Team

Rob Johnson

Rob is a successful entrepreneur and venture capital investor turned business school professor. Rob has been visiting professor in the Entrepreneurship Department at IESE Business School in Barcelona for 23 years, following ten years on the faculty of London Business School. He has been actively involved as an investor in search funds since 1987 and set up the International Search Fund Center at IESE.

He has served as a director, and in several cases as chairman, of many private companies during their growth stages through to successful trade sales and IPOs. Rob serves on the advisory boards of Palamon Capital Partners in London and Vonzeo Capital in Vancouver, the Investment Committee of the Cambodia-Laos-Myanmar Development Fund, and the Endowment Investment Committee at IESE.

Tobias Raeber

Tobias is the former CEO of Herchenbach Industrial Warehouses. Tobias acquired Herchenbach through his search fund, Kronos Kapital & Management AG, together with his partner in 2015 before partially exiting the business in 2019. During his time as CEO, he doubled both revenue and EBITDA realising outstanding returns for investors.

Prior to this, Tobias was a management consultant at Oliver Wyman and worked in real estate. Tobias is currently a non-executive director of several search fund acquired businesses in both manufacturing and services. He has been a guest speaker at INSEAD, LBS, IESE, Vlerick, Columbia, and Judge on Entrepreneurship Through Acquisition (ETA) and Search Funds. He holds an MSc in Economics from Bocconi University and a BSc from Ecole hôtelière de Lausanne (EHL).

Viren Lala

Viren began his career in South Africa at a boutique private equity firm owned by Macquarie Bank. He was part of the transactions team that managed a $2b infrastructure fund. He then joined the investment team of a family-owned conglomerate where he completed deals in food and beverage, real estate and hospitality, mobile telecoms, and infrastructure.

In 2015, he founded Sentinel Capital, a family-office with a global and multi-asset mandate. The organisation’s direct mandate focuses on venture capital & private equity, real estate, and infrastructure. He holds board seats in underlying portfolio companies in sectors relating to non-banking finance, renewable energy, and real estate. Viren holds a BCom in finance and marketing from Wits University and an MBA from IESE Business School.

Simon Webster

Simon is an investor and entrepreneur who raised the first search fund outside of the USA. Through the search fund model, he acquired a UK based company, RSL, in 1995 and became its CEO. Over a 10-year period Simon expanded the organisation organically as well as through acquisition, resulting in a quasi-tenfold sales growth. He led the sale of the business in 2005 and remained CEO until 2007. He achieved top quartile returns for his investors.

Simon teaches the Entrepreneurship through Acquisitions course at London Business School and Judge Business School (Cambridge University) and he is an Entrepreneur in Residence at INSEAD. Simon invests in, and mentors, search fund entrepreneurs and he invests on a global basis. He is a board director of a variety of companies and the majority of these have been acquired by search fund entrepreneurs. He sits on the advisory board of Vonzeo Capital.

Jan Simon

Jan is the Managing Partner of Vonzeo Capital, a global institutional investor in search funds and is the Author of Search Funds & Entrepreneurial Acquisitions: The Roadmap to Buying a Business and Leading it to the Next Level. He teaches on Search Funds at Berkeley, Cambridge, IESE and Oxford. Jan worked over two decades in the investment industry. He co-headed the Emerging Markets Trading Desk at Salomon Brothers, set up the Continental Sales-Trading Desk at Goldman Sachs, and was a member of Merrill Lynch’s Hedge Fund Advisory Group.

Jan holds an LL.B. and LL.M. from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, an MBA from IESE Business School, earned his Ph.D. in Finance from the University of Essex, holds the ICD.D Designation for corporate directors from the Rotman School of Management, and earned his AMP at Harvard Business School. He served with the 1st Battalion of Parachutists and Commandos - Special Operations Regiment, as well as NATO’s Special Intervention Forces - ACE Mobile Force. He holds both the green and red beret.

Sara Rosenthal

Currently, Sara is a Partner at TTCER, an investment partnership established by the early leadership team of Asurion, the world’s largest provider of mobile phone insurance and other tech support services. TTCER invests only its partners’ own capital with the goal of supporting entrepreneurs building enduring businesses with a notable focus on search fund investing. Sara is also the co-founder of the Women's Search Network.

Prior to TTCER, Sara spent seven years at the Stanford Graduate School of Business where she developed entrepreneurship case studies and oversaw all search fund-related activities, work which built on her prior operating roles in the technology and real estate development sectors. Sara received her BA in Human Biology and MBA from Stanford, and she lives in Menlo Park, California with her husband and three children.

Gerald Risk

Gerald is an entrepreneur, investor, and educator. Currently, Gerald is a Partner at TTCER, an investment partnership established by the early leadership team of Asurion, the world’s largest provider of mobile phone insurance and other tech support services. TTCER invests only its partners’ own capital with the goal of supporting entrepreneurs building enduring businesses with a notable focus on search fund investing.

Prior to TTCER, Gerald spent the majority of his career at Asurion, most recently as President. Gerald is also a Lecturer in Management at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business. He holds an MBA from Stanford where he was an Arjay Miller Scholar and a Bachelor's Degree in Commerce from Queen’s University in Canada. Gerald lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife and two sons.

Frank Kenny

Frank was in the Venture Capital business for 30 years and has been a search fund investor for over a decade. He founded Delta Partners in 1994, having previously worked in the VC industry with Burr, Egan, Deleage & Co. from 1983 to 1993. He was on the board of many private technology companies in the USA and was on two NASDAQ Boards, Abacus Direct Corporation and Vivid Technologies Inc. from 1989 to 1999.

Frank currently serves on a number of private boards, including Advanced Surgical Concepts, Neoss and Miracor. He holds a B.Comm. and M.Econ.Sc. from University College Dublin and an MBA from the University of Chicago.

José Martín Cabiedes

José is a successful venture capital and search fund investor. He is co-founder of Cabiedes & Partners SCR, seed investor in the Spanish ICT sector since 1998 for companies such as Olé-ADQ, MyAlert, Privalia, Trovit, BlaBlaCar, Tiendeo and Kantox, among many others.

He is a Professor of Entrepreneurship at IESE Business School and a Board member at the media group EuropaPress. José holds an MBA degree from IESE Business School and Industrial Engineer degree from Comillas Pontifical University (ICAI).

Bill Egan

Bill is founder and General Partner of Alta Communications and Marion Equity Partners LLC, Massachusetts-based venture capital firms. He founded Alta’s predecessor firm, Burr, Egan, Deleage & Co. in 1979, and has identified and backed several of America’s leading growth companies in the information technology, life sciences, and communications industries. He was one of the first investors in Fedex Corporation and is currently part owner of the Boston Celtics. Prior to founding Burr, Egan, Deleage & Co., Bill was a Partner at TA Associates. He began his career as a Manager of Venture Capital for New England Enterprise Capital Corporation.

Bill is past President and Chairman of the National Venture Capital Association, a former Trustee of Fairfield University, a member of Wharton’s Board of Overseers, and a Trustee of the University of Pennsylvania. He is a member of the Board of Directors of Cephalon, Inc., CRH plc, and a number of privately held companies. He is also a trustee of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and the Duniry Foundation. Bill received a degree in Economics from Fairfield University and an MBA from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Finance.

Marc Bartomeus

Marc founded Ariol Capital, the first search fund in Spain, and acquired Repli in Spain and Pentapackaging in Italy. He grew the businesses as CEO and successfully sold them to a strategic buyer in 2020. Prior to founding Ariol Capital, Marc worked for a lower-mid-market private equity firm in Boston. Previously, he held various business development and sales management positions at Promax Electronics in Barcelona, Agilent Technologies in Stuttgart and Hewlett-Packard in Madrid.

Marc serves as a director of several private companies and makes long-term investments in healthy businesses sourced and managed by search fund entrepreneurs. Marc holds an industrial engineering degree from the Technical University of Catalonia (UPC) and an MBA from MIT Sloan School of Management.

Alexander Kirn

Alexander has been an entrepreneur for over 20 years. He founded his first company, an internet service provider, at age 14. After selling the company, he became an investment professional at Summit Partners, focusing on growing software-oriented companies. Alexander raised the first search fund in Germany in 2009 and acquired two technology companies, INVERS and LapID.

INVERS is the worldwide market leader for shared mobility technology and LapID is the market leader for SaaS based fleet compliance solutions in Germany. He continues to lead the growth of both businesses and has become an active investor in primarily European search funds. Alexander is a graduate of the University of St. Gallen and the Harvard Business School MBA program.

Till Bossert

Till is the CEO of Herchenbach Industrial Buildings, a company he acquired in early 2015 with his business partner, Tobias Raeber. The acquisition was the successful result of the first search fund effort focused on Switzerland and South Germany. During his tenure Herchenbach became the market leader in Germany as well as the fastest growing temporary-warehousing company in Europe. He is a regular guest speaker at the IESE Search Fund class and at INSEAD; he also holds several Search Fund board positions.

He strives to pass on his first-hand expertise on successfully managing growth in small business to aspiring entrepreneurs and has become an active investor in mainly, European Search Funds. Before co-leading Kronos Kapital (the search fund), Till was a Management Consultant at Oliver Wyman. He holds a Diploma in Industrial Engineering from the University of Karlsruhe and from Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.

Carsten Schemmel

Carsten is a private serial search fund investor and head of M&A and member of the management board at SPIE Germany/Central Europe. SPIE is a stock listed European leader in multi-technical services with a strong M&A growth path.

Previously Carsten was partner at a small-cap private equity firm (ECM), where he invested and developed SMEs in the DACH region for 17 years before setting off for a sabbatical year with his family. Carsten started his career as a management consultant at A.T. Kearney followed by a role at an internet start-up. He has a degree in Business Administration.

José María Clotet

Experienced CEO at PROMAX Test & Measurement SLU. Participated in the first Search Fund acquisition in Spain in 2014: Repli. In 2018 teamed up with Marc Bartomeus and since then together they have backed 60+ searchers. Although most of the investments are located in Europe, the network has now been extended to the 5 continents.