estonia and Finland:

• Site 1 (database of Estonian companies)

• Site 2 (database of Estonian companies - on the top right corner you can change the language to ENG)

• Site 3 (database of Finnish companies)

The 4 fitlers I was using:

• Revenue between 1-5 million Euros (no crypto, no real-estate, no startups)

• The company must be profitable

• Been on the market for longer over 10 years

• The owner / founder is over 50 (I thought I would have a better chance of getting them to sell the business - I was right!)

They sent me a list of thousands and thousands of companies. I went through them and found 450 which I’d like to talk / meet with.

When calling and meeting with business owners I started finding good opportunities with

• Great returns

• With growth potential

• Low risk

Mentioning low risk as the companies have a long history (they’ve been operating for more than 10 years; 95% of them have always been profitable) and have low key-man-risk; CEO, who is not the owner himself and is 30-40 years old, very motivated to run the company.)

Most importantly, they want us as investors. Which I've learned is a BIG deal and certainly not the case for many other investors they’ve talked with.

So, we are talking with very niche manufacturing business in various industries such as agricultural equipment manufacturer, fench manufacturer, modulating furnace manufacturer, lightning system manufacturing, etc.

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We went back and forth with our investors - at that time we had a commitment from 3 UHNWIs who all knew each other.

They were all very interested in working with us.

"We're good to go. Send us deals; then you’ll do a DD and let’s start with the first acquisition.”

Being a bit naive, I though it all takes days, the reality was months and quarters!

Now what?

Two weeks ago on Monday: "Mikk, we made a big acquisition, which means you gotta start without us, but next year at the same time we'd like to look at it again."

The lessons.

Lesson #1 - When it comes to building relationships with these latest investors, I really wouldn't change a thing. They were really friendly, we met and talked every other week. One of them even invited me to his warehouse, which had about 40-50 cars (3 Porsche GT3s; 3 Aston Martins, BMW M5, Mercedes-AMG GT R (safety car in F1), McLaren, etc. - stuff I’ve seen on TV - and believe it or not, it got even better, the last warehouse had a helicopter)

They were old school gentlemen who liked what we wanted to build. They had a better opportunity came along, that's fine. We get along well.

Lesson #2 (absolute biggest) - If one of your investors have said ‘Yes’, it doesn't mean you should stop talking to others. (They told us they wanted to work with us, no need to look for other investors; "We'll keep the band small")

Lesson #3 - People invest in people. There was probably something about us or our deals that they didn't like.

1. Which means I have to continue learning the craft (I love it!)

2. Need to find EVEN better deals. (No problem!)

Lesson #4 - Don't give up! One other search fund was founded at the same time as us, people much smarter, more experienced than me and my partner (he is 54, 20 years in BIG4, consulted on almost 1000 deals. He is brilliant)

Anyway, this search fund said, "Sometimes it's better to quit even before you start."

Why give up on something you know will work? Is it because it takes longer than you thought?

People are built differently.

What's next when it comes to raising capital?

We’re going back to work.

Long-term games with long-term people.

I start talking to investors again - this time - instead of asking if they want to invest or not, I'm asking them to review our deals - that's how I hope to get some great feedback and lessons. And who knows, maybe some of them will be interested.

Lastly, I hope you got a lesson or two which you could implement in your own fundraising journey.

Take care,

Mikk aka PrivatEquityGuy

P.S. If you want to look at our deals or check out the investor deck we put together, please send me a message on Twitter and I am happy to send it to you.

Please note that building this HoldCo will be a pumpy road, but building in public, in front of thousands of smart folks—and maybe even attracting experienced professionals to advice myself and our team—we’ll get there!