Search Party is a video-podcast created to elevate knowledge about the Entrepreneurship-Through-Acquisition (ETA) strategy. On a regular basis, Search Party will convene expert conversations about the best practices and opportunities in ETA, a model for business growth, career development and wealth creation becoming increasingly popular. Search Party is hosted by David Snow and produced by Elatromme.

A passionate entrepreneur and 20+ year career as a highly successful operator, Dustin most recently served as Managing Director of Koa Capital Partners, a boutique private equity firm doing direct buyouts of businesses in the lower-middle market.

Dustin is in the Search Fund Community “Hall of Fame”’, generating a 22x return on his acquisition of ProService.  Purchased in 2005 using the Search Fund investment model, ProService grew from a fledgling company of $13 million in annual revenue to well over $200 million with close to 20,000 managed worksite employees. ProService was sold at a valuation of greater than $300M and has gone on to be a national force in the HR industry.

Prior to purchasing ProService, Dustin served as the first employee and eventual GM for Ingenio.com/Keen.com, a Benchmark Capital funded Web 1.0 e-commerce company in San Francisco that eventually revolutionized its industry. As a founding member of the senior team, he oversaw all aspects of key revenue producing categories for the $100m+ revenue company up to its sale to AT&T and eventual sale to Alpine Investors. Before that, he did growth strategy consulting for Braxton/Deloitte Consulting in Los Angeles and Chicago.

Dustin has his MBA from The Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern and his BS in Business from the Marshall School of business at USC with an emphasis in Entrepreneurial Studies where he received the Best Business Plan of The Year award. Dustin is married with 3 children and loves to play soccer, fly fish and develop young leaders.

Anthony has been in the investment management industry for roughly 15 years. Prior to joining Next Coast, Walker was a Vice President in the Global Investment Research Division at Goldman Sachs. While at Goldman, Anthony was responsible for idea generation, client engagement, financial modeling, and marketing the views and opinions of Goldman Sachs related to investments in the Chemicals industry. Prior to Goldman, Walker spent five years managing long/short equities portfolios for Millennium Management and Citadel LLC, trading stocks and managing portfolios across a number subsectors within the Industrial industry.

While at Citadel, he produced the second highest Sharpe Ratio (a measure of risk-adjusted returns) within the firm’s flagship Global Equities business unit. Throughout his career Walker has held several other senior level investment professional positions, including Vice President and Research and Investment Committee Member at Ariel Investments, and Assistant Vice President at Barclays Capital.

Walker received his MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business (Finance and Entrepreneurship) and a BA in Economics and Political Science from Columbia University. He is currently Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors for Great Schools, a national non-profit and ed-tech company providing parents with data and information supporting school choice. Anthony is a resident of Austin where he lives with his wife and two daughters.