Futaleufu Partners

About Futaleufu Partners

For about a decade, David Dodson had watched money pouring in to invest in search funds, but not enough experienced operators with the time and interest to mentor. So when David decided to raise a fund, he decided to do things a little differently. He wanted to use the idea of a fund to organize talent to support search fund entrepreneurs, not as a way to raise capital.

So after David found Susan, (a former student of David’s and one of the best business partners a person could hope for), Futaleufu sought out a handful of great operators, most of them from the search fund world, to join us as limited partners. They promised a commitment and enthusiasm to mentor, join boards, and help the next generation of search fund entrepreneurs—and that’s who we are about.

Which is also why, in the last twenty-five years, we’ve not increased the number of deals we do each year. We’ve stayed small for a reason: we believe the search fund model depends on mentorship.

As for the name, it comes from a river in Chile that David’s family once spent some time on. We love the name because it has a family connection, and no one knows how to pronounce it.

Team

David Dodson

David Dodson is one of the true dinosaurs of the search fund industry. He got his start working for Irv Grousbeck (the Grand Daddy of search funds) right out of the Stanford Business School and wrote the initial case material on the first two search funds (Jim Southern, and Kirk Riedinger and Jamie Turner). That’s how old he is. Having always wanted to run a company, after writing those MBA cases, he knew he wanted to raise a search fund, and Irv Grousbeck and Jim Southern were his first two investors.

David is not totally sure how many search funds he’s invested in (in fairness he’s been doing this for over thirty years) but his best guess is about 200. During that time, entrepreneurs he’s partnered with have outperformed the search fund average, and its been over a decade since any have not had a positive return…and he’s made some of his best friends. Following in Irv Grousbeck’s enormous footsteps, David now teaches at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, teaching the first MBA-level search fund course.

Susan Pohlmeyer

Susan joined forces with David to invest in search funds because she wanted to learn from the best in the business (her words, not his). She is passionate about the search fund investment model because she loves working alongside talented, driven entrepreneurs to find and acquire great companies. She currently serves on the board of Travelmax and is a board observer for Unified Dental Partners and Datum Technologies. Prior to joining Futaleufu, she covered portfolio strategy and private equity for Stanford Management Company, focusing on the lower middle market in the U.S. and Latin America. She started her career at J.P. Morgan in equity derivatives.

Susan is a CFA charter holder and holds an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business. She holds a BA in economics from Dartmouth College.