Sean Frank is the founder and managing partner at Cloud Equity Group, a Wall Street-based investment management company specializing in leveraged buyouts of tech-enabled business service providers. The firm’s core investment strategies stem from Sean’s deep expertise and experience as a young and highly successful entrepreneur.
Like many tech entrepreneurs, Sean’s first company was started in a basement, but with one huge difference—Sean was only 12 years old at the time. What started as a hobby turned into a multi-million-dollar business offering a vast array of web-based services before he even finished high school.
“I started my first company at the age of 12. It wasn’t a company, per se—more like a hobby. At the time, the internet was just starting to gain popularity, and everyone was interested in “getting online.” I was interested in website coding and quickly realized that there was an opportunity for me to help people to create a web presence and to make money at the same time,” says Sean.
Timing was just right for Sean’s first business – which started as a white-glove service web hosting provider. It was the tail end of the dot com boom and there was an enormous market of individuals and small businesses looking to create a presence online. Sean started creating personal websites and websites for his friends in exchange for a monthly fee, and then slowly branched out to local businesses and eventually businesses nationally all through word of mouth. By the time Sean reached high school, he was known as the student who was making more money than his teachers.
“While in high school, I became connected with Andy McKelvey, the founder and former CEO of Monster.com. Andy was a lot like me in that he started as a young entrepreneur who had several business ventures. He also had a passion for helping young entrepreneurs like myself.” Sean says. “Over the next couple of years, Andy really helped guide me to legitimize my business.”
At the time, Sean’s company was growing quite nicely organically and its recurring cash flow was becoming quite sizable. As a high school student living with his parents and with no real living expenses, Sean was interested in investing his profits back into his business to accelerate its growth. This was when he became interested in buying out his competitors.
“My first acquisition was small, maybe just $1000,” said Sean. “I really had no idea what I was doing so it was a lot of learning on the fly. My investment model was basically to buy a competing business, merge it into my own to eliminate as many of the operating expenses as possible, and then make my money back from that investment in less than a year. It was messy but it worked.” Over the next few years, Sean kept repeating the process, each time acquiring a larger business to the last, and each time streamlining the process further.
After graduating high school, Sean attended the University of Pittsburgh to pursue a degree in Finance. Following that, he received his Chartered Financial Analyst designation. Sean then combined this formal education with his already immense hands-on experience and founded Cloud Equity Group. Today, Cloud Equity Group manages and invests money on behalf of high-net-worth individuals, family offices, and even institutional investors.