With the advent of technology and startups, MBA candidates are increasingly considering entrepreneurship as their first step after graduation or as a possible career move down the road. In Grad Business Spotlight, we interview MBA alumni from MENA who have chosen this path, shedding light on their entrepreneurial journey and its connection to their business school experience. First up is serial search fund investor and INSEAD MBA 18’, Omer Ben Shach.
A: Omer Ben Shach. 33 years old, based in Tel Aviv, Israel, INSEAD July 2018 alum. I am the Managing Director at BM Holdings, a single family office. I cover mostly M&A and portfolio management, predominantly backing Search Funds, VC Funds and startups.
A: I started immediately after my MBA at INSEAD. I’ve always been drawn to investments and began preparing early on to join my family’s firm. I chose Search Fund (SF) investing – an investment vehicle through which an entrepreneur raises funds to search for, acquire, and lead a small or medium family owned business – because the model balances a smart financial and structured process with entrepreneurship. It also follows a people-first approach and has a great average historical return performance.
A: We introduced a new investment thesis in 2018 and since then have backed more than 40 Search Funds (SF), over 20 acquisitions, and five add-on M&As. It was quite exciting to help pioneer the SF ecosystem in Israel. We are the first Israeli serial SF investors, participated in the first ever traditional SF acquisition and are now working on the second ever.
A: The first year was full of growing pains, as is expected when introducing a new investment model. I also lacked peers, which forced me to look outwards.
A: Israel has always been my home and the business was based here before I joined. Regardless though, I find it interesting to be the only serial search fund investor out of Israel. Coming from Startup Nation is a significant differentiator and value add to our global activity, and doing small cap M&A via the Search Fund model is my differentiator in Israel. Yes, we also back Search Funds in the wider MENA region.
A: In every single way. I invest using a model I learned in a class during my MBA, not to mention that about 70% of our portfolio is either INSEAD principals or lead INSEAD investors with me in the cap table or board of directors.
A: A Search Fund class and a SF or an ETA (Entrepreneurship Through Acquisition) club would be great. I would aim for a school which is geo-related to the target country you are going to search, hopefully with successful searcher alumni in the country or serial SF investors.
A: It has been instrumental in shaping the way I think about investments, the current model we use in my family office, and in widening my ecosystem, among other valuable aspects.
A: We are a small team at my company, so unfortunately we have no open positions at the moment. But actually raising a Search Fund is a great fit for top MBAs with the right background and motivation. A typical SF entrepreneur would be a top MBA alum, with a mix of finance, strategy and operations background (hopefully at least two of the three). The motivation should be fairly entrepreneurial with a real desire to lead a company on all fronts, willingness to really roll up your sleeves and get your hands dirty. Keep in mind a SF life cycle is fairly long, usually four to 10 years in total. It takes up to six months to raise and launch the fund, one to three years to buy a company, and a typical holding period of four to seven years.
