The most important lessons learned over more than fifteen years supporting Spanish family businesses through growth, succession, and transformation.
Fifteen years is enough time to make a great many mistakes. It is also enough time to learn from them. Over these years investing in family businesses, I have accumulated a set of convictions that now guide every decision I make. Some I learned from books. Most, the hard way.
It is the most obvious lesson and the hardest to internalise. In my early years as an investor, I spent 80% of my time analysing financial statements and 20% getting to know the team. Today that ratio has reversed.
The numbers tell you where a company is. The people tell you where it can go. I have seen businesses with spectacular margins deteriorate because the team lacked the ability to adapt. And I have seen apparently mediocre companies triple their value because they had the right people in the right positions.
Financial due diligence is necessary. But human due diligence is what truly determines the outcome of an investment.
Every time an entrepreneur tells me the generational transition will be resolved in a year, I mentally multiply by three. Not out of pessimism, but out of experience.
Succession is not an event — it is a process. It requires preparing the successor, preparing the founder to let go, preparing the organisation for change, and preparing the family for difficult conversations. Each of these dimensions has its own rhythm, and forcing the timeline almost always creates bigger problems than those it attempts to solve.
At Blue Mountain we have supported more than a dozen generational transitions. The ones that worked best are those where we began planning three to five years before the expected handover date.
Peter Drucker was right, but the phrase has become a cliche that many repeat without understanding. What I have observed in practice is something more specific: when you introduce strategic changes into a family business without respecting its culture, the changes do not last.
I have made this mistake. In one of our earliest portfolio companies, we implemented a plan that was impeccable on paper: new commercial structure, process digitalisation, expansion into three new markets. It all failed because we did not understand that the company operated on personal trust relationships that the new structure destroyed.
The lesson: strategy must be built upon the existing culture, not against it. You can transform a culture gradually, but you cannot ignore it.
The most profitable and satisfying transactions in our portfolio have come through personal relationships, not through competitive processes organised by investment banks. This is not a coincidence.
When an entrepreneur calls you directly, it is because they trust you. That trust translates into a more transparent process, a more constructive negotiation, and generally more reasonable terms for both parties. In an auction, the incentive is to maximise price. In a relationship, the incentive is to find the best solution.
Building that network of trust takes years. There are no shortcuts. But it is probably the most valuable asset Blue Mountain possesses.
There is a narrative in certain investor circles that equates value creation with cost reduction, and cost reduction with headcount reduction. It is a dangerous oversimplification.
In middle-market companies, knowledge resides in people. The technicians who have spent fifteen years solving problems, the sales people who know every client by name, the operators who know how to run a machine that appears in no manual. Losing those people to save a few margin points is destroying value, not creating it.
In our experience, the companies that have evolved best are those where we invested in existing people: training, improved conditions, clear career paths. The return on that investment has consistently exceeded that of any aggressive restructuring.
I began my investment career with the typical arrogance of someone who believes that capital gives them the right to have an opinion on everything. The years have taught me that an entrepreneur who has spent thirty years in their sector knows things I will never know, no matter how many reports I read.
My role is not to tell the entrepreneur how to run their business. My role is to ask the right questions, provide external perspective when useful, connect them with resources they did not have, and above all, be there when they need me and stay out of the way when they do not.
These years have taught me that investing in family businesses is not a financial discipline. It is a human discipline with financial consequences. The day we lose sight of that, we will have stopped being good at what we do.
Dirk Manuel Martens Jimenez Founder, Blue Mountain Capital
Founder of Blue Mountain
Over 15 years investing in Spanish companies with patient capital. Expert in business succession, corporate governance, and middle-market investment.
By Blue Mountain Capital
By Dirk Manuel Martens Jiménez
By Dirk Manuel Martens Jiménez
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