Private Equity Funcast

The FunCast spends an hour with Macworld writer and podcast impresario Lex Friedman from The Midroll -- home of 130+ podcasts. Everything that you need to know about advertising on podcasts including listener demographics and getting started.

The FunCast spends another hour with McDermott Will & Emery LLP Partner Ryan Harris breaking down an actual private equity letter of intent. We go term by term with one of the best transaction lawyers in the business. Founders will learn all the tricks of the trade to even the playing field in their negotiation. Devin says "You are welcome".

Jim and Devin discuss the vaunted venture "pivot" and its applicability, or lack there-of in the private equity business.

Jim trades programming barbs, tips and opinions with the guru of application development, Alan Williamson.

Devin and Jim don't follow college basketball, but they have cooked up their own version of March Madness.

Bring out your debt! We've talked a lot about funding options for owners of mid sized companies but we haven't covered debt yet. Well, here you go. A detailed conversation with Ian Larkin, founder and Managing Partner of Maranon Capital. Ian describes why you should look at debt in a business like a parfait sundae (seriously, he does!) and what all those layers mean to you as an owner. He talks about the aversion most business owners have toward debt and why they might want to change their minds a little. Then at the end we kind of ramble on about things that have nothing to do with debt, private equity or fancy deserts.

Interview with Dirk Shimpach, President of goVirtualOffice -- a "NetSuite Solution provider and cloud technology advisor that helps companies find the Cloud CRM, Cloud ERP and Cloud Accounting software". Dirk and his team have worked with a number of our portfolio companies on configuring NetSuite to match our business needs. In this interview we talk about the best fits for NetSuite and things to watch out for when you are selecting and implementing cloud-based ERP solutions.

The FunCast spends an hour with McDermott Will & Emery LLP Partner Ryan Harris talking about the legal traps founders fall into when setting up their companies and when they sell them. What's the best company structure -- C Corp, S Corp, LLC? How do you handle employee equity? Hear about the infamous "Cubs side letter." What are the common issues Ryan sees when founders go to sell their business and how can you avoid them? Listening to this conversation won't make you stronger, but it sure will make you smarter! Enjoy.

Microsoft isn't going away soon as an enterprise server and platform vendor. So there's little risk in building your server platform on Microsoft in the middle market. It's important to build client interfaces that span browsers and mobile platforms, but the server layer is reliable and safe. Nadella is a good choice to move Microsoft more aggressively into the cloud with Azure -- and they've got plenty of money to do it. Congrats to the WhatsApp team and Sequoia on the sale to Facebook. There are some lessons to be learned here in the middle market.

What are the big boys thinking about tech? What are they worried about? Should you even care? We dive into the big ideas coming out of the recent CIO conference sponsored by the Wall Street Journal.