Scott Gelbard’s Blog
Why Mid-Market Companies Are Leaving Capital Markets Money on the Table
Scott Gelbard, Founder — SGI Global Partners / Managing Partner — Peak Ventures There is a persistent myth in the mid-market business world: that capital markets are for large corporations, investment banks, and institutional players with armies of lawyers. The result...
How to Know When Your Business Has Outgrown Its Strategy
By Scott Gelbard, Founder — SGI Global Partners / Managing Partner — Peak Ventures There is a particular kind of stall that experienced business leaders recognize — not a dramatic failure, not a crisis, but a slow-motion divergence between where the business is...
The Due Diligence Nobody Talks About: Assessing People, Not Just Numbers
By Scott Gelbard, Founder — SGI Global Partners / Managing Partner — Peak Ventures Every serious business transaction comes with a due diligence process. Financial statements, legal documentation, tax records, customer contracts, IP filings, compliance history — the...
When the Strategy Is Right but the Timing Is Wrong
By Scott Gelbard, Founder — SGI Global Partners / Managing Partner — Peak Ventures I have seen more well-crafted strategies fail not because the thinking was flawed, but because the timing was off. A brilliant market entry plan launched six months too early. A...
Your Network Is Not Your Net Worth — It’s Your Intelligence Network
By Scott Gelbard, Founder — SGI Global Partners / Managing Partner — Peak Ventures The phrase "your network is your net worth" gets repeated so often in business circles that it has started to feel like a motivational poster — technically true, broadly agreed upon,...
Why the Best International Teams Don’t Run on Talent Alone
By Scott Gelbard, Founder — SGI Global Partners / Managing Partner — Peak Ventures Early in my career, I watched a genuinely talented team fall apart on an international project that should have been straightforward. The people involved were smart, experienced, and...
The Art of the Deal — Why Structure Matters More Than Price in M&A
By Scott Gelbard, Founder — SGI Global Partners / Managing Partner — Peak Ventures Everyone focuses on the number. The headline valuation. The multiple of EBITDA. The per-share figure that gets announced in the press release. After 25 years advising businesses through...
The Advisory Board That Actually Helps (And How to Build One)
Scott Gelbard, Founder — SGI Global Partners / Managing Partner — Peak Ventures Most advisory boards are theater. A collection of impressive names on a website, assembled to signal credibility rather than generate it. The founders who built them were well-intentioned...
What a Family Office Can Do That a Bank Never Will
Scott Gelbard, Founder — SGI Global Partners / Managing Partner — Peak Ventures I've had the same conversation dozens of times. A successful entrepreneur — someone who has spent twenty or thirty years building a business that generates real wealth — sits across from...
Why Leaders Who Listen Outperform Leaders Who Talk
Scott Gelbard, Founder — SGI Global Partners / Managing Partner — Peak Ventures Early in my career, I worked alongside a CEO who had an extraordinary gift: he could walk into a room full of frustrated stakeholders and, within thirty minutes, have everyone aligned and...