ambit partners

My partner, Niel Wyma, is our (undisputed) chief conference goer, and for the past few years has represented ambit partners at the The University of Chicago Booth School of Business / Northwestern University - Kellogg School of Management #ETA Conference. This year, however, it was my turn, and what a compelling, multi-faceted event it was - with something for everyone interested in #SearchFunds. I was fortunate to join Patricia Riopel and Henry Davis on the Navigating Search Outside of the US panel, moderated by Andrei Papayanopulos, and to reconnect with lots of LPs, co-investors, Searchers (Infinite Cake 👀), service providers and academics. Such a cool confluence of people and ideas. And interest! There were over 1,000 attendees, which speaks to the growing popularity of ETA. Kudos to Kylie Gilmore and the whole team from the Polsky Center at the University of Chicago, as well as the student organizers (like Pratap Chowdhury) 🙌👏👏👏 Lastly, a special shout to ETA pioneers, operators, investors and academics Mark Agnew and Brian O'Connor, who got this whole ChicagoLand Search scene kickstarted over 10 years ago. If you two were stones dropping into the still lake of ETA in #chicago at the time, your splash was big, and your ripples are growing, and spreading still. Thank you for catalyzing and fostering what we experienced yesterday 🙏

ambit partners is excited to partner with Alexander Wijs in the launch of Orangeland Capital — a search fund aimed at acquiring and growing a single great business in the #Netherlands or #Belgium 🇳🇱🇧🇪 Alex brings a wealth of international experience to his search. He began his career as an investment banker for Morgan Stanley in New York and London, before transitioning to LMM private equity at Freshstream, where he has worked as an investor for the last three years. Alex holds a MSc. in Finance from Esade and a BA of Science in Business Administration from the Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University. He is a board observer at NOVIDAM and a board member at Amsterdam on Stage, a Dutch theatre company. We look forward to working with you, Alex!

Last weekend, I had the honour and pleasure of moderating the “Searching & Acquiring Abroad” panel at the 10th Harvard Business School Entrepreneurship Through Acquisition (#ETA) Conference. Special thanks to serial co-investors Andrew Freiman [The Cromwell Harbor Partnership] and Mario Sicilia [Cerralvo Capital] for joining live, and to ambit partners Searcher/CEOs Piali Bopanna [720 Fund], Lia Weiner-Tsur [Kerem Capital], Pawel Malon [SINGU], and YVES BIYAH [Falcon Control Systems] for Zooming in from overseas. 5 of 6 Continents represented on one panel has to be some kind of first... Thank you for making the time and effort (especially on late Saturday night timezones! (To me at least... 😄 ) Your insights from around the world made the panel as practical as it was inspiring. Thanks also to Alexandra Andrino for coordinating the panel, and to her and her fellow ETA Club leadership teammates Ben Zheng, Chris Callandar and Arthur V. Belkin, for inviting me to participate (and being willing to experiment with panelists on Zoom!) It was such fun being back on campus!

Our team is growing! We are very excited to announce that, for the first time ever, we are adding a new team member. Michellé Bütow Burger joined the Ambit Partners team earlier this month in the much-needed role of Operations Manager. In this role, she will be streamlining our back office operations, helping us improve workflows, stakeholder communications, travel planning and scheduling, data collection and analysis, social media management and more. Michellé comes with an extensive background in communication, marketing, project management and fundraising. She holds an honors degree in Development Communication from the North-West University / Noordwes-Universiteit. Though most of her career has been in the non-profit sector, she has highly transferable experience working in fast-moving, complex and resource-constrained environments, inside national and international organizations, helping to catalyze change across borders, cultures and languages. Michellé is an extrovert, passionate about creating things, seeing change happen and investing in people. Her skills, passion, energy and #gees are a welcome addition to our team. Welcome Michellé!

A big thank you to IESE Business School for hosting last week's 6th International Search Fund Conference in Barcelona 🇪🇸 As always, it was a blast to connect with CEOs and searchers - active and aspiring - and the global community of investors and advisors. A special shout-out to Belén B., Patrick Wladimirski, Jan Simon, Sara Rosenthal, and the many others who worked to pull it off.

Excited to be returning to Harvard Business School to moderate the Searching & Acquiring Abroad panel at this weekend's #ETA Conference. Bringing some of ambit partners' expertise to bear, our focus will be on opportunities outside of North America, Latin America and Australia (where there has historically been more coverage). Global investors Mario Sicilia (Cerralvo Capital) and Andrew Freiman (The Cromwell Harbor Partnership) will help me unpack the nuances of #SearchFunds in more frontier markets, with Searcher/CEOs Piali Bopanna (Asia/India), Lia Weiner-Tsur (Asia/Israel), Pawel Malon (Europe/Poland), and YVES BIYAH (Africa/Ivory Coast). Even if not from these countries/markets specifically, we will discuss themes relevant to anyone thinking about #SearchFunds in new(er) places. Join if you can! Niel Wyma Andrew Locke Michellé Bütow Burger Alexandra Andrino

Last week, IESE Business School held its 6th International Search Fund Conference, and I was lucky enough to be invited by Andrew Locke from ambit partners to speak on a panel about the first few months of the search. It was both an honor and a humbling experience to share the stage with some true legends of the search fund ecosystem—Enrique Chamorro, Carl Lundberg, and Patricia Riopel. The discussions were lively, insightful, and packed with learnings, it was great to see prospective searchers and investors engaged and asking the tough questions. Beyond the panel, I had a blast meeting with investors and exchanging ideas with fellow searchers and CEOs in the rest of the Conference. Huge kudos to Jan Simon, Belén B., and the entire organizing team for pulling off such a stellar event with over 650 attendees! Looking forward to the next one.

We are pleased to announce that ambit partners has partnered with Rodrigo G. in the recent launch of Longati Capital, a search fund focused on acquiring and growing a single enduring business in Brazil 🇧🇷 Rodrigo will draw on extensive experience from his five-year tenure at McKinsey & Company, where he led projects across Brazil and Southeast Asia. Before his consulting career, he served as an officer and fighter pilot in Força Aérea Brasileira - FAB, the Brazilian Air Force. Rodrigo holds an MBA from INSEAD and an M.Sc. from the Instituto Tecnológico de Aeronáutica - ITA. We are excited for this new venture with Rodrigo and Longati Capital!

A whirlwind week for me last week, traveling to #Wellington 🇳🇿 🥝 for a SSS - Cybersecurity Specialists board meeting (thank you for the hard work and hospitality Luke Taylor, Lea Forster & team), then on to #Sydney 🇦🇺 🦘 🐨 for the #ETAForum (thank you Pete Seligman & team for organizing and hosting, and James Frank, Alix Doherty and Charlie Lanchester for putting up with me on the panel discussion). It was a privilege and pleasure to (re)connect with, learn from and contribute to the rapidly growing and evolving #SearchFund community in the region on behalf of ambit partners. Across engagements with aspiring Searchers, current Searchers, operating CEOs, co-investors, fellow directors, as well as limited partners, I was struck by the increasing momentum, expanding experience, and deepening sophistication of the #ETA model down under 🌏. Though both Australia and New Zealand present unique challenges in applying and scaling the Search Fund model, two things stand out as common when I compare them to other markets around the world: the scale of the ETA opportunity, and the quality of the people pursuing it. I look forward to investing more in the region, and hope that more countries can follow suit in the years to come!! Niel Wyma Andrew Locke Luke Taylor Pete Seligman Nima Sedaghat Madhur Singhal Pat Prendiville Matthew Williams Ivan Milutinovic Graham Marsland Kelsey Winney Sam Waller Jake Maisey Douglas Cook

As Summer winds down, we want to close the loop on ambit partners' inaugural MBA Summer Associate Program - Last May, we welcomed our first class of Summer Associates: Ian Rafael De Luna, from the Stanford University Graduate School of Business, and Sally Tian from Harvard Business School. For the first six weeks of the Summer, Sally and Ian worked directly with the Ambit team, collaborating remotely and in-person from #CapeTown and #Kigali, supporting work across live transactions. Then, after a halftime team meetup in #Istanbul, they split up to work alongside two Searcher/CEOs from our portfolio: Sally joined Xue Lin and Prospect Search Capital, the first search fund launched in #China. Ian spent time in #NewYork, #Bangkok, and #Manila, supporting Luke Taylor, who recently assumed the CEO seat at SSS - Cybersecurity Specialists, the first search fund acquisition in #NewZealand. In parallel, the team kicked off a primary research project on “trailblazing #searchfunds”, generating insights on launching in new(er) markets outside North America. Our team is grateful to Sally and Ian for their interest in ambit partners, their flexibility and adaptability in helping us structure our first internships, their willingness to travel and get on calls at weird hours in different languages, their high-quality work, and their conscientious feedback on our own business and investment process. Thank you Ian and Sally - it was a pleasure working together! We can’t wait to see what you will do in the world of search funds, and beyond.