Investing in US Small Businesses and Employee Ownership
Nov 04, 2020 7:30 AM
Michael Schahfer, Teamshares
Investing in US Small Businesses and Employee Ownership

Small businesses employ almost half the workforce and U.S. Baby Boomers, who own at least 2.3 million of them, need to sell over the next decade. Attempted sale processes fail 80% of the time. There just aren’t enough buyers. Employees are the natural buyers but don’t have the risk-tolerance, money, or experience to do it alone. Teamshares is solving this problem by buying companies from retirement-age owners and transitioning them to majority employee ownership over 10+ years. Teamshares buy companies from retiring owners, seed employee ownership, incorporate our financial software and education, and plug them into our peer network. The team has successfully completed the first three small business transitions and employee-ownership conversions at Teamshares in 1Q20, the second of which was Planforce Group, an architecture firm right here in greater Minneapolis.

Alex Eu is a co-founder of Teamshares, a venture backed company helping convert small businesses to be employee owned. He is also President of All Type Electric, a family and employee owned electrical contractor and a co-founder of Libero Sports, an emerging markets soccer agency. He previously worked at investment firm The Chernin Group and investment bank Perella Weinberg Partners

Mike Schahfer is the Director of Business Operations at Teamshares where he works on building a smooth onboarding and transition process for our companies. Mike started his career at the Boston Consulting Group before working in operations at a N.Y. based charter school network called Uncommon Schools. He received his B.A. from Duke University and remains a huge fan of its basketball team. 

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