Buyout

The Insider’s Guide to Buying Your Own Company

Author: Rick Rickertsen , Robert E. Gunther
Pub Date: 2007
Your Price: $24.95
ISBN: 0814406262
Format: Hardcover

• Overview
• About Rick Rickertsen
• The Insider’s Guide to Buying Your Own Company - Chapter 1
• Advance Praise For BUYOUT: The Insider’s Guide To Buying to Your Own Company
• Praise for this book
• A Conversation with Rick Rickertsen, author of BUYOUT
• Any Talented Manager Can Lead A BUYOUT Says Rick Rickertsen Author Of buyout
• Tactical Tips for Approaching Investors from Rick Rickertsen’s BUYOUT
• Table of Contents
• Request an Evaluation Copy, INSTRUCTOR ONLY!

About Rick Rickertsen

Entrepreneurship and the realization of one's dreams and potential are more than just the subject of Rick Rickertsen's book, BUYOUT: The Insider's Guide to Buying Your Own Company. As a venture capitalist with 15 years of experience under his belt, Rickertsen has made a career of helping great managers achieve professional fulfillment. As Chief Operating Officer of the Washington, DC-based venture capital firm Thayer Capital Partners, Rickertsen and Chairman Fred Malek have built Thayer from a start-up to a firm with $1.2. billion of capital in just six years. Rickertsen led the firm's most successful investment, the management buyout of SAGA software, which the Washington Post dubbed "the kind of home run that big investors often long for but rarely hit."

The facet of the buyout world Rickertsen has enjoyed most during his career is working closely with management teams to help them realize their dreams of owning and running their own companies. "The most surprising thing I've noticed throughout the years," Rickertsen says, "is that most managers don't understand the deal process and, therefore, don't control the process. Most crucially, this means they don't have the ability to get the best deal for themselves." Rickertsen's motivation for writing BUYOUT stems from his lifelong desire to see people-including himself-do the best they can in order to achieve the quality of life that comes from personal and professional satisfaction.

Prior to joining Thayer, Rickertsen worked with Morgan Stanley in New York City and with two investment firms in Los Angeles, spending two years at Brentwood Associates followed by four at Hancock Park Associates. While at Hancock, he was involved in one of the worst deals in management buyout history. The chapter of BUYOUT entitled "Avoiding Deal Hell" uses this experience as a cautionary tale. Both jobs helped

Rickertsen developed his venture capital skills and recognize, his personal and professional priorities. "At Brentwood, I learned the value of due diligence and other essential lessons of investment banking. At Hancock, I learned that one could work hard, but also have lots of fun and a great quality of life."

Rickertsen's new-found awareness of the importance of personal fulfillment led to a brief questioning of his career, despite his happiness at Hancock Park Associates. "I was living in Los Angeles and had always been a movie nut, so I almost went to work for a studio. I wrote three screenplays, none of which were made into movies, although one script about the Devil's son was optioned by a D-list producer."

Rickertsen had previously toyed with the idea of a career other than investment banking. While getting his undergraduate degree at Stanford, he explored various majors, from pre-med to pre-law, settling eventually on industrial engineering. After working as an engineer at IBM, he lost interest in this field as well and "was forever cured of any desire to pursue engineering as a career." At this point Rickertsen was attracted to yet another career. "I saw all the smart people going into investment banking and thought it sounded like the right thing to do. Most of the jobs were in New York and I thought a California guy like myself could stand to spend a little time there." Joining the high technology investment-banking group of Morgan Stanley, Rickertsen was able to combine his new career with the interest in technology that had originally led him to engineering.

Investment banking seemed to make sense for Rickertsen, who had always had an interest in both entrepreneurship and helping others to improve themselves. While growing up in Southern California, he was ever the hopeful entrepreneur, mowing lawns, running a paper route, and working at his local driving range. At the latter job he developed skills he would use later in life. While he was officially employed to collect balls in a caged golf cart, he soon became a self-styled coach, offering tips to the players. "I had a nice way of telling people how to improve their game, so they didn't get angry," Rickertsen recalls. The ability to critique and advise without causing umbrage became a marketable skill when as a venture capitalist he guided top executives to successful buyouts and mergers. Rickertsen always enjoyed both coaching and playing golf, and later played on the Stanford golf team.
Rickertsen has finally found his professional niche working at Thayer. "It's a good firm and, most importantly, a great place to work."

Rickertsen is as busy as one would expect a highly successful venture capitalist to be, leading by his own account a "normal, completely stressed life." He still manages to make time for his personal life and interests. Despite his formative failure as a screenwriter, Rickertsen still characterizes himself as a "closet writer" and contributes to both the Washington Business Journal and Washington Techway. He lives in McLean, Virginia with his wife Maria and daughter Alexandra and, although he admits to having "wrecked their evenings and weekends" while writing BUYOUT, he considers his family his most important personal investment.

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