Attention, privately held kidcos with succession or growth-management challenges: There’s an innovative strategy you may not have heard of—and an exec looking to take your call.

Veteran industry executive Samantha Freeman has joined the Entrepreneurship Through Acquisition (ETA) team at Swiss investment company Novastone Capital Partners. ETA programs (commonly called search funds) identify and align entrepreneurs and experts to acquire, manage and grow privately held companies, often with an exit strategy in mind.

Freeman is Novastone’s first kids industry specialist, and in her new role she’s on the hunt for companies that have potential but have plateaued or become stuck in succession planning. With its search fund model, Novastone will finance an acquisition and put an exec like Freeman at the helm to strategize and execute solutions to the company’s sticking points.

Freeman says she sees this as an opportunity to find and build the next big kids success story, whether it involves a content prodco, consumer products manufacturer or service provider. The common denominator is finding a place where she can take charge and add value, she notes.

Fitting Novastone’s profile are profitable small- to mid-size companies in the US$10-million to US$50-million annual revenue range (startups need not apply). Its specialty is identifying businesses with management issues or stalled growth, and bringing in an executive who can take the reins and chart a path forward.

For Freeman, the program offers an appealing shortcut to running a kidco without having to start a business from scratch, she says. Before joining Novastone’s investor roster, she spent three years consulting for companies and brands including  pocket.watch and CoComelon. And prior to that, she was co-founder and CEO of kids prodco Out of the Blue Enterprises, which she sold to 9 Story Media Group in 2018. Freeman was also Nickelodeon’s VP of licensing and consumer products and a product manager for Barbie at Mattel earlier in her career. These roles have given her an eye for spotting the gaps in a company’s growth, she says.

“I’ve been in talks with businesses and had a good initial response so far,” says Freeman. “I’ve spent my whole career in the kids industry, and I’m putting all of that together with this new opportunity.”

Novastone’s roster of executives who are searching for companies to acquire and run includes entrepreneurs with backgrounds in education, healthcare and tech, but Freeman is the first who will specifically target businesses in the kids entertainment industry.

According to Stanford Graduate School of Business’s most recent Search Fund Study, the sector is currently growing, with search funds securing 44 acquisitions in 2021—almost double the number in 2020. A record US$776 million was invested in traditional searchers and search-acquired companies in the same two years, says the report.