BluWave at 10: A Private Equity Founder's Origin Story

Sean Mooney: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Karma School of Business, a podcast about the private equity industry, business best practices, and real-time trends. I'm Sean Mooney, BluWave's founder and CEO.

In this episode, we have a rare moment of introspection where we're going to talk about BluWave's 10th birthday, where we've come from, how we almost didn't get to where we've gotten to, and a little bit about some of the lessons learned along the way and some of the cool places we'll be taking the business in the days ahead.

Enjoy.

Today is a rare introspective moment for the podcast. We're going to talk about BluWave's 10th anniversary. It's kind of a crazy story with all [00:01:00] sorts of twists and turns and tenacity, and grit, and multiple times nearly failing. But ultimately, it's been built to what it is today through an amazing triangle of great people within BluWave, our service providers, and top PE firms.

And it's turned into something that I'm really proud of, and I think it's turned into something that is making a difference in the business world and even broader at large, through some of the other things we do. I'll tell you a little bit about how it came to be. We're going to tell you a little bit about why it came to be, where it's gone, and then show you a little preview into where the business is going.

It's a pretty interesting one. There's lots of twists and turns in between, and I'm happy to share this rare look-back moment in time for a business that I can't believe started 10 years ago. Maybe to inform a little bit of the why, I'll do something that's uncomfortable for me. I'll share a bit of the story of me in terms of before [00:02:00] BluWave, which ultimately led to what became BluWave.

The quick backdrop on me is I grew up in a large family in Austin, Texas, the son of an entrepreneurial father and mother who raised us full time in support of that entrepreneurism. And growing up, worked in the company, and so worked with, in the summers of Texas heat and steel-toed boots. Eventually, I was able to work half the day inside, and then I got to go more time inside, and that really seeded the roots of not only business, but starting businesses and entrepreneurism.

In college, I went to Georgetown University, where I was very fortunate to get in. I think I got the Texas discount. There weren't a lot of people in Texas that left Texas back in the 90s when I was going, so I was just probably a bit of a novelty. I was fortunate to have a great group of friends, many of which who grew up in the New York City area.

And so when it came time to get jobs out of college, we of course asked them, "Hey, what are you guys going to do after college?" And I [00:03:00] spoke with Pucker, and Bob, and Mike, and Brian, and Jeff, and all of them, except for maybe Brian, said, "We're interested in working in New York City and doing things like investment banking or trading or things like that."

And I, of course, being from Texas, said, "What? What's investment banking?" "Oh, it's this thing where you help raise capital or buy security, sell securities, or you sell businesses, you raise businesses or you restructure businesses, those type of things." And I spoke with a lot of people and they go, "Oh, that is a great way to learn business." I go, "Well, that makes a lot of sense to me."

So I started interviewing for some firms, and got down to a couple of them, and then ultimately I joined one within a financial restructuring group. And the idea was that you would maybe a little, have a little more hands-on experience, you would work extremely hard, and you'd see companies in their good times and their bad times and everything in between.

And so that really appealed to me. I joined the firm, and they told me I was going [00:04:00] to work 120 hours a week. And I said, "Okay, yeah, there's no way you can work 120 hours a week." But I did. I think the first time my mom came and visited me, she started crying, because I was like a shell of a human being with no skin tone and almost translucent skin, because you really do work 100 to 120 hours a week.

But the difference is you get experience in dog years. And so while I was working 120 hours a week, most people I knew were working 40, and so I was getting at least three times the laps, but you're probably getting five times the experience. And so by the time after doing three years of investment banking, back then you used to do three, I was so much better informed in terms of how the business world worked than I could ever imagine.

That comes with a sacrifice, but so often things that are worth it come with sacrifice. It's one of the reasons why I went gray very early in my life. That's what other people tell me, "If it grays, it stays."

From there, though, I started always getting this inkling, almost back to being a kid, where I said, "I just want to get my hand on the wheel a little more. I want to have [00:05:00] something that is closer to business building than business advising." And at this point, there was this industry that was becoming more well-known, it was still in its nascency, called private equity. And within the investment bank that I was working with, they had a private equity firm affiliate. And if you were reasonably good, and probably more than anything, hardworking, they would say, "Hey, you can come work with us. We're not going to pay you for it, but you're going to get experience in private equity," and it just means, by the time you're a second or third-year analyst, when you're maybe able to take your hours down to 80 hours a week, you would take them back up to 100, because this experience was really interesting.

And so I made kind of the crazy decision like, "Yeah, I'll do another job, and I'll take it back up to 100 hours a week, and I'll work 20 to 30 hours a week for the private equity firm that you have so I can learn that business." And so for, as I recall, it was like maybe two to three years I did that kind of co-opt program.

I said, "This is a really interesting business." You get to work with [00:06:00] companies, you get to invest in them, you get to build them, and then you ultimately exit, and there's alignment.

And so from there, I joined my first full private equity firm. I decided that was the way I was going. There was a great guy named Lee Lewis at the investment bank I was with who said, "Hey, I'm moving to a firm in Greenwich, Connecticut that's raising a $500 million fund. It's going to be this really cool structure where we can do all sorts of things. And I've heard you're pretty good, and I heard you're a hard worker, so why don't you come with me?" And at that point I was interviewing with other firms, and I said, "Hey, why not go with someone you know?" And so then I started, and that was the first full-time firm.

This was 26 years ago. And PE was an interesting place, and it was very hard. There was information asymmetry. Nothing was easy in terms of getting information, but the economics were a lot better. And so back then, we would have 100 companies, ratio specific anyways, where they would show up, and you'd look at 100 companies, and you'd pick [00:07:00] three or four that you thought were the best, and you'd set the terms.

And you would buy low and sell high. Now, it was not easy, because it was all new. You're creating the bounds of an industry that never existed before. And when you needed information, like literally, you're going to libraries, or you're printing things off of printers from CDs. There was just a lot of information asymmetry, but the economics were quite good.

That set me off on my PE journey. And as the industry matured, you could see there was more and more investment bankers like me that were coming into private equity, and we were... had the same kind of training. We were smart, we were hardworking, we knew the levers of value, and we figured, "Okay, we're going to provide capital to these companies. We're going to unleash their own entrepreneurial selves if they have the burden of no liquidity off their shoulders, and we're going to do some things based on seeing for ourselves hundreds of companies a year that are going to help them get better." And that was great, and the returns were quite high in the early days, like 40% IRRs.

And I looked at that and I go, "Oh my gosh, I wish I was 10 years older." I [00:08:00] was like, all the people I work with are going to crush it." And they did. But they are also the crazy people who left their investment banking careers and their consulting careers to do this new thing called private equity, so they deserved to crush it.

They took the risk early on before it was known to be a thing. From there, I stayed at this one firm for quite some time, and then I joined another firm that was a spinout where I had more upward mobility, because that's part of the deal with PE firms, particularly then, is once the seats are taken, they're taken and you've got to go somewhere else.

And so I joined another firm that was formed by really excellent investors who had done tremendously well at their other firm, and were pursuing more of a kind of a specialized thesis, and I thought that would be great. And what I noticed over time in the private equity industry was every year they would say, "The industry is over, and it's too mature."

And they said that since the late 90s. And every year there was still so much more to be done, and I think that absolutely remains true today. It's just different. It's more mature. It's more of an industry, so you got to be better. And it was the same thing in 2002 trying to raise a fund when no one [00:09:00] was investing in PE firms or funds because it wasn't a thing.

So it's still hard. It's just different. But what happened was instead of us having 100 companies to invest in and we'd pick the top five, we would look at 100 companies and compete against 200 PE firms by the time you get to the mid-2010s. And we went from, metaphorically in my mind, we were architects. We were envisioning the strategy of the business, and then you back someone and someone else builds the company, and by unleashing that kind of arbitrage, you're going to do well. And we went from that to now, you're getting to a much more efficient industry where not only were we architects, but we had to be engineers, and we had to be general contractors building these companies, using a house-building metaphor.

And that was totally different because we had to do that in order to keep our returns high enough to justify still working 80 hours a week, and saying goodbye to your family, and [00:10:00] doing that because you wanted to create something different and better for everyone you know, you love.

By all means, we're also driven to it. We're probably mostly achievement-oriented. That's the kind of people who go to these industries. It's like they want to test themselves and do better and better, and it's in some ways that's just part of the DNA of the people in it. But it was just getting harder and harder.

And so I realized, and we all realized, we can't just buy low, sell high. We actually have to start building these companies.

Hey, as a quick interlude, this is Sean here. Wanted to address one quick question that we regularly get. We often get people who show up at our website, call our account executives, they say, "Hey, I'm not private equity. Can I still use BluWave to get connected with resources?" And the short answer is: yes.

Even though we're mostly and largely used by hundreds of private equity firms, thousands of their portfolio company leaders, every day we get calls from everyday top proactive business leaders at public companies, independent companies, family companies.

So absolutely, you can use us as well. If you want to use the exact [00:11:00] same resources that are trusted and being deployed and perfectly calibrated for your business needs, give us a call, visit our website at Bluwave.net. Thanks.

Back to the episode.

Now, the problem with a private equity firm is that they're small companies. They're a fraction of the size of the portfolio companies. If you think about a 2% management fee as that being the revenue of a business, if you have a billion-dollar fund, your revenue is $20 million in revenue. Think about running an entire business in a competitive market on that.

That's not a very big business. So what we had to do is, as I mentioned earlier, we got a general contract. We needed to use all these really excellent third-party service providers. The problem was we knew our service providers for core things like accounting and insurance and legal, but we needed them for all these other things as well. Not only when we were doing diligence, but when we were buying, because we couldn't just accept average returns anymore.

We had to create something called [00:12:00] alpha, which means when the market goes down, we still go up. When the market goes up, we go up even more than the market. And so you needed specialized skills. And what we would do is we would have Harvard, Wharton, Columbia grads, every time we needed that something special, something specialized that was custom-fit for our need, we would all start googling the problem and industry and calling our buddies.

And I was like, "This is insane." It was like $3,000 an hour if you do the math, and I was like, "This is nuts." And I go, "Gosh, what I wish I had is... I can go to Amazon for consumer products, and Yelp for restaurants, and Angie's List for my house." But for business, for these big, important projects, it's googling and calling buddies and saying, "Do you know someone who does this?"

I'm like, "This is insane." And I'm already working around the clock as a partner now at this firm, and I'm now spending my day calling buddies, like, "Hey, do you know someone who does this?" And they didn't know any better than I did.

I go, "Well, wait a minute. What if there was, like, this ecosystem, this market network where you brought together this pre-curated ecosystem, all the best service [00:13:00] providers, and then the PE firms could use this, like a really high-end Amazon meets Gartner Magic Quadrant, where it was the best of the best, and it was this magic toolbox or this toolkit for business building?"

And I go, "Huh, that's a pretty good idea, and surely someone has done this." And I looked around, and no one had did it, and I learned subsequently later why. It was really hard. But I said, "You know what? This is an idea that should be solved, and a pain that should be solved, so why don't I back this thing?"

And so I did some work on the side, and I did the market sizing. I was investing in companies like this, but different. And I was like, "Ah, if we created this Frankenstein where we did this and that, and combined with this and that, and put it all together, you could solve this thing."

And I was like, "All right, this would be great. I'll go get some buddies, and we'll back it, and we'll have someone do it who's an experienced operator." But in the back of my head, I had this kind of, like, Ratatouille moment. If you've seen the movie Ratatouille, at the end of the movie, there's that hardened restaurant critic, and he's just jaded, and I probably was pretty close to that.

You're [00:14:00] working, you're around the clock, and you're stressed out, and you're jaded. And at the end of the day, I'm watching this movie, it clicked. I go, "Oh, the restaurant critic remembers his childhood when he has the ratatouille, and remembers that he always wanted to be in the restaurant business."

And then I, at that same time, remembered at that moment... I remember this moment watching the movie. I go like, "Wait a minute. I remember when I was a kid, I always thought I was going to be like my dad and be an entrepreneur and build a company." I'd just been on this hamster wheel since high school of chasing these ribbons and medals and badges because that's all you do, and then I never asked the word 'why?'

Then I thought, "You know what? Why don't I do this thing?" It was insane, because I had worked tens of thousands of hours to get this job that I... and if I stuck with it, it would be pretty financially great. It comes at a cost, but so does everything, but it would be great, so why do this? And doing a startup is, like, a 1% chance of success.

And so I fought it and fought it, but [00:15:00] it just kept on coming back to me. And I was talking to my brother about it, and I was like, "This is insane." And I was trying to get everyone to talk me out of this thing, because you don't work that hard to get that job and then leave it. And then my brother, Tim, who's like the zen one in the family, he's like, "Sean, you've got to listen to the universe, and it'll speak to you."

And I'm like, "Eh, that sounds pretty zen and woo-woo, but thanks for advice." And then maybe a couple weeks later, I'm at the JPMorgan conference, the healthcare conference in New York City, if any of you are familiar with this thing. It's the big lollapalooza of healthcare in the investment world. And I was at a Houlihan Lokey reception, and they brought in this group called The Bumbys.

And The Bumbys come in, and there are these two... I don't even know how to describe them. They've got, like, headphones on and dark sunglasses, and they have these typewriters in front of them. And they look at you, and they give you what's called an utterly honest read on you. And it was funny because a lot of them were getting this read to people I know.

It's, like, uh, kind of passive-aggressive. And they said things like, "Oh, you look like you're really good at paddle tennis," [00:16:00] or, "You must have awesome golf clubs," and they're , like, giving them a range. And they looked at me, and they both stared at each other for a while, and then they nodded to each other.

And then they started typing this thing out, and it goes, "You're this company guy. You're afraid to take a risk, but I can see you've got this business idea in you. And you're afraid to do it, but I can see the energy emanating from outside of you for it." And it's like, "You need to go do this thing."

And this was insane. I mean, I looked at it, and they handed it to me. It's like, how do they even know this? And I went and compared notes with all these other people what they got, and no one got something like this. So I was like, "What is going on?" And then I remembered my conversation with my brother, Tim.

I said, "Well, this is the, I guess, the universe talking." And so somehow I convinced my wife that this made sense, who gets all the credit in the world, because this was insane. Basically, there's 1% chance of success, maybe 2, doing this. But somehow she agreed to [00:17:00] do this. And then the idea was, if we're going to do a startup, you've got to change the curve.

Doing a startup in New York City, the math I was doing was like, it's going to cost twice the cash to raise this thing. So if we're going to do a 1%, how do we turn a 1% chance into a 66 or a 67, 68% chance? It's like, well, we've got to lengthen the time and lower the cost of the lift. And what I did there was I said, "Okay," I did a market study.

And I said, "Where should we build this thing other than New York City?" And I looked at things like cost of living, taxes, healthcare system, university system, grade schools, weather, airport, flight data, fun, with the idea that if people weren't there, they'd want to come there, and I will be close to where I need to go anyways, so let's get ahead of the curve and pick something based upon that kind of matrix.

I looked at my algorithm. I did all the work. I got all the data. It wasn't as easy just going to ChatGPT like it was then. And at the top of my list was Nashville, Tennessee. I said, "I love Nashville. I never even thought about that. [00:18:00] Plus, there's no state income tax. It's even better."

Hey, Karma School listeners. This is Sean with a quick aside. Virtually every day, I'm having conversation with private equity firm professionals and business operators, and we're talking about the same exact thing. Where and how do we actually start with AI? The answer is, you start with people who have already done it successfully for others.

This is exactly what BluWave does. We have built a one-of-one invitation-only network of trusted AI enablement providers that top private equity firms are using right now to create real value. Private equity-grade quality, pre-vetted by BluWave, ready to go at a moment's notice. And they're not just for PE.

Whether you're a PE professional or an operating company CEO, go to Bluwave.net. That's B-L-U-W-A-V-E. We'll get you to the right resources so you can start on your AI journey right now.[00:19:00]

And so long story way too long, we moved to Nashville, got it started Labor Day weekend of 2016. Started off on the Tuesday morning after Labor Day at a Regus office in Brentwood, Tennessee. Our employee number one, Libby Hall Cornelius, joined with just a deck after having moved back from San Francisco, and we had an intern, Michael Connaughton, who was the son of Mike Connaughton, who I used to work with at one of my original PE firms.

And that was it, and we got going. And I was ready to go. All my friends told me it was a great idea, and we run, and it was a disaster out of the gates. First year, we almost did no revenue. I'll be candid. It was, like, tears. I was like, "Oh, my God, this is the first time I'm going to fail in my life." I brought some friends' and family money into this thing, and it's just going horribly wrong.

Everyone likes two of the three things, but they don't like this and that about the business. And so I was probably going to shut it down a [00:20:00] few times, and then I got over the hubris, and I finally got the confidence to ask for some help. And I go to my... really all my friends and go, "This thing seems so good on paper, but it's just failing miserably. What do we need to do?" And some really good friends are like, "Okay, here's what's wrong with it. It's this. It's that. You need to do this and that, and just get over it. I know you wanted to do it in this model that was like your old portfolio companies, but the reality is that's not working. And so you can go down swinging with something that's not going to work, or you could change, and go left and zig when others are zagging."

And so I said, "All right. Let's go zig instead of zag, and I'm just going to listen to exactly what you want." And what I learned was two things: if you've given more than you've taken in life and you ask your friends for help, they're so excited to help you, and the second thing I learned was if you have the audacity to ask your customers what they want, they'll tell you.

And I did those two [00:21:00] things, and then when we figured it out, no business turned into 10 PE firms, 20 PE firms, 30, 50, 100, 200, blah, blah, blah, and the flywheel just started spinning, and the next thing we're in the top 3% of Inc. 5000. And then we started really investing in the core of the business.

So at least a year before the ChatGPT moment, we've used this one-of-one data set that we have that is as special as you could ever imagine, and we started building our own, it was then called machine learning, but then our own AI technologies to help us super match it with speed and certainty in a way that could never be done before.

And then from there, the business picked up another level of speed, and we were in... Deloitte named us as one of the fastest, most innovative tech companies in the country, Deloitte Fast 500. And this whole time, we've been bootstrapping. And then in 2025, we said, "You know what? Let's bring in some partners."

And so we brought in some growth equity, and that helped us to even pick up things further, and further invest in our tech and our go-to-market [00:22:00] team and our capabilities. And it's just been this long serendipitous run where, as I look back at it, I'm marveled that we were able to accomplish this.

And one of the things that I'm always aware of is, what seems like in retrospect a straight arrow up and to the right is actually more like a sine curve, this wavy line that goes up and down, and up and down at an angle. And so along this whole time, and anyone who's built a business or has been deeply involved in any business will appreciate this, the whole journey has been all sorts of ups and downs and left turns and right turns.

And when I explain what it's like building a company with my friends who are still in private equity is, I'll say like in private equity I felt like I had like noise-canceling headphones on, meaning like any time there was a positive note, there was a negative note and they would cancel it out and you're in this middle kind of burn where it's just like, oh, it's like there's always a good offset with a bad because you've got 10, 12, 15 [00:23:00] companies in your portfolio, and there's always something good and something bad going on, so you never really feel the notes.

But in a private business that you're building, you get the highest highs and the lowest lows seven times a day, but you feel all the notes, and you wouldn't trade it for anything else. And I think anyone who's been through kind of that experience will appreciate that. And so it's been this amazing journey.

It's been the hardest thing I think I've ever done professionally, but also the most satisfying. And I've learned just a ton of things along the way, and I don't know if this is valuable for others, but I'll share it. One of the things we learned really early on was: values matter. I think when we were starting the business, there was a little bit of an East Coast, West Coast thing where East Coast business people would say, "Strategy matters."

West Coast would say, "Values matter." And I basically came up with this philosophy that we use a lot today is like, well, let's use the word 'and' not 'or'. It doesn't need to be a binary choice. So yeah, strategy matters, but value matters. So one of the things that we did very early [00:24:00] on that I think has really helped us is intentionally pick what our values are.

It's like teamwork. You might go faster alone, but you'll go further together. Integrity is incredibly important. Growth mindset is really critical, because the world changes fast, and you have to be looking forward, and seeing where it's going versus where it was.

And then lastly, you've got to play to win. We're putting points on the board because the score matters. And so we did that very intentionally, and then we hired to that. And the next thing that I think I learned is that values matter, but people matter just as much. Once again, it's 'and' not 'or'. If you work with great people who share your values, everything becomes easier. It flows like water downhill versus pushing things. And you're not always going to get it right, and rarely do. It's the striving and it's the continuous improvement that we have found that really makes the things more impactful.

And I think the other thing I've learned along the way in these 10 years is, speed and agility are musts. [00:25:00] Virtually every year we've played this clip to our team from this movie called Better Off Dead with John Cusack.

For those of you that are people of the 80s, you'll get this. And really what happens in the movie scene, if you imagine it, there's... You've got Lane Meyer and Monique, and they're up on this wind-crusted peak that looks death-defying. And Lane is trying to make the ski team from his high school team, and Monique is his romantic interest, and they're interested in each other.

And they're going on this, and Lane's trying to make the ski team, and he's looking over the hill. And Lane goes, "Look at this. How am I going to make it down this thing? We're all going to die if we go down this thing."

And Monique, who's the wise, smarter, more bold one goes, "Listen, Lane it's real easy. All you have to do is jump off this cliff, go down the hill really fast, and if something gets in your way, turn." And she jumps down the cliff, and she beautifully sashays and skis across every obstacle and makes it way to the down. She goes, "Okay, your turn." And he comes down and he's like, "Well, if you can do it, I can do it."

And he goes, [00:26:00] and he immediately tumbles the whole way down. And what I learned is like, yeah, you're going to... Speed and agility are a must. You're going to fall, but when you fall, just get up quickly, dust off your pants, and keep on going. And then 30 movie seconds later, Lane Myer was skiing like a pro. And that's what the first years felt like.

That's what probably some point every single year of building companies felt like with me, where, it's like, you think everything's going just smooth, and then you hit a bump and you tumble. And what matters is, at least I found, is you get up, you dust your pants off, and then you keep on going.

That's something that has stuck with me in terms of just the ethos of the why and the how that I've learned. One of the other things that I think, particularly as a business, that's been really impactful, one of our secrets to our success was: drink your own Kool-Aid. You've got to live your values. You've got to hire to it.

And the cool thing about us is we created this magic toolbox, this toolkit for business building for the private equity industry. And one of our first [00:27:00] early ahas was, like, why don't we just use ourself on ourself, and embrace the private equity way? And the private equity way that evolved was: any time when I was doing something new at first, I would bring in a true expert. I would learn from it, and then... because they had already figured out all the hard stuff. And then I would rent it in PE. And then when it was working, after learning all the hard stuff from the expert who's already done it, then I would bring inside to our portfolio companies what really worked, and then maybe keep the stuff out that didn't make sense until it made sense to bring it in, or if it didn't work, just stop it.

And the costs were low. And that was one of the big things we learned, particularly during the harder days, but even every year here we've done this in some shape or form. It's this idea of bring in an expert when you're doing something new, learn from them, quickly see what is going to be core to you and bring that inside. If it's not core, keep it outside or stop doing it, [00:28:00] and then rent it until it makes sense to own the capacity yourself, and then rapidly iterate in those loops.

And so we're going to say, "Okay, I'm going to observe what's going on, I'm going to analyze it, and I'm going to bring in a resource. I'm going to learn from it. I'm going to insource what keeps in. I'm going to keep outsourcing what doesn't needs to be insourced." In retrospect, that's one of the reasons why we were able to bootstrap for so long.

That's another maybe core thing that I would say if I were to do this all over again, I would've done that a lot earlier. And it's amazing in retrospect that it took us so long to figure out, like, "Hey, why don't we just do the same thing that we're proselytizing other companies to do?"

And so that would be one thing I think, for any company, no matter how big you are, there's a value to bringing in people who are good at what they're doing, learn from what they know, and then do it and skip all the skinning of your knees because you don't need to be like Lane Meyer and fall right out of the gates. Lane Meyer probably would've benefited from like getting a lesson or two first.

There's just been so much along this journey that we're [00:29:00] all really proud of, and I'm certainly so grateful for. I think there's a lot left to come that's super exciting. And so if you look at where we're going as a company, we're going to continue to focus on private equity heavily.

Maybe to paraphrase Mark Twain, the rumors of its demise have been greatly exaggerated, and repeatedly exaggerated probably every five years since I started in the industry in the late 90s. It's always been hard. The industry's already always evolved. There is a very long way to go in the PE industry.

We're excited to be in support of it. One of the things that I think you're going to see as customers of ours is our AI programs that we've been developing for years now are reaching kind of amazing levels. And so what has been behind the curtain and we see from our vantage will be coming out to the front of the stage quite shortly, and I think people are going to be pretty amazed by it.

So keep a lookout for that in terms of your own customer [00:30:00] experience, and the service provider experience, and things that are going to make them more successful. We're going to be extending what we do to the left and to the right, but solidly within our core value proposition. And so it's bringing new things to our customers, and you'll be hearing about some of those things shortly as well.

At the end of the day, where will BluWave go? We're going to continue to have our North Star. And when I think about our business, it's really simple. If we make two other groups successful, one with a need and one with the capability, in bringing them together at the exact time they need to know each other, we're going to do great.

But more importantly, they're going to do great first, and then all things will be fine. And essentially what this podcast is about, it's just the whole mantra is, the 'Karma School of Business' was a term I came up with years ago in PE where I was just trying to get out of my own way as a kind of a young buck.

And so, I figured out if you just do good things with and for good people, and eliminate all the other noise and distractions, the flywheel of business and life just spin faster and [00:31:00] faster, and it just becomes easier and better. And so that's going to be our North Star. It has been our North Star, will continue to be.

Just make two other groups successful, and if we do that, we do well. At the end of the day, I'm hugely appreciative of our BluWave team, our amazing service providers, and the privilege of working with the best business builders in the world within the PE industry. So I wanted to say thank you to each and every one of you who have been along this journey with us.

And I apologize for being soapboxy, but I don't... this happens maybe once a decade for me. Ultimately, though, I'm even more excited about what's to come, and can't wait for you to be part of the journey as well

That's all we have for today. Thank you for listening. Please continue to look for the Karma School of Business podcast anywhere you find your favorite podcasts. We truly [00:32:00] appreciate your support. If you like what you hear, please follow, five-star rate, review, or share. This is a free way to support the show, and it really helps us when you do this, so thank you in advance.

In the meantime, if you want to be connected with the world's best-in-class private equity-grade professional service providers, independent consultants, interim executives that are deployed and trusted by the best business builders in the world, including many hundreds of top PE firms and thousands of portfolio companies, and you can do the same whether or not you're in the PE world, please give us a call or visit our website at Bluwave.net.

That's B-L-U-W-A-V-E, and we'll support your success.

Onward.

The views and opinions expressed in this program are those of the individuals presenting and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of any other persons or entities, including those referenced herein. No representations, warranties, financial, legal, tax, or other advice are made herein.

Consult your advisors regarding any topics discussed during this [00:33:00] episode.

Private equity insights for and with top business builders, including investors, operators, executives and industry thought leaders. The Karma School of Business Podcast goes behind the scenes of PE, talking about business best practices and real-time industry trends. You'll learn from leading professionals and visionary business executives who will help you take action and enhance your life, whether you’re at a PE firm, a portco or a private or public company.

BluWave Founder & CEO Sean Mooney hosts the Private Equity Karma School of Business Podcast. BluWave is the business builders’ network for private equity grade due diligence and value creation needs.