Nov 2, 2023 · 1h 20m · my-first-million
How I Bought A Multi-Million Dollar Egg Carton Business For $0 | Sarah Moore Interview
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
In this in-depth interview with Shaan Puri, entrepreneur Sarah Moore reveals how she overcame personal hardship and educational deficits to execute a 100% debt-financed acquisition of eggcartons.com, scaling it into a multimillion-dollar packaging enterprise.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. The hosts hold 41.1% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
The hosts as informed peer 5.1 Guest teaching 6.3 Guest disagreement 2.6 The hosts pushing back 1.7
speaking balance: gold is the hosts, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 9:34 Condemning corporate banking culture
Sarah forcefully attacks the culture of elite banking institutions, questioning why pedigree graduates would voluntarily choose to become 'someone else's bitch' and live under 15-minute response mandates.
Hardest push from the hosts ▶ 1:04:50 Questioning authenticity amid viral skepticismShaan confronts the narrative directly, detailing how viral skeptics called bullshit on Sarah's background and questioning whether he was being deceived by a Theranos-style illusion before fact-checking.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 16:50 Dismantling PE industry thesis criteriaSarah dismantles standard business school investment frameworks by demonstrating that industry categorization is largely irrelevant compared to verified historic profitability and operational simplicity.
The host holds their own ▶ 58:25 Shaan's personal insight on mentor expectationsShaan brings deep personal domain knowledge and vulnerability, relating his own experience of being backed by billionaire mentors at 24 and the psychological burden of living up to external belief.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | The hosts as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | The hosts pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Enigmatic Entrepreneur and the Search Fund Concept | 4 | 5 | 2 | 1 | Shaan introduces Sarah's viral story and sets up the premise of buying unsexy businesses. Sarah explains her initial discovery of the search fund concept at Harvard Business School and why corporate banking did not appeal to her. The tone is collaborative and inquisitive. | |
| HubSpot CRM Sponsor Break | 6 | 4 | 4 | 2 | Sarah vividly critiques the relentless culture of investment banking where responsiveness within 15 minutes is demanded 24/7. Shaan builds on this with his own college friend anecdote about the absurd phrase 'ASAP or sooner'. Both bond over rejecting traditional corporate servitude. | |
| Designing an Independent Search and Busting Industry Myths | 4 | 7 | 5 | 2 | Sarah debunks traditional search fund models and investor payback terms, explaining why she went independent. She directly challenges the standard PE dogma about picking the 'right industry', arguing that sustained profitability matters far more than theoretical industry thesis. | |
| Sourcing Deal Funnel Interns via Craigslist | 5 | 6 | 3 | 3 | Shaan questions how a broke student recruited interns, leading Sarah to explain her pitch offering open access to live PE dealmaking. Sarah reveals that Craigslist yielded vastly superior, unconventional talent compared to standard Harvard job boards. | |
| Automating High-Volume Cold Outreach | 5 | 6 | 2 | 1 | Sarah explains her high-volume email permutation system and how owners inadvertently verified their company financials when replying angrily or complimenting the outreach. Shaan compares the psychological dynamic to running into an acquaintance at a party. | |
| Finding eggcartons.com and Negotiating the Deal | 6 | 7 | 3 | 3 | Sarah breaks down the discovery of eggcartons.com, determining purchase price multiples, and why she strictly insisted on seller notes over complex earnouts. Shaan contributes with insights from helping his own friend structure a small business acquisition. | |
| Closing the Acquisition with 100% Debt Financing | 6 | 7 | 4 | 3 | Sarah explains how she negotiated zero-down financing by getting specific regional banks to treat the seller note as equity. Shaan probes on the mechanics of banking underwriting while recapping the audacity of using fake alumni IDs to house interns. | |
| Unlocking Hidden Value and Scaling Revenue | 6 | 7 | 2 | 2 | Sarah explains how shifting definition from 'egg cartons' to 'specialty packaging requiring separation and protection' unlocked 40% non-egg revenue and enabled a 5-6x surge during COVID. Shaan playfully suggests rebranding the company to Cartons.com. | |
| Critical First-Year Operational Pitfalls | 4 | 6 | 2 | 1 | Sarah shares key operational mistakes from year one, focusing on the disaster of attempting to port critical 1-800 landlines to VoIP systems. Shaan and Sarah agree on the golden rule of leaving core operational infrastructure untouched early on. | |
| Troubled Youth and the Benefactors Who Changed Everything | 3 | 8 | 1 | 1 | Sarah opens up about her traumatic childhood, foster hopping, legal troubles, and the Bracken family who took her in and taught her basic life accountability. She details how working at a diner led to benefactors who offered to fund her college education unconditionally. | |
| Academic Deficits, Relentless Work Ethic, and the Harvard Leap | 4 | 8 | 2 | 1 | Sarah reveals testing at the 33rd percentile reading level in college and paying her sister to take the SAT out of intense academic insecurity. She describes compensating through obsessive, around-the-clock studying in the Northeastern library to avoid letting down her benefactors. | |
| The Burden of Belief and Personal Mentorship | 7 | 6 | 1 | 1 | Shaan shares a deeply personal parallel about the crushing emotional pressure of having wealthy mentors believe in you and hand you keys to a company at 24. Sarah echoes the sentiment and explains her personal philosophy of being 'that one person for one person'. | |
| Confronting Viral Doubters and Examining the Original Playbook | 6 | 6 | 3 | 2 | Shaan reviews the social media backlash questioning whether Sarah's zero-down Harvard deal was legitimate, and reads through her authentic Craigslist hiring copy. Both laugh at the unpretentious wording that promised live deal experience without useless financial modeling. | |
| Unapologetic Guerrilla Deal Sourcing | 5 | 7 | 3 | 1 | Sarah shares guerrilla marketing tactics, including wearing 5-inch heels to broker mixers, riding Boston blue bikes in 'I Want To Buy Your Business' sweatshirts, and mass-faxing photo flyers. Shaan praises her shameless commitment to standing out. | |
| The Pursuit of Freedom and Parting Remarks | 5 | 5 | 2 | 1 | Sarah concludes with an impassioned reflection on entrepreneurship as the purest remaining avenue to personal freedom. Shaan sets up boundaries to prevent listeners from overwhelming her business while agreeing to help serious prospective searchers. |
Statements from this episode (23)
Moore: Search funds allow buying businesses without money or experience
“They mentioned something called a search fund, which is where you essentially can go out and buy some grungy business and become the CEO basically overnight without any money or experience.”
Moore: Goldman Sachs enforced a 24/7 15-minute response rule
“And he said, at Goldman Sachs, there was a rule of 15 minutes, Meaning, you had to respond to whatever form they reached out to you in within 15 minutes, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.”
Moore: Elite graduates going into banking choose corporate enslavement over freedom
“Again, given the pedigree of these people, you would think you would shoot for the moon year. You would want to have this freedom in your life, but you're literally choosing a form of enslavement, in my opinion.”
Puri: Banking and consulting are brain drains diverting talent from entrepreneurship
“Yeah, anytime, you know, I think banking, consulting, these are often brain drains. The talent, really talented people go there because it's sort of safe and it's like a well-respected path, But if you think about how much, how many more cool, interesting thin…”
Moore: Harvard Business School doesn't teach students how to evaluate small businesses
“And people will say, you have a Harvard MBA, but Harvard is very corporate. They don't teach you how to look at a corporate or commercial window washing business and evaluate their financials to see if you want to buy it. They're looking at very complicated fi…”
Moore: Traditional search fund backers require searchers to repay 1.5x capital
“Look further into it and see that if you were to get an investor to back you, they'll give you plenty of money. You can live a cushy life. You can do this in a fancy office. You can wine and dine these sellers. But you have to pay back one and a half times tha…”
Moore: Private company databases are only accurate about 50% of the time
“The, we estimated, just by looking at some financials we actually knew about, that the database was accurate about 50% of the time. Accurate meaning the owner's name is correct, the revenue's correct, the employee count, all of those metrics, because they're a…”
Moore: Industry sector is irrelevant when buying consistently profitable small businesses
“And what I found is that the industries were absolutely irrelevant. What matters is that you find a business that is established and has been consistently profitable for a number of years. Everything else, garbage.”
Moore: Private equity firms do not offer unpaid internships
“Private equity is an industry where they don't do free internships. You're more of a liability waste of their time than the free internship. So you're not gonna get a free internship at a private equity firm. You need to have actual skills. You need to have in…”
Moore: Craigslist produced better sourcing interns than elite student job boards
“I initially used the student job boards, and they were actually the worst. You get these cookie-cutter students who think like everybody else, they were basic. The best interns I found came off Craigslist.”
Moore: Initial acquisition targets were $4M-$20M revenue and $1.5M+ EBITDA
“Initially, I looked at businesses, ideally between 4,000,020 million in revenue, and I wanted something At or above a million and a half in EBITDA.”
Moore: Only about 5% of target acquisition businesses were consistently profitable
“I would say maybe five percent of the businesses we looked at were consistently profitable and established, that few.”
Moore: Small business sellers frequently kill deals by expecting 10x valuations
“A lot of people, the combo ends because they think their business is worth tenx, and it's just not.”
Moore: Required seller's notes on acquisitions to avoid taking outside equity
“The second thing for me was a seller's note. That was a non-negotiable for me, because a seller's note to me was a substitute for getting equity, and I didn't want to get any investors involved”
Moore: Keeping SMB acquisition terms simple and jargon-free builds seller trust
“I honestly think ignorance truly is bliss here, because the less you know, it's kind of better, because you can keep things extremely simple for the seller, and I think that breeds trust.”
Moore: Acquired eggcartons.com with zero personal cash using strategic debt financing
“You don't need to put any cash down, and I didn't have to because of the seller's note. So I did a 25% seller's note and a 75% bank note, and the idea there was when shopping around for a bank to do the deal, it was all about, and it took me, you know, twenty-…”
Moore: Most bankers do not understand deal financing structures
“Most bankers have no idea what they're doing or what they're talking about. Truly, I had to learn this the hard way. They think they can finance a deal. They have no idea how to finance the deal. They have no idea what these structures, what the details are of…”
Moore: 40% of eggcartons.com revenue is unrelated to eggs
“I estimate now that 40% of our revenue has nothing to do with eggs.”
Moore: eggcartons.com revenue grew 5x to 6x during COVID
“COVID was like cheating because we five, six X'd during COVID to answer your question on the numbers.”
Moore: Any product needing separation and protection is target packaging market
“I always say anything requiring protection and separation is fair game.”
Moore: New acquirers should avoid changing anything during their first year
“Do not change anything big, or really anything at all, the first year. Both of those things cost me a lot.”
Puri: Believing from a few creates far more pressure than disbelief from everyone
“Actually, the most pressure is when almost nobody believes in you, but a couple people do. And when a couple people do, it adds a whole different level of emotional pressure to the situation, more so than when nobody believes in you.”
Moore: Being a woman in business acquisitions is a leverageable advantage
“So, people talk all the time about this industry and being a woman, and they think that it's a disadvantage. Well, that's a matter of perspective. I deliberately wanted to leverage my gender, and so part of that was within the broker community, it's all men us…”