ost entrepreneurs pursuing a traditional search fund fit a type: freshly-minted MBA, little to no leadership experience, largely unproven.

Today's guest is the exception.

‍Randy Rempp had already run a company. At 29, with zero direct reports to his name, he was handed the CEO seat of a struggling insurance business bleeding $2 million a year. Six years later he'd turned it profitable to the tune of $5m EBITDA.

He just didn't own any of it.

No real upside for all that value he'd created.

That rub sent Randy looking for his own deal. So he came to search funds mid-career, not out of a top-tier MBA program, and had to earn investor trust on one thing that most searchers don't have: evidence he could already run a business.

In 2021 Randy closed on Meridian Title, a $30m-plus acquisition and one of the larger title insurance agencies in the country. That was not a starter business; it was sized to match what he'd already shown he could handle.

Listen for how Randy broke into search fund capital without the standard pedigree, the deal-saving F-reorg triggered by a Georgia Senate runoff (remember that?), and how Meridian kept growing through the worst home-sales downturn in fifty years.

Here is Randy Rempp, CEO of Meridian Title.