Insights from: a UK Searcher - Melda Eren, Perennia Capital

You are listening to a podcast from NSEAD, the Business School for the World. Welcome to the NSEAD ETA podcast, where we explore the world of entrepreneurship through acquisition. I'm your host, Kadir Aoliteju, and in each episode we bring you stories and insights from NSEAD alumni and industry leaders. This week, we're continuing our special live series from the NSEAD ETA Insert from Conference in Fontompler, where we sat down with panelists straight from the room to capture the thinking in real time. Whether you're an aspiring entrepreneur, a seasoned investor, or simply curious about ETA, our podcast provides expert perspectives and practical advice to inspire you or your own journey. Today, it's my pleasure to introduce to you all, Melda Errin, NSEAD MBA Founder and Managing Partner of Perenia Capital. One of the UK's latest search funds. Congratulations, Melda. Focused on acquiring and operating a great British company for the long term, Melda launched Perenia in 2025 after building a career across investing and high growth operations, including Time at Get Air, a pioneer ultra-fast grocery delivery. Melda brings a fresh perspective to ETA from someone who has seen business transformation from multiple angles, and Perenia is designed around long-term ownership and alignment. Melda, it's wonderful to have you with us today. To kick off, can you maybe look us through your journey and introduce yourself? Thank you for having me. I was born in Bulgaria, raised in Turkey, and moved to Germany after university. I started my career in consulting, which gave me really interesting projects across Europe, Asia, Africa. I even got to live in South Africa for a while, and after that I did my MBA at NSEAD, and that's actually where I first heard about search funds. A few friends in my cohort were raising a fund at the time. Back then, my plan was different. I wanted to join a startup or a scale-up to see an experience into a partnership from ground up. And with the idea that maybe one day I can start myself, something, so I joined an on-demand grocery delivery. And I was their first employee internationally, and I was in charge of launching the business in the UK. And it was mid-soft COVID, so traveling was allowed. So I was the only person on the ground responsible for launching the business, finding realistic locations, overseeing construction, just setting everything from zero to one. And yeah, and everything was moving very, very fast in the last 10 years. I launched eight markets, and I was in charge of European demand. Then post-COVID, when things changed, when interest rate increased, it was much more difficult for us to fundraise. And we had to wind down the international markets, and I left as one of the last people out. And after that, I knew two things. One, I didn't want to start something from zero myself at that point, but I also didn't want to work for someone else. So the question became, how can I be in charge of my own destiny? How can I be the one who is in charge? And that's when the search for a model ticked for me. That is amazing. I honestly don't know where to begin, because there is so much we can talk about there. So in fact, why don't we go semi-chronologically and start with fundraising? You had an incredibly successful search at fundraise. Can you tell us a little bit about that and what that looked like for you? Yeah, so fundraising for me was quite an interesting journey. I actually quite enjoyed it. But before I go into details, maybe I can tell how I approached it. From the moment I decided that this is something I wanted to do, I basically started talking to people like all the searchers and trying to understand, okay, which model I want to do, which geography I want to commit to. And what the industry thesis I should pursue. So just trying to learn as much as possible, reading lots of books, listening to all the podcasts. And it really helped me understand where my friends might be and where there might be opportunities. And that's how I basically approached it. And then the conferences were incredibly helpful for me to also get to know other people, other searches, investors as well. And then I worked on my PPM. And there I decided that I wasn't going to follow suit. I wasn't going to write a long word document. I wanted to just do slides. And I wasn't going to do this investment style white background, blue or black font, quite classic, clean look. I wasn't going to follow that. I was just going to have colors. I was going to have a branding. I was going to just reflect who I am, what I believe in, still professional, but I just wanted to be different than the rest. So that's what I focused on. I created my website, the logo, the name, based on all of these things. And then I just went out there, fundraising. Now I love that. And that is genuinely a really unique take as someone who's seen it quite a few now. Like that is a very brave approach. And I love that. But like, because you obviously put so much time into the brand, what does perennium mean? So the first thing is I wanted to put my name on it. Perennia has Eren, which is my last name. I wanted to have a little nod to that because I'm looking this for a very hopefully long term career opportunity for me, but also I wanted to indicate that I want to continue something that has already started. And hopefully that will continue more times to come. So it's a perennial class. It's very lovely and very clearly there's a lot of heart and for into that name on that. Like, so you mentioned you did a lot of conversations as well. How did you come to decide that the UK was for you and your industry approach? Yeah, and I think the first thing everyone should try to answer is, is this the country you would like to live in? Is this the country you want to commit for the next five, 10, 20 years? A country where you want to raise your kids? You spend every remaining time. And for me, that was definitely UK. I have been living in the UK for the last six years. I do have a British partner, and that was the country I wanted to do. Then the older aspects of it, actually, can I do this here? Do I fit to the market? And are there enough opportunities? That came secondary for me. And because obviously UK is probably one of those markets where you can do this as a foreigner. It's an outsider. It's one of those rare markets. It is quite open. And I have been living here for a long time that I was comfortable with the culture, the way of doing business and connecting with people. So for me, it just made sense. That's beautiful. In the fundraising phase and the search for research phase, I guess. What were some of your biggest learnings there? What do you think was separating the successful and possibly the less lucky searches you were speaking to? I think we all have unique angles and we resonate differently with different people. I think the searchers who do the best are the ones who accept that and lean into it rather than fighting it. So, and the way to figure out quickly is going out there and getting feedback quickly. And I remember in an early conversation with one of the prominent UK investors who said to me, "You're Turkish, you're a woman, that's not a bug, that's a feature." I love that. That's the good thing. That's the thing, yeah. And that really resonated with me. That's really, really powerful. You have to own the sources of your difference. There is no value in denying them really. I love that. And so, that sounds like a really good conversation. I was going to ask, you know, the best conversations you had. What would they like? How did they go? The best conversations I had were often when investors asked me questions that made me think on the spots, the things that you couldn't necessarily prepare for in advance. I really enjoyed those. And one of those was something like, how did you change through the fundraising since the beginning to now? I really love that question because it requires you to be quite reflective and really be self-aware. Yeah. What was your answer? Oh, we're here. Well, I think it's a common trap we fall into. We generally talk about our successes quite a lot. And at the beginning of fundraising, I was mostly focusing on that angle. But towards the end, I actually realized the failures or the hardship, for example, the closing down, the markets winding down. When things are going bad, how do you manage that? Talking about those, we're actually resonating much more interesting with the investors. So that's something I realized. As you say, it sounds like, yeah, of course, why wouldn't it? Because it's the ability to learn and the hard times that you know are coming if you're doing the search thing. The easy times, that's the good times. I know I need to worry about that. But amazing. Okay, so if we shift from fundraising out like actual search, how has it been? It's been great. I'm not going to deny it's obviously hard, but every day I feel so grateful that I get to do this because I'm the one who is driving the car and that's an incredible opportunity, but at the same time it's a huge responsibility. What do your kind of operations look like? Like is it just you? Do you have interns? Are you? What is a day in the life of Melda? Yeah, so we do, we have a little office space. Yeah, I do have some interns in the team. We all go to the office, work side by side, and I'm a solo researcher, so it's really important to create that kind of a team environment so that I don't feel alone in this journey. Yeah, so I work very closely with my interns and then we just hunt for good companies. Fantastic. And so that hunt, how does your background and your experiences between consulting and getting your how is that shaping your process, your structure? When I was fundraising or when I was thinking about doing search, I was thinking of leveraging my background, especially in the beginning, and because I worked in Cross Area Delivery, which is obviously a technology company, but it's also logistics company. So I really lean in to that in the early days and explore that part of the market so that I can have conversations with the owners where I really know in depth what is going on in the industry. I can use the terminology and the keywords that which makes building tasks much easier and make sure that you come across as a person who knows what they're talking about. That's what I focused on early days. And from there on, just exploring new avenues and new industries as well, which helps me learn more about what is out there. Yeah. And so now you've started seeing maybe beyond the horizon, that kind of thing. What does a good target look like now? Well, a good target looks like a business that's been family-owned and has a great culture and a great team. And in an industry that is growing, that has some tailwinds, and the demand is there because the customers have to have what they're offering rather than they want to. Yeah. And ideally, there's an opportunity to scale the business internationally. International ambitions. I love that. Very exciting. It's clearly, you know, you've done it before, so why not? I love that. And so in terms of the search strategies, what's been the best part of this like, you know, the searching engine, the things you're doing, like the calls, the letters, the meets, the dinners, maybe the trade shows. Yeah. I really enjoy meeting owners in person. And in order to do that much quickly and efficiently, I often go to trade shows, exhibitions, conferences, where I know the owners are attending themselves. And there I can catch them, I can be in front of them. And I can just wrap 10, 15 minutes with them and talk about their business, talk about myself, and talk about the future, if that makes sense for them. And it's a great opportunity to get to know people, get to know where they are. And they're quite, they can be quite honest and direct about them. So it is very actually an efficient way to go. I can imagine. And like, this is slightly more nitty gritty than what we used to, but how do you know which ones to sell is going to be? So there's a lot of research that goes into before deciding to go to a conference. So often conferences will have lists of exhibitors, lists of attendees. So it's a couple of weeks in advance looking at who is attending and whether the MD, the director, the CEO, who is in charge is attending as well, or not. And then sometimes conferences will have networking apps themselves, so you can ask send messages through these channels, which is a sometimes more direct way of reaching, because they will be keeping eye on them, because they may be looking for clients. Yeah, of course. Yeah, that's a good way to make sure they're there. Yeah, make sense. I'm curious about your thoughts on the sellers, you know, you're meeting from trade shows that part of convincing them to step away. Like, I feel like that's quite a high commitment signal if they're going themselves, you know what I mean? Like, that is actually incredibly true. And it is one of those things. So when you're in the trade show and if the owner is there, there is a chance they're still involved in the business. So it is going to be maybe emotionally more difficult for them to separate. But some of the sellers I talked to, they're saying it, I'm thinking this in six months. I'm thinking this in nine months. Come back then. So it's also little with planting the seeds. Yes, yes, yes. Yeah, that makes so much sense. And because yeah, when you have the time to marinate with it and find all your reasons, it's probably even better that they've they've been able to put a face to the name than if you just like picked up an email or something. Yeah, makes a lot of sense. Very wise, Malta. So again, search in the UK, there's a lot of concern just given how broken it is. It sounds like you're leaning very much more proprietary. Yes, that is correct. And it is true. Finding a deal where there are no advisors involved is quite rare. That happens. But I think it requires a lot of persistence. But the beauty is that even if it is broker, if you reach out to owner first, for sure, we'll see the deal. So you're not relying on brokers showing you that deal. So for me, as a channel that worked much better. And there is always pros and cons of broker deals versus not broker deals. With the broker deals, you know that they definitely want to sell the motivations there. You know that they are prepared. The business has been in the best shape that it could be in terms of preparation. The financials are there. And it is going to be much quicker in efficient process. Whereas with the other, it is maybe not going to be a competitive process, but then it will take much longer. And you will need to help the owner to prepare the information, maybe, or you just need to work with less information. Yeah, present comments, present comments. We've done a lot of such a set aside questions. How about investors, how are you maintaining your relationships then? I think I'm a very in-person person. I really like speaking with my investors in person that I can. So for me, these conferences, the London Business School Conference and the NCL Conference are fantastic opportunities to be able to grab a coffee or grab a beer with my investor. Just bring them up today. Because there is obviously a lot of catch up you do on the other side. You do share your report, you organize calls, but it's often on the screen. Whereas like that, I think you get to spend much more quality time and build out a relationship. And they, like, the, what's the analogy? Like, you're married. You're going to be in it for the long haul. So it makes sense. Invest in your relationship. Shifting, we were going down the timeline. Now we're going to go several steps back to get here. Because a thousand and one lessons. I mean, festival market, making eight different ones. Like, what does that take? Like, well, it's actually very interesting because when I was in charge of launching the UK, I was the only one on the ground. We are still not a known name. When I'm trying to sign contracts or hire people, no one knows what's going on. A year later, and I'm in charge of launching the US. We are, I am in charge of a hundred plus team to do the launch. We have a 12 billion valuation. Everyone knows our name. And it's, it's a completely different whole part. And getting from that initial part to that stage in a year, I don't think that's fat mobile. Like, how quickly you needed to grow, how quickly you needed to hire, and how quickly you needed to make a decision. And move very quickly because the competition was intense. We weren't alone in the market. And it was, it was a race. It sounds like it's a lot. When you think back, you know, because like I said, this is an incredibly, like, high growth story. What's the single biggest lesson or learning that you're going to take forward? Capital allocation. So managing cash and runway was the most important lesson on me. Early on, we were quite careful. But later, we had to take some bigger bets to keep growing, keep competing, and some of these didn't pay off as we thought people. So now when I look at a company, and when I look at a company's financials, the first and I think about is how stable the earnings are because as an operator I need to make payroll, I need to be able to service depth, I need to be able to invest in the business, and I need to also have enough buffer if one or two things can go wrong, I should still be able to be comfortable and so on. So considering all of those things, it's probably the biggest learning because I lived through how difficult it is when you're trying to survive another day and another month. And so you know with your experience in the super fast pace startup world versus kind of the traditional kind of boring businesses of ETA, what are you thinking about strategically? Like what growth strategies are you most excited about? I think this is a bit straightforward but the sustainable growth is the answer here because once you hire a person you need to make sure that they are part of the team and you invest so much on that. And there's always a cost on the other side, a human cost when you cannot sustain that growth. So I think that is the lens I look at that. It's not just gaining more customers, gaining more territories and more markets, it's actually that what would be the results if you weren't actually going to succeed in that. So the sustainable growth, yeah, making sure that you're making the right bets. Yeah, you mentioned the human cost and I hear pretty often how for a lot of non-operator search folks when they start operating, it feels like a masterclass in organizational behavior and like the people side of things. How do you think about that and kind of what's your approach for the first year as it relates to people, especially? One of the important advices we hear about this topic is that is the first time see when you just got into the business you parachute it in. Your job is to understand and learn as quickly as possible. And I think one of the best ways of doing that is talking to people. I heard is that you could probably try to have lunch with every single employee and not only get to know them but also get to know the company through their eyes and what's working, what is not working, what they would wish to change. So that's something that I keep in mind. If I were to acquire a company a lot of my early days will be focused on just getting to know people, what makes them proud, what makes them angry. And then hopefully that will give me much more information that due diligence wouldn't have given me. Yeah, yeah. That's fantastic. And it sounds like you were very much making the time to make people the priority. What was the toughest decision you had to make there? The toughest decision I had to make was staying until the end and not leaving when things got hard. When you're sailing and when the wind is behind you everyone wants to jump into the ship and one wants to join the journey and it's fun. But when you're sailing against the wind when there is a storm people are generally not very keen to say it's very hard, it's very stressful. So for me I really want to, I decided that I wanted to be there until the very end, making sure that I can do right by the people, by our partners, suppliers, making sure that this comes to an end in an orderly fashion where we can wind down the business properly and making sure that everyone gets as much as they can. It taught me also how to lead and motivate people when the end is there, when you know that it's coming, which is a different cold situation for everyone. But how do you make sure that you can still create little winds, you still keep people coming to work every day and giving their best, but there is no maybe tomorrow. So that was something very, very perfect. Yeah. It sounds like you need to ship at the end one of the things you're thinking about was creating little winds. Like how did that evolve and kind of what would, what would you be talking about in a masterclass on leadership with your wealth experience? Well, I think leadership is about adapting situations and to be able to bring people with you and fight alongside with you. And I think what I learned through my time at Gitter especially was like people really appreciate when you are on the ground fighting alongside rather than just saying this is what should be done and you should do it. It's completely different when you are the one who will carry in the boxes alongside them or when you are the one forning people up and giving them bad news. They respect that because they see that you're also doing this and it's not something that is necessarily something they only have to do. We are all doing that and we are all doing this together. Yeah, but apparently pivoting now to just ETA more broadly, taking it I guess like a step back. What role would you say networking has played in your journey? And is there any advice you'd give on that? Yeah, huge role. I didn't heavily on fellow women, fellow insiders, the Turkish searcher community and former Gitter colleagues. My advice is as long as you come prepared and you ask for questions, people who are genuinely very happy to help especially I would say that for myself but like when a woman approaches me or in the other approaches me, they smile again each other. Yeah, and I am very happy to help because that's how I got here. I got a lot of help and I think I carried that obligation that I would like to give back as well. Yeah, very, very grateful for that approach and advice. And so what is something you've learned from your journey again but perhaps that you had actually never read or heard about before you experienced it for yourself? Yes, that there is only so much preparation you can do. I don't think anyone really knows what they're doing until they are doing it. Because most advice and reflections are post-fact. And so when you are stuck on a hard question or a hard decision and feel like you have no idea what you're doing or what you should do, that's completely normal. So the key is believing in yourself that you will figure it out. You will reach out to the people and ask those questions or you will find a way to answer that problem. And if you're in the beginner's seat again, that's uncomfortable, that comes in cycles and you need to just ride the wave. What a word, like that sensation of feeling like you have to prepare and prepare and prepare is definitely something, especially at the conference this weekend. I've heard a lot of investors saying women are very, very used to doing and sometimes it's just about starting and learning it on the way. I will ask if you want to give us one more mic drop, anything to say, to listen as well, aspiring, whether it's searches, operators, investors, before we close. Yeah, I think the most important question to answer is why you want to do this. And what your alternative would be if you didn't. After that, you just need to take one day at a time. You don't need to worry about closing a deal yet. You don't need to talk very about finding a company or talking to the owners or fundraising or doing your PPM yet. You just need to decide, do you want to do this and why do you want to do this? Then you just ask questions, you follow you then, and you just take it day by day. Amazing. Thank you so much for joining us, Melda. This has been a wonderful session and it's been a pleasure having you on. Thank you. For our listeners interested in exploring entrepreneurship throughout position further, head over to the NTIAD ETA in search on top where you can dive into a growing collection of resources, connect with the wider community and stay close to the latest thinking in ETA, including insights from initiative director and associate professor of entrepreneurship and family enterprise, Ivana Namoska. And if you enjoyed this conversation with Melda, make sure you stay tuned. We have a great couple of episodes coming to round us out with season two. Whether you're an aspiring entrepreneur, investor, or advisor, there's so much more to explore in the hub and even more to learn from the leaders shaping the ETA landscape. Don't forget to subscribe so you don't miss any of the good stuff.