From Investment Banking to ETA

In this episode of the ETA Insider Podcast, Sudeep Das, MBA ’04, President and CEO of Asteroid Operating Company, joins the podcast to discuss coming to entrepreneurship through acquisition a decade after business school. Two engineering degrees and several years in IT services led him to Booth, then to ten years as an investment banker in New York. Mid-career, with a family and a decade of deal-making behind him, Sudeep found ETA sitting at the intersection of finance and entrepreneurship, and has since acquired three commercial mechanical services businesses. One of the three turned out to be the wrong fit. He digs into why searchers should stop chasing headline EBITDA, how licensing a sales playbook from an industry titan opened doors with founders, the pricing philosophy that cost him customers, and why time is the real enemy.