Did you know that 30% of funded search funds end up not making an acquisition?

We have bought eight beautiful businesses this year and learned a lot about what works and what doesn’t.

Read below for case studies of the two best (20x) acquisitions I have seen. Happy New Years!

First - you pay for existing profits, but you usually pay nothing for the growth potential. Buying at 4x EBITDA and doubling a business, you now paid 2x. Your loan payments are only based on the price you paid. You keep all the growth as equity.
So there are businesses out there that have both boring, predictable profits today AND potential for substantial growth. Make sure you find one with both.
Business #1: Buyer paid $400k for an ecom business. High margins, bad marketing. Paid about 4x cash flow. Put 100% of his energy on social media growth marketing. Kept going and testing until he had the formula.
Key ingredients there: low purchase price, proven useful product, Hugh margins, poor marketing. The buyer brought the hustle and creativity to scale through social media marketing. It wasn’t a passion product for him, but he liked the market.
Business #2: Buyer had a hobby that he was passionate about. Found a membership program that he loved run by a husband and wife team. Cold outreach to them: “would you ever consider selling your business for the right price?”
Similar to first one, his special sauce was scaling social media marketing and improving conversion. This was a subscription membership - low cost high utility and in a niche market.
Paid $800k plus a bit of seller financing. Again 4x cash flow approx. He 10x’ed the customer base in a few years. As @RyanBegelman says, there are riches in niches.
So why do so many searches fail? In my view, one huge problem is they overindex on consistency of profits and underindex on growth potential and strategy. As a result, investors don’t get that excited even when they do find a deal. Boring is good. Boring and scalable is better.
Another problem is they don’t solve for financing. Some businesses are easy to finance, some are hard. You want to talk to lenders early and often. They are your best sources of intel on how much debt you can access and at what cost.
So I often advise searchers to look for smaller (SBA fundable) opportunities as well the bigger $10-$20 million deals in the traditional sweet spot. You own more of the business and often have more unrealized growth.

More from Business

This is a GREAT argument to pull up when talking to people about minimum wage. Some others nested below


A large number of new jobs being created are minimum to low wage, so looking for a new job generally won’t increase pay.

Raising minimum wage helps things not directly related.

Helps Infant mortality? Yup.

Lowers Suicide? Yup.

Reduce smoking rates? You bet.

It also boosts the local economy! Minimum to low wage earners spend more % of their money, so an increase means more is spent, often in community!

Low paying jobs are often in sectors which would gain from this. More people spending money in your shop makes your business more money! Now you have more profits and increased labor costs are covered.
I love Twitter.

It’s truly the Town Square of the Internet.

But finding the diamond in the rough voices can be tough.

Here are 20 of my favorite people to follow:

1. Alex Lieberman - @businessbarista

Alex writes extensively about the Founder journey.

The cool part is he’s lived everything he talks about - starting from $0 and selling for $75M with hardly any outside capital raised.

My favorite piece:


2. Ryan Breslow - @ryantakesoff

Ryan is a Top 1% founder.

This guy is a machine - he’s built 2 unicorns before the age of 27.

Ryan spells out lessons on fundraising, operating and scaling.

My favorite piece:


3. Jesse Pujji - @jspujji

Jesse is who I think of when I think “bootstrapping.”

He bootstrapped his company to an 8-figure exit and now shares stories about other awesome bootstrappers.

He’s also got great insight into all things growth marketing:


4. Post Market - @Post_Market

Post puts out some of the most thoughtful investment insights on this platform.

It’s refreshing because Post cuts through the hype and goes deep into the business model.

Idk who he/she/it is, but the insights are 💣.

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