Our HISTORY: We Began – and Thrived – in
TURBULENT TIMES
The year 1935 marked the middle of the Great Depression. Unemployment was at an all-time high of 25%, capital was nearly impossible to access, and business bankruptcies were commonplace. FDR, elected President in 1932, declared a "Bank Holiday" to stop the run on the banks in 1933. His wide-sweeping and controversial social programs were being vigorously debated.
With this alarming landscape for a backdrop, Nathaniel Foote Bigelow formed his own firm, then called Bigelow & Company. He set out to help owner-managed companies run their businesses more effectively, and access capital to expand.
The 1970s Marked a Shift Toward Advising
on MERGERS & ACQUISITIONS
In the 1970's, Nat brought aboard a team of seasoned, professional management-oriented consultants who grew the consultative aspect of the firm with a strong emphasis toward strategy (how to build sustainable enterprise value) and merger/acquisition (how to capture enterprise value).
As the capital markets evolved in the late 1970's and early 1980's, Bigelow responded by raising large amounts of capital in equity and debt markets for its owner-manager clients. Business combinations became an increasingly important way for owner-managed firms to grow. An important focus for Bigelow became what happens "after the marriage."
Bigelow Principals Go NARROW & DEEP, Advising
Only Successful ENTREPRENEUR OWNER-MANAGERS
By the 1990's, the ownership of Bigelow had transitioned to its current owners, and the corporate form and name were changed accordingly to The Bigelow Company LLC. While the firm enjoyed considerable success with a wide variety of clients, including advising business units of IBM and American Express on specialty acquisitions, it became increasingly clear that our passion and creative energies were fueled from the opportunity to work side-by-side with owner-managers.
The Age of the ENTREPRENEUR
Without entrepreneurs and the new firms they create — firms that create nearly all the net new jobs in our economy every year — we would have no new wealth to support either the government or the non-profit sector. Government can’t create wealth, nor can the non-profit sector. Only for-profit firms can create wealth, pay taxes, and secure the economy's future. And entrepreneurs are central to this process.
From the socially desirable viewpoint, a cursory glance at the names of the one hundred largest private charitable foundations in the U.S. proves that entrepreneurs have made larger contributions to the not-for-profit social sector organizations than any other kind of donor through their private charitable foundations: Gates (now including Buffet), Ford, Getty, Wood, Kellogg, MacArthur, Mellon, Moore, Hewlett, and Lilly, to name a few (Foundation Center, 2009).
Taylor et al. (2009) further estimates that an additional $5 to $6 trillion (that's $5 to $6 thousand billion) in new charitable capital will be donated by entrepreneurs in the next twenty years. Many donors are inclined to have these funds spent on causes they feel passionately about during their lifetime (or shortly thereafter).
This is markedly different from wealth creation in the 20th century, which frequently focused on providing wealth to large numbers of family members and for future generations to come.
Technology & Private Equity Have Radically
Changed the LANDSCAPE
The first private equity firms were formed only in the 1980's, yet by 2010 there are several thousand. Each of these firms has raised over $100 million, and many are focused on private, owner-managed enterprises. Valuations in the private transaction market are inherently "inefficient," meaning there is typically a wide range of opinion about the intrinsic value of owner-managed firms (as evidenced by the Indications of Interest we receive). Today, it is customary for us to find a range of over 50% around the median of offers — both strategic and private equity. This challenging feature of the private capital market (unlike public markets) motivated us to develop a highly effective proprietary methodology for finding the best fit investor who will most appreciate our client firms.
With our state of the art tools, technology has utterly leveled the playing field between large financial "supermarkets" and independent firms like Bigelow. Without a doubt, there are now dis-economies of scale in firms that work in professional fields like ours.At the same time, our work has become increasingly psychological, both in understanding the impact of behavioral economics on markets and investor behavior, and in our role as advisors. Helping our clients work through their complex personal and professional choices is a critical part of our work.
Our clients — and The Bigelow Company itself — represent a new breed of entrepreneurs, men and women who are concerned with more than the financial transaction.
Work is personal. Why would you be a prisoner of a bureaucratic organization if you have the unique ability to bring value? We relish working with a team that imbues their actions with enthusiasm, positive momentum, and a can-do attitude. Experience has shown us that these traits are absolutely required to overcome the seemingly never ending negotiations and due diligence process involved in achieving a successful outcome for our clients.In some ways, Nat Bigelow was performing a venture capital function for early stage firms before the term 'venture capital' was coined.