Episode 132

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Published on:

13th Mar 2025

Ep. 132: Vern Davenport, Partner at QHP Capital & Michael Curry, Co-Chairman and Co-CEO at Lullwater & Co., Part 2

Topics:

  • 5-Element Hiring Framework
  • Hiring for Attributes vs. Experience
  • Moneyball Thinking for Smart Hiring

...and so much more.

Top Takeaways

  • What happens when you work and lead with passion?Vern and Michael emphasize that passion is crucial for both business success and leadership. Passion keeps teams committed through challenges and drives both personal and professional growth. For leaders, it means embracing a growth mindset, being open to feedback, and fostering team development. Passion is just one element in Vern’s hiring framework—and a key predictor of success.


  • Scorecards help you hire without the guesswork. Hiring practices often rely on gut feelings, making them prone to bias. Michael advocates using scorecards with measurable criteria like technical skills, cultural fit, and soft skills, along with clear performance expectations. This approach makes it easier to assess candidates objectively and sets the stage for accountability. When new hires understand what’s expected, they can focus on the right things to succeed in the role.

 

  • When paying more helps small businesses scale faster. Vern and Jordan acknowledge that small and medium-sized businesses often hesitate to offer higher salaries. But hiring top-tier talent for critical roles is an investment in expertise that can drive results quickly. This aligns with Michael’s Moneyball approach to hiring. Just as the Moneyball thinking in baseball focuses on overlooked metrics to build a winning team, in business, the idea is to invest in key roles that might be costly upfront but will have outsized returns over time.


About Vern Davenport

Vern Davenport is a partner at QHP Capital, a growth equity firm focused on healthcare, life sciences, and technology. He has held executive leadership roles at Misys Healthcare, Medfusion, M*Modal, and Allscripts, specializing in business transformation and operational execution. Vern is also one of the creators of The Management System, a structured framework for scaling businesses.


About Michael Curry

Michael Curry is the co-chairman and co-CEO of Lullwater & Co., an investment firm specializing in entrepreneurship through acquisition. A search funder turned investor, he is an experienced operator in the healthcare space. Michael scaled a healthcare services company through M&A and is now focused on building the next stage of his investment firm.


Disclaimer

The opinions expressed herein are those of QHP Capital, L.P. (“QHP Capital”) and are subject to change without notice. Past performance is not indicative of future results. QHP Capital is a registered investment adviser with the U.S Securities and Exchange Commission. Registration does not imply a certain level of skill or training.

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Investors & Operators
A Podcast by 51 Labs
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.

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Jordan Selleck

Founder. Recovering Investment Banker. 3x Entrepreneur. Philz Coffee Enthusiast.

Jordan Selleck is a recovering investment banker turned 3x entrepreneur. While teaching English in China, Jordan met an investment banker in a bar and before he knew it he’d spent six years in cross-border investment banking advising global corporates and private equity firms on M&A deals up to $250 million.

As much as Jordan loved investment banking, he always knew he was meant to do something more. In 2016, Jordan founded Debtmaven, a deal management platform for debt financing in the lower middle market. It was while he was marketing Debtmaven on LinkedIn that Jordan found his true passion: building meaningful relationships in the lower middle market.

Seeing over 50% of Debtmaven’s $450million+ in deals come from LinkedIn, he realized he’d found an untapped market and began his journey with LinkedIn consulting. Dozens of clients and a handful of extraordinarily talented employees later, 51 Labs is a thriving marketing agency for the lower middle market that produces captivating content and generates organic traffic across LinkedIn.

Jordan was born in San Diego, grew up in North Carolina and attended UNC-Chapel Hill. He has traveled to 32 countries, lived in China for 18 months, trains Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, is a fourth-generation private pilot, SCUBA dives, speaks Mandarin Chinese, and is a husband and father of 2.