oday's interview is the story of a searcher who launched the first search fund in a small country, and over the last 6 years has built a category leader.

Nicolás Lulli and his two partners raised capital from US investors to buy a business in Peru.

They found and acquired their target in 2020 during the depths of Covid.

The business had $1m of EBITDA and offered a variety of services, including physical document storage or, as the industry calls it, records management.

Peru imposed very strict rules during Covid, which crushed Nick's business. That $1m of earnings dropped to zero in his and his partners' first year of ownership.

But not only did they save the business, they've since grown it into a powerhouse in the Andean region with $10m of EBITDA.

And the future looks brighter still.

Today Nick lives outside Boston, his base from which he works on the business.

But listen for how he worked in the business on the ground in Lima for the first five years.

It was a very difficult and operationally intense half-decade of living and breathing the business every day.

Many of the standout stories on Acquiring Minds share this pattern: the entrepreneur works in the business for years, learning, operating, becoming an expert, earning the right to only then work on the business.

Recent examples include Jerod Pierce, who grew his little $500k SDE HVAC business to over $6m in EBITDA before exiting to private equity for high 8 figures.

Aizik Zimmerman has grown his plumbing business J. Blanton from $6m to $25m in revenue in 3 years by embracing founder mode.

And of course Steve Carroll, who bought a mechanical contractor that he operated himself, painfully, for the first year. Today Kelso Industries does over a billion in revenue.

Nicolás, Jerod, Aizik, Steve — all examples of entrepreneurs who did not shy away from being the operator themselves.

Now don't get me wrong: it is important to see a path to working on your business. You will hit a ceiling if you can't get graduate from in to on.

But often years of working in the business are required or, said better, rewarded.

The credibility, the battle scars, the expertise you build over years of operations become the foundation from which you eventually grow your business to new heights.

You'll notice that the format of the interview is a bit different, including the presence of my co-host and partner in Minds Capital Niklas James. This is a cross-post from the Minds Capital Podcast.

If you haven't checked out MCP yet, the interviews over there focus on the independent sponsor model of business buying. We publish weekly interviews with sponsors and other successful players in that ecosystem. Check it out: Minds Capital Podcast.

OK, here is Nicolás Lulli, launcher of the first search fund in Peru, and builder of Polysistemas.

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