From Fired Searcher to $50M in Deals in One Year | Kevin Hong, Caprae Capital

Kevin Hong is a former searcher who was fired from the company he acquired and is now the founder of Caprae Capital, a tech-enabled lower middle market investment platform behind SaaSquatch Leads, Search as a Service, and a growing portfolio of businesses.After years as an entrepreneur, Kevin turned to search as a more de-risked path to ownership. But his experience running a data center services business turned into a battle over governance, board control, seller alignment, and strategy. Instead of disappearing after being removed, he went public, interviewed other terminated searchers, and began publishing investor rankings and operator feedback in an effort to bring more transparency to the search ecosystem.In this episode, Kevin discusses:Why search appealed to him, how he approached his acquisition, and what ultimately led to his firingWhat he thinks traditional search gets wrong about governance, boards, and operator-investor alignmentHow Caprae works, what he means by “rewriting LMM PE from the source code,” and why he believes founder-led, tech-enabled models can outperform the traditional playbookWhat he learned from surveying terminated searchers and why he believes the industry needs more transparency as it scalesSend us Fan MailSupport the showFind us on Apple, Spotify, Amazon, and YouTube.