The idea of purchasing an existing company and then optimizing it to grow is one Jack Rafoth thinks about often. This process, also known as entrepreneurship through acquisition (ETA), is a strategy to become a business owner by acquiring a company, where an entrepreneur seeks the support of investors to find, acquire, operate, grow and potentially sell a small company.
“I would love to do that, but you need a lot of experience and you have to acquire the funding,” said Rafoth, a second-year full-time MBA student at the Weatherhead School of Management.
Rafoth received his bachelor’s in systems engineering at Otterbein University and during this time he had the experience of holding a couple of manufacturing-based internships.
“Throughout those experiences I found myself more interested in the finance, business management and strategy side of manufacturing, so that led me to want to go to school for my MBA,” he said.
During his first year at Weatherhead, Rafoth attended a couple of events on campus where he heard Scot Lowry, the Richard L. Osborne Professor of Entrepreneurship at Weatherhead, discuss ETA.
“As soon as I heard him talking about ETA, I knew this is exactly what I would like to do down the road,” Rafoth said.
For more than 30 years, Weatherhead has taught the practice of ETA and is one of the world’s leading ecosystems dedicated to advancing knowledge on the subject.
This past spring, Rafoth started the ETA student group, along with Alex Glatz (MGT '23) and second-year MBA student Tyler Fond, after seeing a need for supplemental information to the ETA curriculum taught in class and as another avenue to expose students to it.
As president of the group, Rafoth is looking to hold a number of events to get students interested in ETA, which include: a speaker series, competitions, workshops, alumni panels, networking opportunities, a monthly newsletter and more. Through these, Rafoth said students will be able to meet local business owners and alumni who've gone through the ETA process and will be able to provide guidance as to how to get started.
One of the larger upcoming events on Oct. 25 is the 2nd Annual Richard L. Osborne ETA Symposium, where students interested in entrepreneurship can attend and they can also participate in a pitch competition with cash prizes.
Beyond running the ETA student group, Rafoth is also a graduate assistant to the ETA initiative working directly with Lowry, and he has an internship with TransDigm Group Inc., an aerospace manufacturing company in downtown Cleveland.
TransDigm peeked Rafoth's interest after he completed a case study on the company in a class taught by Professor Scott Fine. Both Fine and the Office of Career Management helped Rafoth get an interview leading to his internship.
“I would never have those connections if I never came to Weatherhead,” Rafoth said.
At TransDigm, Rafoth works with the sales and accounting departments to communicate to customers on engineering changes that have been made to their aircraft, and to make sure these changes go through the proper approval processes, including with the Federal Aviation Administration. Previously, he was in the finance department doing scrap reporting, where he was recording, tracking, and analyzing information about the cost and causes of scrap materials being created.
TransDigm is a company that buys other companies, a concept slightly different from the ETA approach of an entrepreneur buying a company. This exposes Rafoth to how the process works on a bigger scale.
“Whether I do that for a large company, like a private equity firm or TransDigm, or if I do it for myself, I'm not positive yet,” he said. “Both of those are years away and right now I’m just building up that practical experience in this space.”