Renny Sie | Forging Relationships with Founders and Family-Owned Businesses

On this week’s episode of M&A Masters, we’re sitting down with Renny Sie, Vice President of Business Development and Investor Relations at the private equity firm Boyne Capital.

Established in 2006, Boyne Capital takes a different approach to investing—one that forges lasting and collaborative relationships with companies whose founders and families are still deeply involved in growing their businesses. It’s a term they call a value cultivator approach.

Renny says, “Partnership is extremely important to us. The fit is important because this is going to be a long-term partnership to grow this thing together and make it bigger and better for everyone.”

Listen to discover:

  • How to propel family-owned businesses to the next level—partnering NOW to prosper in the future
  • Boyne Capital’s unique value cultivator approach to the lower middle market—building the right team through focusing on relationships, recruiting, and retention
  • Why they feel that Rep & Warranty Insurance is an important component for their deals

And much more

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

TRANSCRIPT:

Patrick Stroth: Hello there. I’m Patrick Stroth, trusted authority in executive and transactional liability and president of Rubicon M&A Insurance Services. Now a proud member of the Liberty Company Insurance Broker Network. Welcome to M&A Masters where I speak with the leading experts in mergers and acquisitions. And we’re all about one thing here. That’s a clean exit for owners, founders and their investors. Today I’m joined by Renny Sie, Vice President for Business Development for Boyne Capital. Boyne Capital was established in 2006 in Miami, Florida, with a focus on investing in lower middle market companies. Boyne has a unique approach to investing. It’s an approach to forges lasting and collaborative relationships with companies whose founders and families are still deeply involved with growing their business. It’s a term they call a value cultivator approach. Renny is a pleasure to have you. Thanks for joining me today.

Renny Sie: Thank you, Patrick. It’s great to be here.

Patrick: Now, before we get into Boyne Capital and the value cultivator approach, I just think is a unique wording there. So that’s, that’s very, very interesting. Let’s start with you. What brought you to this point in your career?

Renny: Oh, gosh, where do I even start? I guess I have what you call a non traditional background. So starting from the very beginning, I was born and raised in Jakarta, Indonesia, the oldest of three siblings, the first one to actually go to college. I came to the US to attend college at California State University Fresno. So right by you. And my major was classical piano performance. After graduating from CSU Fresno, I went on to do my masters and then audition to a bunch of different schools to try to find a scholarship for me to keep going to school, because I liked school that much. Eventually ended up in University of Miami Frost School of Music doing my doctorate in classical piano performance. So did that until 2016. And then I found myself married with a young child and then realize that, oh, my I’ve been doing this for my whole life, and it’s not going to pay the bills, unfortunately. 

Patrick: Yes. 

Renny: My husband told me I should go back to business school and get MBA and I told him, he was crazy. But I’m glad I took the chance, went back to business school at University of Miami did a full time MBA three year program there. Interned with Goldman Sachs in the summer, took a full time job with them in their Florida office. Three years in learned a lot from Goldman. Really enjoyed working there. But always had a knack with entrepreneurship and private equity and that world. My dad is an entrepreneur. So I got in touch with Derek McDowell at Boyne Capital. And technically I basically just asked him for a job and he gave me he gave me a chance. So that was more than three and a half years ago, I’m still sitting happily here at Boyne Capital. My primary focus here at Boyne is deal originations and LP relations. So what that means is, I connect us with the potential sellers or what we call potential partners.

Patrick: And so you’re around that connection. Is there any, you know, the skill set you have from being a high level concert pianist, into the financial world? I just it that’s a really unique matchup.

Renny: Yeah, I would say, you know, contrary to popular belief, people think that artists or musicians are on a creative side. Or more prone to creativity, you know, an art side. I’m not. And I think most of my colleagues in the music world isn’t either. We’re trained to like stare at tiny little notes and tiny little details. So I would say that we have really attentive to details. That’s one.

Patrick: Focus, yes.

Renny: And then when, focus and then the discipline, you’re used to like practicing eight, nine hours a day, I guess, without paying for, without, like actual benefits, right? Other than getting better. So those skills that like I brought over and I have found like my training in classical music has been very helpful.

Patrick: Tell me about Boyne. And why don’t we start with this? How did they come up with the name because that usually gives you some insight into the culture and the founder.

Renny: Yeah, so like I said, Boyne was founded in 2006 by Derek McDowell, our CEO and Managing Partner who today still very involved in all aspects of the firm. The name Boyne Capital came from River Boyne in Ireland. A very pretty river. So I’m not sure about what specials are of Boyne, I should probably educate myself about that. But that’s where it came from. We are a lower middle market focused private equity firm. We are based in Miami, there is 26 of us sitting in Miami, which is crazy, because when I joined three years ago, there’s only 16, 17 of us. 

So we have grown a lot, which is exciting time. And lower middle market is what we define as companies with EBITDA between three to $15 million, typically revenues under $100 million. And you asked me why lower middle market space? You know, it’s because I think we can provide the most value in this space. You know, lower middle market companies, often are family owned, you know, and they usually do not have either the infrastructure or the capital to grow on their own without eating into the sellers, or the management teams time and personal capital, right. So that’s where we came in. We we like to partner with business owners management team, or, you know, I guess the sellers, in this case. 

We do majority recapitalization and usually position ourselves as a solution provider. Because if you think about it, most business owners think about PE partnerships as an exit route, right? Is like oh a PE firm wants to buy me, therefore, I must exit 100% and give give them the keys to my house. But that’s not usually the case. Especially not with us. With us, it’s not 100% exit. And for the most part, we actually do not encourage that. We encourage them to hang on to a minority equity, because we will help them grow their business. Together, we’re going to maximize enterprise value, and then they will actually have a much bigger exit the second time around.

Patrick: Yeah, that second bite of the apple.

Renny: Correct. Yeah. And that’s where the value cultivator concept come in, right. We always joke internally. We’re not good at leverage buyout, but we’re excellent in leverage buy in. So we buy into those, those management teams and those owners of the businesses and really support them through their growth initiatives. And, and there are many ways that I can go into detail with examples of how we how we support them.

Patrick: Well, I think that is very helpful, because there are a lot of owners and founders that they reach an inflection point, some of them are looking for an exit. And then it says, well, do they really want an exit? Or do they just want to change, they just don’t know how to do it. And as we’re finding a lot of owner founder businesses, where an owner can, you know, commences a process, then all of a sudden, is reluctant and starts dragging their feet there, which can get very, very frustrating, because they really didn’t want to give up something that was the core of their life. And, you know, and there are those that do want to do that. And there’s an avenue but the others that they don’t want to give everything away, they’ve spent a lifetime building something. 

And there, as I mentioned, the inflection point where they’re, they’re too small to be enterprise, but they’re too big to be small now. And so what do they do? And they just don’t know where to go. And unfortunately, and this is why we wanted to go and meet with Boyne Capital is that if they don’t know, the owners of founders, if they don’t know about Boyne Capital, they may default to you know, partner with a strategic that may not have their best interests at heart, or they’re going to go to an you know, an institution and you know. Where, where if you go to an institution, you’re going to get underserved, you’re going to get overpriced, and you’re not going to get what you really wanted. 

But a lot of people don’t know about this. And the thing with Boyne Capital particularly is, okay, you started in 2006. In 2019, there are over 5000 private equity firms now, okay. More than half of them look to the lower middle market. And so, you know, you have to have something unique that comes and speaks to these owners and founders depending on what they want. If the ones that want an exit, they can go someplace others that want to get to that other side and see how to cross the finish line. They can come to an organization like Boyne. You mentioned that with your value cultivator approach. There are a couple ways that that manifests. Give us a couple of examples if you could.

Renny: So for most of our platform, investments, like I said, typically they don’t have the necessary key executives in place. Typically, like a CFO or controller, that they would actually have to go out and hire and recruiting and hiring takes a lot of time away from the CEOs from running the business. Right. So our team, our operations team in house has a team of operations people that actually work hand in hand with the portfolio company management team to do financial reporting and you know, executing their growth plans, talking through strategy, and within the team, my colleague, who’s whose title is VP of human capital, and she’s been instrumental in hiring and adding key hires to portfolio companies as they become on board so the management team doesn’t have to. 

You save time, and that’s definitely a valuable thing to present to potential partners. And then also, of course, you know, when when you’re trying to grow by acquisition, you’re trying to do it on your own. It is a huge undertaking, right? Even if you’re doing it, not to sell your company, but to acquire companies to grow your own. It is helpful to have somebody like us, you know, with capital and more than just capital, to help you execute, identify targets and make sure that you’re going down the right path.

Patrick: Yeah, experience helps, doesn’t it?

Renny: Yeah, for sure. For sure. And also, like, given the pandemic, some businesses, you know, thrive, some businesses didn’t. But I bet a lot of business owners would not want to go go through that again, alone. Helpful always have a partner.

Patrick: Yeah, I can imagine. Well, the other thing is key when you’re, you got the skill set with the human capital, particularly now, it’s not only a challenge to recruit, but it’s retain. And I think, probably what you have is a great skill set and an advantage on that front. The other thing that’s interesting is that you’re not coming in and the the procession with a lot of private equity firms from outside is that the private equity firm is going to come in, as you said, load them up on debt and do a lot of financial reengineering. You don’t do that. You’re looking at no, we want we want to go ahead, and we’re going to reset and get some operations and get people in.

Renny: That’s right. So for from our side, partnership is extremely important, right? The fit is important, because we have the mindset of like this is going to be a long term partnership to grow this thing together to make it bigger, make it better for everyone. So it’s not just kind of like acquire and hold or like come in and clean house and put in as much as our people on the board. No, it’s not that. So every single major decision making is made in partnership with management team. So we think that’s very important. Again, there’s like something for everyone, right? So if someone wants to, like retire 100% and hand over the keys, probably not for us. Like if someone who wants to actually a partner who supports their growth and willing to roll up our sleeves and actually do the work. Like putting in infrastructure putting in NetSuite doing key hires and actually clean up everything and make it you know, better and more more professional, then we would probably be a good fit.

Patrick: Talk about, you mentioned lower middle market, where you’ve got owner and founder involved. Fill out the profile. What’s the profile of Boyne Capital’s ideal target? What are you looking for?

Renny: So aside from the financial profile, three to 15 million EBITDA, revenue under 100, typically what we look for some some a business with good growth potential, proven profitability. I guess that’s probably kind of normal. But someone who has grown their business to a point that they can’t anymore, or they need help to do more, and they want to do more, right. So that’s the key. So like you said, it’s inflection point, but they want to push through that inflection point. Instead of like okay, this inflection point, and I think I’m done for the day. And in terms of industries, we’re pretty agnostic. We like business services, more acid like businesses, you know, in a bunch of different different verticals. And we have an areas of interest that we’ll list on our website, if you want to go and check it out. But most importantly, it’s a partnership. It has to be with the right management team, yeah.

Patrick: So that’s the, that’s where the fit is. Any issues on geographical?

Renny: We invest in US and Canada. If you look at our current active portfolio, portfolio companies or even former portfolio companies is all over the place. We have companies in Florida, California, Wisconsin, Kansas City. Officially, we are looking for investments in Canada, we just haven’t found one yet.

Patrick: One of the recent trends has been happening in mergers and acquisitions and why we’ve had such a big growth in private equity is the successful transition that M&A transactions are having right now. They’re happening more efficiently. They’re happening, cheaper, faster, all those other wonderful terms that you have, and one of the reasons why the industry has gone from a few 100 private equity firms to 5000 today is that the transactions themselves are a lot easier to execute. And one of the byproducts of that, or one of the creators of that has been that there’s been a product out in the insurance world called reps and warranties insurance. 

And what it has done is really elegantly transferred risk away from buyer versus seller, to a third party with deeper pockets so that if both parties can transfer risk for reasonable price, okay, deals go forward. And not only do they close, but then the post closing transition is that much easier, because again, you don’t have one party against another. And so you know, don’t take my word for it. Renny, good, bad or  indifferent. What’s your experience been with rep and warranty insurance?

Renny: I totally agree with you, Patrick. We have had a very good experience using it as a way to take a major area of buyer seller negotiation off the table. For many of our transactions. I think we use it in about like 80% of our platform transactions now. And it removes the often contentious issue of escrow size and exposure cap for seller indemnification. And it gets more cash in their pockets at closing. And it still protects us from from unknown issues in the business that are discovered, put close. So we’re a big proponent of rep and warranty. And we will, we will continue to keep using rep and warranty insurance. And now the rep and warranty insurance market is so robust. So there’s we can typically find good coverage and options for pricing.

Patrick: I could not have said it better myself. Thank you. Thank you so much. I think one of the great things about the platform we want to bring to people’s attention in the audience is that reps and warranties used to be a product reserved for deals at $100 million dollar enterprise value and up. They had rigorous due diligence requirements, financial requirements, all those things, and the price was still relatively good. But the eligibility criteria to get in was difficult, particularly for the lower middle market. And what’s great is there’s been a new product that’s been introduced that provides a sell side rep and warranty policy. And it protects sellers and the buyers involved in deals at a $15 million transaction value and down. 

So you can buy up to $10 million in limits on a 10 or $11 million company and cover everything all the way up to the thing. It’s a fraction of the cost. And what’s nice is the more that organizations like yours and lower middle market are aware of this because it’s not only good for platform acquisition, but for add ons, which usually you know, you had to go bear because they weren’t eligible. Now it’s there. So it’s one of those things we wanted to make sure we pointed out to everybody. Renny, as we just turned the corner from 2021 to 2022. And I don’t see robust M&A activity dropping anytime soon. Share with me, what trends do you see either an M&A or Boyne Capital? Tell me what you see.

Renny: So I can’t predict your future, Patrick. I don’t have a crystal ball. But what I can tell you is like I think the trend of what we were seeing in 2021 has been going to continue. Just from macro environment, the pandemic, I guess, is still here, surprisingly, right. So people still have that mentality, probably they don’t want to go through another round of difficulties alone. So that’s going to drive some activity. And some people probably have some difficult situations happen with, you know, house, or family that got them to rethink their priorities. And maybe they want to step back, retire from the business. And some people probably want to start their own business because like they quit their corporate jobs, right. So those definitely will contribute to stronger M&A environment. And things like tesco changes, also. So a lot of things that could potentially make it even more robust, or whatever it is, you know, like I see just good things, hopefully happening in 2022. We are excited to see what it has in store for us.

Patrick: I completely agree. I mean, one of the things that I’m stealing from a prior guest is that, you know, we have economic cycles come and go. Pandemics are going to come and go and tax changes are going to come and go. One thing that is gonna be constant is time. And as you know, a lot of these owners and founders, many are baby boomers, they’re getting to the point where they’re going to reach their own personal inflection point. And that’s that’s going to be father time. So I think that there’s going to be a very large transition as we go forward. And that’s going to carry forward I believe, sincerely for the next couple of years. But, you know, we’ll keep our fingers crossed and hopefully, things things will move as they’ve been moving. So this is good. Now Rennym, how can our audience members find you and Boyne Capital?

Renny: First place to check is our website and www.boynecapital.com. And it’s spelled B as in boy, O as an Oscar, Y, N as in Natalie, E as an echo capital.com. You can find myself there with my contact information. It’s Renny Sie, I always tell people it’s like Jenny with an R. It’s easier. My email is rsie@boynecapital.com. It’s spelled R as in Robert, S as in Sierra, I as in echo. No, I as in Italy, E as in echo @boynecapital.com and you can call me at 305-856-9500.

Patrick: Fantastic, Renny Sie from Boyne Capital absolute pleasure talking to you in this value cultivator approach. I really, really like it. It’s very, very refreshing. It’s just, it’s this abundance thing where you take something you’re just going to make more for everybody and I think it’s just very, very positive. Thanks for joining me today.

Renny: Thank you for having me, Patrick. Take care.

Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn

Join Our Newsletter

ZoomInfo - Consultation
Start Over