The founder’s exit and the Sunrise Capital-led MBO (2014)

Passing the limits of owner-founding by re-cutting the capital

The heart of this decision was not the avoidance of a financial crisis but the recomposition of the shareholding the founder held. For an independent mid-sized firm to break through into upstream consulting, it needs to keep hiring expensive specialists, it needs money to take on larger engagements, and it needs a professional manager to direct both. With an owner-founder holding most of the stock, assembling the two at once is difficult. Eguchi’s withdrawal and a buyout that installed Sunrise Capital as the largest shareholder were one template for business succession: crossing the limits of owner-founding with a fund’s capital and an outsider’s management.

That said, the fresh start guaranteed nothing about the growth that followed. Results just after the listing were sluggish, and the acceleration came only once it overlapped with an external tailwind — the DX demand that arrived from 2019. Even so, the founder’s withdrawal from both capital and management is what made possible a professional manager’s regime of adding people and raising rates, and thus the foundation of the later leap. How to retire the person who built the company, and to whom to pass the capital and the management next — Baycurrent’s buyout reads as one answer to that question.