Investors & Operators

About Investors & Operators

The M&A market can be boring, but everyone has a story. The Investors & Operators podcast is about discovering the stories people were holding back, didn’t know how to tell, or forgot about. The goal is simple: fresh, authentic storytelling to bring people together in the M&A community. With over 1M organic views and counting on LinkedIn, 51 Labs is disrupting the M&A market through the use of videography and content creation. In a market that longs for authenticity, 51 Labs helps strengthen your brand and tell your story. From concept to distribution, we strategize and produce thoughtful content to be used across a multitude of channels, to help you stand out in an otherwise traditionally boring market. New episodes every other Thursday at 6:00am Eastern.

Publisher

51 Labs

Category

business · business · business

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

13 Feb 2020

Latest episode

8 Oct 2026

Latest episodes

158 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   8 Oct 2026

   Ep. 158: Sean Dowling, President, Eastern Operations Area at TurnPoint Services

   Sean is President of the Eastern Operations Area at TurnPoint Services, a Trivest portfolio company, where he oversees a $640M P&L with about 2,200 employees across 27 brands and 33 locations. Four years ago, he served as a Marine Raider officer in special operations. He's also a member of 51 Vets. Topics: Hiring Veterans for Execution Marine Raider Selection The Military-to-Business Transition Scaling Leadership from 150 to 2,000 People ...and so much more. Top Takeaways Execution is the most underrated skill in a portfolio company. Many veterans don't know how to talk about their soft skills once they're out of uniform, so they undersell them. Sean's message to PE firms is that people who can both build a plan and carry it out are rare, and special operations trains exactly that. He calls them "strategic executors." For sponsors building leadership benches, hiring for those traits can matter as much as industry experience. Scaling a team takes the same skills, used on purpose. Sean's largest Marine unit was about 150 people. Getting to 2,000 came down to delegation, commander's intent (a shared end state everyone works toward), a rigorous plan, and accountability. At TurnPoint, leadership's job is to set that intent rather than make thousands of frontline decisions a day. Sean still stays close to the work: he's "in an attic every single month, digging a trench" with the technicians who carry out TurnPoint's mission to "turn bad days into good ones." No mistake is permanent. After leaving the Marine Corps, Sean tried to fix everything at once, which went against how he'd been trained. The turnaround began when he went back to solving the problem in front of him, starting with 11.5 days of GMAT prep that got him into Duke's Fuqua School of Business. He now coaches new leaders to watch for "Superman syndrome" around day 45, when taking on everything alone leads to task saturation. About TurnPoint Services TurnPoint Services is a family of HVAC, plumbing, and electrical brands serving residential and light commercial customers, with a mission to "turn bad days into good ones." The company partners with established local service businesses, keeping their brand names and founders' legacies while adding back-office support, training, and modern systems. Its brands share a servant-led culture built on three customer promises: no needless delays, no cutting corners, and no nonsense. Sean leads TurnPoint's Eastern Operations Area, which spans 27 brands, 33 locations, and about 2,200 employees. Investors & Operators is brought to you by 51 Labs 51 Labs is a marketing agency for the lower middle market. We offer full-service digital marketing for PE, portfolio companies, IB, VC, hedge funds. Brand Identity, Marketing Strategy, Marketing & AGM Video, LinkedIn Strategy & Execution, Web Design & Development, CRM Support & more 400+ videos 100+ projects #1 content creator on LinkedIn in the lower middle market

2. 

   1 Oct 2026

   Ep. 157: Robin Graham, Head of Technology Investment Banking, Oppenheimer & Co. Inc.

   Robin is the Head of Technology Investment Banking at Oppenheimer & Co. Inc., where he leads a 50-banker team spanning 12 tech verticals. He has 30+ years of investment banking experience advising high-growth technology companies on M&A and capital raising. Topics: AI in Investment Banking Tech Market Outlook Strategically Hiring Senior Talent Building a Collaborative Culture ...and so much more. Top Takeaways Growth opportunities are increasingly coming from venture-backed targets. Most of the M&A activity Robin's team is seeing isn't traditional buyouts but portcos making strategic acquisitions to build out their existing platforms. Oppenheimer’s recent sale of Kentik to PE-backed Infoblox is one example. For sponsors, it’s a reason to look beyond the traditional add-on universe when building their M&A pipelines. The best use of AI may be capacity creation rather than headcount reduction. Oppenheimer is using an internal analytics tool to offload model-building, SEC data pulls, and other repetitive work. Robin sees the payoff not as needing fewer bankers, but as giving the existing team more capacity to process transactions and spend time with clients. The practical opportunity is to identify where AI can remove execution bottlenecks, then deliberately reinvest that capacity rather than treating efficiency as the end goal. High-stakes moments are built through low-stakes repetition. Robin learned that lesson rowing at Harvard, where months of repetitive training came down to a handful of six-minute races. Dealmaking requires the same discipline: keep doing the work when the payoff is distant, so you’re ready when the moment that matters arrives. About Oppenheimer & Co. Inc. Oppenheimer & Co. Inc. is a full-service investment bank and wealth manager. Robin leads its technology investment banking group, with about 50 bankers across 12 verticals, from semiconductors and enterprise software to defense tech and aerospace. The team has advised on transactions including Backblaze's 2021 IPO, Corvex's $33M data-center financing, and Gilat's ~$157.5M acquisition of Comtech's satellite and space communications segment. Investors & Operators is brought to you by 51 Labs 51 Labs is a marketing agency for the lower middle market. We offer full-service digital marketing for PE, portfolio companies, IB, VC, hedge funds. Brand Identity, Marketing Strategy, Marketing & AGM Video, LinkedIn Strategy & Execution, Web Design & Development, CRM Support & more 400+ videos 100+ projects #1 content creator on LinkedIn in the lower middle market

3. 

   10 Sept 2026

   Ep. 156: Vern Davenport, Partner at QHP & Allison Crumpler, Former VP of People & Culture for Catalyst Clinical Research

   Vern Davenport is a Partner at QHP Capital with 35+ years of experience building and transforming healthcare technology and services businesses. Vern is the author of Accelerating Growth, which lays out QHP’s approach to scaling companies through its Management System. Allison Crumpler is the former VP of People & Culture at Catalyst Clinical Research. A professional Certified Coach with 15+ years of experience in clinical research, Allison focuses on leadership development, organizational culture, and employee engagement. Topics: Why Culture Drives Performance Turning Values Into Behaviors How to Kill Watermelon Metrics Scaling Culture Across a Portfolio ...and so much more. Top Takeaways Values become culture through repetition. Operationalizing values means defining the behaviors behind them, teaching them, and reinforcing them in practice. Allison calls it the “Mr. Miyagi” approach: repeat those behaviors over and over, even when they feel obvious. That repetition is what embeds them into the organization and gives managers and employees a shared language for accountability. Measure culture with leading indicators, not just engagement surveys. Allison shares a few of the metrics Catalyst used to measure culture beyond traditional engagement and turnover data. They called them “Key Culture Indicators”: employee referrals, town hall attendance and time to hire. Put a target against each indicator, review it alongside operating KPIs, and set a more ambitious target once the current one is consistently achieved. Make the financials visible so everyone knows how they contribute. An individual contributor in a 1,000-person company can't see how they move EBITDA, so they disengage. Catalyst shared key company metrics across the organization, then helped teams understand how their own work affected sales, customer satisfaction and financial performance. Transparency turned "just doing my job" into "we win or lose together." About QHP QHP Capital is a private equity firm focused on middle-market life sciences and pharma services businesses. With $4.5B+ in AUM, QHP combines decades of sector experience with an operator-led approach to investing. Across its portfolio, the firm implements its proprietary Management System to build stronger leadership teams, operating infrastructure and commercial capabilities and support long-term, independent growth. About Catalyst Clinical Research Catalyst Clinical Research is a technology-enabled clinical research organization (CRO) specializing in oncology and providing clinical development services to biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies globally. Investors & Operators is brought to you by 51 Labs 51 Labs is a marketing agency for the lower middle market. We offer full-service digital marketing for PE, portfolio companies, IB, VC, hedge funds. Brand Identity, Marketing Strategy, Marketing & AGM Video, LinkedIn Strategy & Execution, Web Design & Development, CRM Support & more 400+ videos 100+ projects #1 content creator on LinkedIn in the lower middle market

Who has been a guest on Investors & Operators

Names identified in recent episode analyses. Showing up to five guests.

• Brandon Fix
• Chris Nicolini
• Alex Russ
• Hilary LaBrash
• Andrew Nelson

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

Apple Podcasts (US)

5.0 / 5

4 ratings

Spotify

5.0 / 5

2 ratings

Podcast Authority Score: 55 / 100

A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.

Quality

79

Social presence

0

YouTube

0

Engagement

76

Contact Investors & Operators

Guest appearances

Books guests

Based on episode analysis; this does not confirm that the show is currently accepting guests.

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