Articles on Practicing Entrepreneurship Through Acquisition
I’ve stood in front of rooms full of M&A advisors explaining the acquisition criteria that traditional search funds use to evaluate businesses. And I’ve watched them laugh. Once you start listing the requirements, it’s easy to understand why. Searchers want predictable earnings, recurring revenue, limited
There’s a reason why I wrote Buy Then Build and built an educational platform and community around acquisition entrepreneurship. It’s because I believe and know from decades of experience that acquiring businesses is one of the
When most first time buyers think about financing an acquisition, their only frame of reference is using a bank loan (mortgage) to buy a house. However, when it comes to buying a business, it doesn’t
“If the seller has $250,000 in cash on the balance sheet, does that transfer over?” “If the seller has outstanding business loans, what happens to those on closing day?” These are some of the common
“Hey Walker, isn’t part of the appeal of buying small companies that I can use seller financing? Doesn’t this mean the seller basically becomes the lender for the business I’m buying?” Yes… and no. Although
“Walker, how do I do what you’re doing? How do I own a portfolio of businesses like you?” I’ll never forget when I was asked this by one of the students after guest lecturing at
Building and having wealth is more than buying nice cars – it can allow you to do a lot of incredible things. It’s no secret that having wealth gives us the financial freedom to decide
“Is it a fair multiple?” This is one of the most common questions I get from first-time business buyers in the Acquisition Lab. New buyers unfamiliar with the acquisitions landscape struggle to evaluate the quality
So you’ve decided that you’re going to acquire a business rather than start from scratch. Great idea! However, if you’ve been in the business search process for any length of time, you know it takes
The number one reason people join the Acquisition Lab is because they want to decrease their risk in buying a business. The questions come in various forms: What are the safest businesses to buy? When’s
About a year ago, I was helping a client sell their business, and, at the same time, I put my house on the market for sale by owner. In both deals we found the perfect
In five years of running the Acquisition Lab, I’ve discovered the more ambitious a buyer is, the quicker they usually want to hire an operator to run the business. They’ll say to me, “Walker, I
As a buyer, knowing how to analyze a business is crucial to the search process. I’ve talked about how to evaluate a business’s opportunities in the past, and the reason why is that you need
I’ve stood in front of rooms full of M&A advisors explaining the acquisition criteria that traditional search funds use to evaluate businesses. And I’ve watched them laugh. Once you start listing the requirements, it’s easy
Codesmith grew from roughly $2.4 million in revenue to more than $18 million. Then ChatGPT arrived. Revenue dropped to roughly $9.6 million, then $5 million as AI hit the software engineering education market that had
In 2016, I bought an e-commerce company with what I thought was a pretty obvious growth opportunity: SEO. There was only one issue. I’d never done SEO. So I started learning. I read about it.
A member of the Acquisition Lab recently found himself looking seriously at a copy-machine business. This was a guy with a technology background. He’d built a startup that went through Y Combinator, had a massive
When we model the sale of a company, we can get incredibly precise. What’s the valuation? How much cash comes off the table? What are the tax consequences? Is there rollover equity? An earnout? How
Redwood trees can grow more than 350 feet tall. How do they get there? They grow up before they grow out. Early in their development, the tree puts its energy toward height. The branching comes
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