The Ledger
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Beshore: Competitors inflate bids by 30-40% with no intent to close
“Oftentimes we'll lose deals because other groups will come in and throw out a valuation that's 30, 40% higher than ours. They have no intention of ever closing. And on top of that, if you're a fundless sponsor, you don't even raise the capital yet. You haven't…”
Beshore: Private equity cannot make 5 to 10 year investments
“One of our favorite questions to ask is what are investments we could make today that wouldn't show up for five or 10 years? Private equity just can't ask that question.”
Beshore: Adventur.es operates as a marketing and manufacturing firm, not private equity
“We don't think of ourselves as being a private equity firm. So we're not a partner led partner driven private equity model. We think of ourselves more as being a marketing firm, right? That's getting the word out about what we're doing, how we're doing it, try…”
Beshore: Adventur.es avoids competitive auctions to prevent overpaying
“We typically, with very rare exception, don't participate in auctions. We just subscribe to the winner of an auction is the biggest loser, sort of by definition, you pay the highest price.”
Beshore: Small business owners frequently destroy value reinvesting excess cash poorly
“By the way, this is the challenge that most small business owners get into is there's not really that high return opportunities for the cashflow generated. So you're generating a lot more cash flow than you are opportunities to deploy that cash flow, and so wh…”
Beshore: Adventur.es offers a distinct acquisition product from PE and search funds
“So what we do today is we try to consistently express our opinions about what we're looking for, about how we work, about why we're going after certain segments. We try to make our value proposition incredibly clear in the marketplace of we're offering a diffe…”
Beshore: Adventur.es fund requires 75% LP vote to remove him
“And I think how we structured the fund, it's a true blind pool. There's no control. I mean, I think you know, the only control that the investors have is they have to 75% vote, I think. I think that's what it is. 75% level have to vote to remove me, and I'm 15…”
Beshore: Adventur.es conducts diligence in-house unlike traditional private equity
“What makes ad ventures very unusual is that we do almost all of our diligence in-house. So this is very unusual in private equity. Most of it's outsourced, both legal and financial due diligence is outsourced. They're even going to bring in Consultants to do p…”
Beshore: Adventur.es is the wrong buyer for 90% of sellers
“90% of the time we're the wrong buyer. 90% of the time a seller just wants the most cash at close, the least risk, and it's a pure financial decision.”
Beshore: Businesses must be valued on cash remaining after maintenance reinvestment
“The ideal thing is you want to value a business on after everything has been paid to kind of keep it on its current trajectory, right? And you have investments in leadership being made that scale with the company as it increases in size and heft. That takes mo…”
Beshore: Adventur.es defaults to accumulating cash until exceptional opportunities arise
“And, you know, our default is not to do anything. We're fine just building cash. We're fine sitting on our hands, but then you have these opportunities that come along that you want to have the highest opportunity cost in the world.”
Beshore: Some LPs passed because Adventur.es charged zero management fees
“And investors, to be frank, some of them didn't invest in our first fund because we didn't have a management fee.”
Beshore: Aerospace acquisition candidate generated $3M owner earnings versus $8M EBITDA
“So we looked at an aerospace company where it was doing seven, eight million dollars of EBITDA. But when you got through all of the reinvestments and all of the dynamics in the industry, really the business was doing about three million dollars in true owner e…”
Beshore: Adventur.es avoids lowballing and enters deal talks near final price
“We don't do the whole, we're going to low ball you so that you high ball so that we meet in the middle thing. We typically, you know, if we're gonna use a football analogy of a hundred yards, we try to come in on the 40 yard line going to the 50 yard line, rig…”
Beshore: Personally invested 15% into Adventur.es permanent capital fund
“I'm a heavy investor. I'm a 15% investor in the fund. That's a lot of skin in the game.”
Adventur.es closed its last two acquisitions without senior debt
“The last two deals we've done with no senior lender involved. We've done all equity with a combination of equity and seller debt.”
Adventur.es Created Its Own Book Imprint Over Publisher Economics
“The idea that we do all the work and they do some editing and have control, and then we'd go out and sell the book and they would take 70 to 90% of the proceeds just didn't sit well with us. So we created our own imprint. The imprint is called boring books.”