We came together because we really like helping entrepreneurs tackle the challenges of growing a business. We had worked together previously but have very different backgrounds and experiences. The common thread was we believe we can help the next generation avoid many of the mistakes we’d seen over the years, some of which we had made ourselves.
We locked ourselves in a conference room in Austin, Texas to set our strategy in the Spring of 2022. The first question: “Who are the clients we want to work with?” The answer: entrepreneur and family-owned businesses that are big enough (meaning no startups) but not too big (go hire Goldman Sachs) came to us quickly. The answer to the second question, “What services should we offer these companies?” took more time. We knew lots of companies that need capital, some that need help selling themselves and many that just need some good old-fashioned advice. We felt strongly we collectively have those skills (not in all sectors….more on that later) but we had never heard of a successful private equity/M&A advisory/consulting firm before. That, believe it or not, got us excited.
A theme that came out of the Austin meetings was that we didn’t have religion as to the things we would not do. For example, we swore off growth capital fundraising but got stuck on “Well, what if we really know the company and sector well, really like the people and strategy, feel like we already know the right investors…would we still say ‘no’?”
A similar theme developed around the topic of which industry sectors we will focus on. The answer became, “It depends.” We feel that to invest our own capital and ask others to follow our lead requires a deep level of expertise, therefore the focus of our principal investment business is on music, live events, hospitality, media and other closely related sectors in which we have many years of hands-on experience. For our M&A Advisory business, we feel the most important factor is knowledge of the investor base and experience running a sales process. Therefore, we are confident in our capability to “bank” a wider set of sectors. Finally, we determined that some sectors, biotech for example, is best left to others.
So we launched The Laurel Group with four (at least) very real hurdles: (1) a broad range of services that are hard to condense into an elevator pitch, (2) guidelines, but no set rules for the type of companies we’d work with and the types of mandates we’d pursue, (3) sector coverage that depends on what the service is, and (4) a totally un-scalable business model. Oh, I left that last part out: We decided early on that all the Founders would be hands-on with all of our clients. Because our skills overlap and because it is hard to know what challenges our clients will face in the future, we decided we wanted each client to have full access to each of the Founders.
Our first client, Down Home Media, a new celebrity backed media company led by Tim McGraw, is an example of how we work with our clients and how “rules” have become “guidelines”. Down Home came to us as a yet-to-be funded start up and since we had sworn off startups, we initially passed. But we really liked the Founder, Tim Staples, found his vision to be compelling, so we did our best to be helpful to Tim as he launched the business. Tim in turn (we believe) found us to be quick learners who he can lean on to help him think through and even help execute parts of his strategy, allowing him to focus on the company’s core. Fast forward to fall of 2023 and:
The Laurel Group raised $2.6 million of the initial funding round and each of the Founders made personal investments
The Laurel Group is working on a number of projects for Down Home that include helping design a strategy for a new division of the company
We are paid for our work in equity—if we are willing to invest our cash to buy stock, we should be willing to invest our time for stock, right?
We are excited about our business and the work we do. If you are excited about your business and fit within the guidelines we set for our three business lines, we’d like to hear from you. If you are excited about your business and don’t quite fit….it can’t hurt to talk.
- John McAvoy
