Warren Buffett invests in companies with a “competitive moat” which he defines as a durable competitive advantage. Most founders start with a unique idea for their business which becomes diluted as the owner chases revenue at the expense of their original vision. Take Mitch Durfee for example. Durfee started Grunts Moves Junk, a junk removal and [...]
We know consumers have shifted their eyes from televisions to mobile devices, so how are companies raising upwards of $28 million to capitalize on this evolution? For Mitchell Reichgut, co-founder of Value Exchange Advertising (VEA) company Jun Group, he helped create a service that has multi-national and luxury brands running to them to reach their target customers. Jun [...]
You’ve decided to buy a business. Maybe this is your first acquisition, or maybe you are a serial small business owner. If you’ve gone through this process before, you understand the drill. 90% of the buyers that decide to buy a business never follow through. No wonder brokers and sellers are very thorough in their buyer [...]
If you’re looking to sell a small to mid-sized business these days, one of your bidders is likely to be a Private Equity Group (PEG). They have a ton of cash looking to buy well-run companies, but they probably won’t acquire all of your company. A PEG may buy most of your business and ask you to stay [...]
Small businesses stay small either by choice, or because they start chasing growth in the wrong places. When you strip away the layers, it all comes down to darts. Imagine a dart board with a bull’s eye and around it is a series of wider and wider circles. The bull’s eye is where the people just like [...]
You’ll never know the ideal time to sell your company -- but in many cases, it's when someone's willing to buy it. Rand Fishkin, the bestselling author of Lost & Founder, learned this lesson the hard way when his company Moz received a $25 million dollar offer from HubSpot despite only expecting to do around $8 million [...]
How do you place a fair valuation on your company when only one partner wants out, and the other is ready to continue? The answer - for Judith Nowlin and her partner Amanda - wasn’t a matter of calculating how far they’ve come, but rather how far they would go. Nowlin, co-founder of iBirth™, a daily pregnancy, [...]
People want to be around those they like and trust. This is so true when selling a business. When I first meet a business owner that would like to sell their company, I try to envision how they would come across when meeting a potential buyer. The transactions that have the greatest opportunity to close are [...]
Pundits often criticize founders who are building to sell as money-grubbing mercenaries lacking a higher purpose, but what happens when planning your exit is the first step you take in launching a company? Kimberly Caccavo and Kate Nowlan, founders of GRACEDBYGRIT, share why they started their business with the intent of getting acquired by a bigger brand right [...]
Gary Miller was the founder of management consultancy Aragon Consulting which grew to employ more than 150 people. Miller, along with his team, built a proprietary modeling technology and was banking on attracting a premium multiple for the consultancy—which is why he was so disappointed by IBM’s original acquisition offer of just three times Earnings Before [...]
