Opinion
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.”
Insight
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.”
Opinion
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…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
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.”
Opinion
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…”
Opinion
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.”
Disclosure
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-…”
Insight
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…”
Insight
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.”
Assertion Supported
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…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
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…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
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…”
Insight
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.”
Disclosure
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”
Insight
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.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
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.”
Insight
Moore: Any product needing separation and protection is target packaging market
“I always say anything requiring protection and separation is fair game.”
Insight
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.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
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.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Moore: 40% of eggcartons.com revenue is unrelated to eggs
“I estimate now that 40% of our revenue has nothing to do with eggs.”
Disclosure
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.”
