ETA Searchers, Grit and Self-Actualization

A career move to the Entrepreneurship-Through-Acquisition (ETA) search-fund market may result in any combination of bewilderment, disappointment, wealth creation and self-actualization, according to A. J. Wasserstein, a Senior Lecturer at the Yale School of Management.

Wasserstein, himself the builder of two successful businesses, has made entrepreneurship and the search fund community the subject of his teaching and academic work. As Search Party learned in a fascinating conversation, Wasserstein has developed frameworks not only about the potential of an ETA career to pave a way to self-determination and wealth, but to personal fulfillment, what psychologist Abraham Maslow calls self-actualization.

Wasserstein, together with Next Coast Legacy Managing Partners Dustin Sellers and Anthony Walker, discusses the growing awareness of the ETA career path among MBA students, the attributes necessary to embark on a high-risk professional journey. Making sure the entrepreneurial path dovetails with personal values and goals is important, says Wasserstein, because he doesn't want his students to end up "the richest divorced people, or the richest people estranged from their kids."

At the center of the self-actualization possible for CEOs of lower-middle-market businesses is the ability to directly and positively impact the lives of employees and other stakeholders, to create an entity bigger than the personal ambitions of the ETA searcher.

 

Select works from A. J. Wasserstein:

Exploring Search Fund Entrepreneur Economics https://yale.app.box.com/s/0mo483h9lmfd04bl1om9dkc7oz4xm2s6

Exploring Search Fund Entrepreneurship Using Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs as a Framework

https://yale.app.box.com/s/gz48z3i3t55oxdzqbxk1ny32v6oq775o

Including Employees in a Search Fund Waterfall https://yale.app.box.com/s/6ouw7vhe9eq6a24y63dy29mjz166o8ht

 

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