Matan Hazanov moved from M&A valuations to running a $300M business as COO, learning marketing, sales, and finance at scale. That experience convinced him to start a $150 million venture capital fund, building on a childhood spent in his family's retail business.
I always had a passion for entrepreneurship. My, My parents are serial entrepreneurs. I would say more out of necessity. Immigrating to Canada, that's. That was their. That was their only option, or so they felt. And so it was a real family business. We were in the. Called the Schmutz business, but we, we sold drapes and bedding and bathroom accessories and things like that. And from the age of 10, I was working in the store and like, I just always had a feeling that I was going to build something. And so, you know, in those seven to 10 years when I was in the valuation group, I always had a business plan going on on the side, starting a baby food company or like a safe company for how to lock your stuff up in a dorm room in university, like random things. But I was, you know, doing valuations in the context of M and A, and those things really ebb and flow when you tend to work really late hours. And then the, you know, the side hustle would go to the wayside. I found that by sort of moving into that chief operating officer role, I was now operating what was then a $300 million business. So for me, okay, I wasn't starting a business, but I was operating a business at scale, and I was getting to learn the ropes of marketing and sales and finance and everything that into really running a business. And so that was a tremendous learning opportunity for me. And yeah, it was. It was honestly just amazing.
