DealQuest Podcast with Corey Kupfer Podcast Por Corey Kupfer arte de portada

DealQuest Podcast with Corey Kupfer

DealQuest Podcast with Corey Kupfer

De: Corey Kupfer
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Why do some companies grow by leaps and bounds while others only inch forward? Simple. They embrace Deal-Driven Growth in addition to organic growth! DealQuest is where you learn how to strategize, prepare for, find, and complete deals to grow your company faster. Listen in as host Corey Kupfer takes you behind the scenes with some of the world’s most fascinating deal-savvy business leaders. This is the one place where they can share openly the secret to deals they have done (or failed to do) and the issues, opportunities, benefits, pitfalls and lessons learned. Here you learn first-hand all about: Powerful deals that require little capital, mergers, acquisitions, and tuck-ins, Joint ventures, partnerships, and strategic alliances, licensing, raising capital and onboarding key employees, negotiating, structuring, finding, valuing, closing and integrating deals. Don’t be the one at the table who doesn’t grasp the power of Deal-Driven Growth!© 2025 014078 Economía Gestión y Liderazgo Liderazgo Política y Gobierno
Episodios
  • Episode 382: Building Enterprise Value Through Fee-Based Transitions with David Lau

    Episode 382: Building Enterprise Value Through Fee-Based Transitions with David Lau
    Dec 17 2025
    From chief marketing officer at the first internet bank to building the leading annuity platform for RIAs, David Lau shares proven strategies for raising capital, navigating public company challenges, and why converting commission-based revenue to fee-based can multiply your exit value by five times. In this episode of the DealQuest Podcast, host Corey Kupfer sits down with David Lau, founder and CEO of DPL Financial Partners, who has raised over $500 million across multiple ventures and built DPL into a platform serving more than 10,000 advisors at over 3,500 RIA firms. WHAT YOU'LL LEARN: In this episode, you'll discover why organic growth matters far more than market growth when acquirers evaluate your business, how converting commission-based annuity business to fee-based can multiply both your revenue and your exit multiple, the real tradeoffs of taking institutional capital and signing up for aggressive growth, the critical difference between venture capitalist optimism and private equity scrutiny, and how recognizing when your business has "run its course" can open the door to building something bigger. DAVID'S JOURNEY: David's career began as chief marketing officer of Telebank, the first internet bank, where he helped raise over $500 million. When preparing to go public, the stock jumped from $17 to $150 in weeks before Goldman Sachs stabilized pricing at $105. He later built Jefferson National, an insurance carrier he sold to Nationwide. That experience taught him the valuable part was distribution, not the capital-intensive balance sheet, leading directly to founding DPL in 2018. KEY INSIGHTS: A billionaire David met admitted he "mistook a bull market for brilliance." Acquirers only pay premium multiples for organic growth. If you did nothing different over the last decade as an RIA, you're making twice as much just from market performance. Buyers know this. Converting from commission to fee-based transforms exit potential with three times the revenue and five times the multiple, while expanding your buyer pool. DPL's technology reviews 2,500 policies per hour, and a significant portion of DPL's $4 billion in annuity sales were M&A related. When launching DPL, David planned to bootstrap until meeting Todd Boehly. Taking institutional capital means signing up for aggressive growth where some team members won't make it to the next stage. Venture capitalists are optimists who see your vision. Private equity investors see everything that can go wrong. Perfect for RIA owners considering M&A, hybrid advisors evaluating fee-based transitions, and entrepreneurs weighing capital raising decisions. FOR MORE ON THIS EPISODE: https://www.coreykupfer.com/blog/davidlau FOR MORE ON DAVID LAU: https://www.dplfp.com https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-lau-b6449b7/ https://x.com/dpl_fp FOR MORE ON COREY KUPFER: https://www.linkedin.com/in/coreykupfer/ https://www.coreykupfer.com/ Corey Kupfer is an expert strategist, negotiator, and dealmaker. He has more than 35 years of professional deal-making and negotiating experience. Corey is a successful entrepreneur, attorney, consultant, author, and professional speaker. He is deeply passionate about deal-driven growth. He is also the creator and host of the DealQuest Podcast. Get deal-ready with the DealQuest Podcast with Corey Kupfer, where like-minded entrepreneurs and business leaders converge, share insights and challenges, and success stories. Equip yourself with the tools, resources, and support necessary to navigate the complex yet rewarding world of dealmaking. Dive into the world of deal-driven growth today! Episode Highlights with Timestamps [00:00] - Introduction: David Lau's journey to building DPL Financial Partners [04:00] - Capital raising at Telebank: $500 million raised, stock jumping from $17 to $150 [08:00] - The tradeoffs of taking institutional capital and signing up for aggressive growth [12:00] - Venture capitalists as optimists versus private equity investors who see downside [16:00] - Why choosing the right capital partners matters more than just getting funded [20:00] - How DPL solved the RIA insurance problem with commission-free products [24:00] - Converting to fee-based: Three times the revenue and five times the multiple [28:00] - Why organic growth matters more than market growth in valuations [33:00] - The future of RIA consolidation and when to sell a business [40:00] - Freedom: Working with Russian defectors and gaining perspective Guest Bio David Lau is founder and CEO of DPL Financial Partners, the leading annuity platform for RIAs. Since 2018, DPL has worked with 20 insurance carriers and built an advisor base of more than 10,000 advisors from over 3,500 RIA firms. Before founding DPL, David was COO of Jefferson National, which he helped build and sell to Nationwide. Earlier, he served as chief marketing officer at Telebank, the first internet bank, where he helped raise over $500 million. His work has been covered in The Wall ...
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    42 m
  • Episode 381: The Psychology Behind Successful Exits with Dave Hersh

    Episode 381: The Psychology Behind Successful Exits with Dave Hersh
    Dec 10 2025
    What if losing your life savings on your first investment at age 27 became the catalyst for understanding why 90% of startups get stuck for the same psychological reasons? That's exactly what happened to Dave Hersh, founding CEO of Jive, board partner at Andreessen Horowitz, and author of Reignition. Dave grew Jive from an open-source project to a NASDAQ IPO, bootstrapping to $12 million over five years before raising venture capital. But when he watched Atlassian, a comparison company that started at the same time, stay on their original trajectory and become worth over $20 billion while Jive eventually died on the public markets, he realized fear and insecurity had driven his capital decision rather than genuine strategy. That painful lesson shaped everything Dave now teaches as an executive coach and General Partner at Metamorph Partners. After working with hundreds of stuck companies, he discovered that 90% of failures trace back to the same psychological patterns. Not cash. Not product market fit. Not competition. Subconscious patterns driving decisions without founders knowing. The statistics are sobering. Between 80 to 95% of founders suffer mental health issues while running their companies. Even successful founders have an 85% chance of experiencing depression or struggles for up to 10 years post-exit. Only 15% are truly thriving after they sell. Dave introduces his inner board meeting framework, which helps founders identify the internal parts driving major decisions. The child wanting safety. The hero wanting to save everyone. The warrior that cannot let go. When you understand these patterns, you can work toward compromises that break through stalemates. The conversation covers when and why to raise capital versus bootstrap, the transition process between identities that most founders skip, and the human-first competitive moats that will define success in the AI era. For founders navigating capital decisions, stuck companies, or the complex terrain after exit, this episode offers a different lens on what actually determines outcomes. FOR MORE ON THIS EPISODE: https://www.coreykupfer.com/blog/davehersh FOR MORE ON DAVE HERSH:https://www.linkedin.com/in/davehersh/https://one-in-ten-thousand.beehiiv.com/ FOR MORE ON COREY KUPFERhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/coreykupfer/https://www.coreykupfer.com/ Corey Kupfer is an expert strategist, negotiator, and dealmaker. He has more than 35 years of professional deal-making and negotiating experience. Corey is a successful entrepreneur, attorney, consultant, author, and professional speaker. He is deeply passionate about deal-driven growth. He is also the creator and host of the DealQuest Podcast. Get deal-ready with the DealQuest Podcast with Corey Kupfer, where like-minded entrepreneurs and business leaders converge, share insights and challenges, and success stories. Equip yourself with the tools, resources, and support necessary to navigate the complex yet rewarding world of dealmaking. Dive into the world of deal-driven growth today! Episode Highlights with Timestamps [00:00] - Introduction: Dave Hersh's journey from dot-com era to executive coaching [02:30] - Growing up in Newport, Rhode Island with no entrepreneurial modeling [05:15] - First entrepreneurial experience: selling ninja weapons to neighborhood kids [07:45] - Arriving in New York on September 10th, 2001 and founding Jive [12:00] - Bootstrapping to $12 million over five years without outside capital [16:30] - The Facebook moment and decision to raise venture capital in 2006 [21:00] - Why founders equate raising money with success and the 10% reality [25:45] - The Atlassian comparison and what could have been a $20 billion outcome [30:15] - Mental health statistics: 80-95% of founders suffer while running companies [34:00] - Post-exit malaise: 85% of successful founders struggle for up to 10 years [43:00] - Identifying internal parts: the child, hero, warrior, and insecure parts [51:30] - Human-first moats in the AI era Guest Bio Dave Hersh is an executive coach, speaker, and investor based in San Francisco with over 30 years of experience in strategy, startups, and conscious leadership. He was the founding CEO of Jive, which he grew from an open-source project to a NASDAQ IPO. He also spent two years as a Board Partner (investor) at the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. He is the author of Reignition, a playbook for helping startups get unstuck and find their breakthrough, and is working on a new book about enlightened leadership in the era of AI. Dave currently serves as General Partner at Metamorph Partners. Host Bio Corey Kupfer is an expert strategist, negotiator, and dealmaker with more than 35 years of professional deal-making and negotiating experience. Corey is a successful entrepreneur, attorney, consultant, author, and professional speaker deeply passionate about deal-driven growth. He is the creator and host of the DealQuest Podcast. Show Description Do you want ...
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    43 m
  • Episode 380: Build a Winning Deal Program with Strategic Planning

    Episode 380: Build a Winning Deal Program with Strategic Planning
    Dec 3 2025
    From jumping straight to deal structure to building repeatable acquisition programs that scale, Corey Kupfer shares the exact whiteboarding process he uses with clients to create successful deal programs across M&A, joint ventures, licensing, and any deal-driven growth strategy. In this solocast episode of the DealQuest Podcast, host Corey Kupfer walks through the five critical steps that must come before deal structure when building a repeatable deal program. Drawing on 35+ years of deal-making experience and countless whiteboarding sessions that have helped create platforms completing dozens of transactions, Corey reveals why most attorneys start in the wrong place and how proper planning separates successful programs from expensive mistakes. WHAT YOU'LL LEARN: In this episode, you'll discover why deal structure should be the sixth step in your process, not the first, and how to identify your personal and business motivations before pursuing any deal program. Corey shares the five whys technique from Honda's former CEO to uncover your real drivers, how to define your ideal target or partner profile to avoid wasting time on opportunities that don't fit your strategic criteria, and why your value proposition must differentiate you from competitors who may have more capital. You'll learn how to assemble the right deal team with both internal and external expertise, why building a repeatable model before doing individual deals prevents cap table nightmares and integration problems, and the power of having template documents ready to demonstrate you're a serious player. The framework applies whether you're pursuing acquisitions, joint ventures, licensing deals, franchising, or any other deal-driven growth approach. THE WHITEBOARDING PROCESS: Most clients come to Corey asking about deal structure. What should the terms be? Should they pay cash or offer equity? What about earnouts? These are important questions, but they're not where you should start. After doing whiteboarding sessions with countless clients over 35 years, Corey can say with complete confidence that every single one has gotten significant value from the process. The firms that skip these steps end up with inconsistent deal structures, cap table problems, and integration nightmares. The companies that do this right create efficient, repeatable processes that let them scale their deal programs. THE INTERNAL JOURNEY: Corey often talks about things other lawyers don't discuss. He focuses on the internal journey, making sure business leaders and executives move forward on deals from the right place. When you get to wherever you think you want to go, you should actually be happy and satisfied, and it should help you achieve your objectives and goals. Too many entrepreneurs pursue growth strategies based on external pressures or assumptions about what they think they should be doing, based on entrepreneurial wisdom out there. They grow and do things in ways that don't actually end up making them happy and satisfied and aren't necessarily best for their business. STEP ONE: START WITH YOUR WHY: The first question in every whiteboarding session is why. Not just the corporate why, although that matters. Corey wants to know your personal why as the founder or executive driving this strategy. If your why is geographic expansion because your clients need services in other markets, that's legitimate. If your why is adding capabilities that will create a better integrated client experience, that works too. If your why is increasing enterprise value before an exit in five or ten years, there's no judgment about that. You just need to be clear on what drives you, because that clarity will shape every subsequent decision. Corey uses the five whys technique, which comes from the former CEO or chairman of Honda. You ask why five times, going deeper with each question. Why do you want to grow? To get bigger. Why do you want to get bigger? To serve clients better. Why will that serve clients better? Because they have needs we currently send elsewhere, and integration would improve their experience. Why does that matter to you? Because I genuinely care about my clients and believe this will make them happier while helping our company grow. That depth of understanding separates deal programs that succeed from those that become expensive distractions. STEP TWO: DEFINE YOUR TARGET PROFILE: Once you know your why, you can determine who you should be targeting. This is where many firms waste tremendous time and energy. Doing deals is a distraction from running your business, especially if you don't have a dedicated corporate development team with finance people, legal resources, and integration specialists. You need to be surgical about who you pursue. Think about the wealth management space, which Corey works in extensively. There are huge numbers of buyers right now. The market is incredibly competitive. If you're trying to compete with private equity backed ...
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    27 m
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