Short write-ups from each job, written while they're still fresh. Some of this will probably seem obvious to me in a year, and that's fine.
Sep 2026Integrus Partners
Most of the valuation work is in the EBITDA bridge
The physician practice deal was the first time I built an adjusted EBITDA bridge from scratch. You start with what the books say, then add back things like above-market owner pay or a one-time legal bill. Every add-back raises the number, and every one has to hold up when the buyer asks why.
Everyone roughly agreed on the range of multiples. The real back-and-forth was over which adjustments counted. So the most useful skill turned out to be judgment: knowing early which adjustments we could actually defend, before the buyer pushed on them.
Jul 2026Alden Advisors
Good companies can still be hard to sell
Some of the companies I saw were profitable and had happy customers but would still be tough to sell. Usually the reason was structural: the revenue depended on the founder, one customer was a big chunk of sales, or there wasn't much you could actually hand over to a buyer.
Mapping buyers taught me to start from what the buyer wants. A strategic buyer is paying for something specific, like a product, a customer list, or a region. If I can't say in one sentence why a buyer would want the company, they probably don't belong on the list.
Jun 2026Vandy 2 Wall Street
Selling 51% is a different pitch than selling 100%
Our team pitched Gap selling a controlling 51% stake in Athleta instead of the whole brand. The model got us to a $561M enterprise value and a 19 to 20% IRR for the buyer.
The part I found most interesting was the structure. Keeping 49% lets Gap share in the upside if the new owner turns the brand around. The DCF got us in the door, but the memo only came together once we could explain why both sides would say yes.
May 2026Dallas Venture Capital
Early-stage decisions come down to the founder a lot
Market size, competition, and projections all go in the memo, and they matter. But at the early stage, a lot of the decision came down to whether the partners believed in the founder.
Also: automating the monthly KPI pull in Python was a small project, and people thanked me for it more than anything else I did. Nobody likes doing that by hand.
Feb 2026EverGold Search Fund
Most small business owners aren't thinking about selling
I screened 200+ companies for the search fund, and most owners had never really thought about selling. The ones who did reply often had a reason they hadn't said out loud yet.
Finding good targets is slow. That's why I built the AI workflows. They handled the reading and first drafts, so I could spend my time on calls and memos, the parts that needed a person.
ongoingSEYA
Being a founder made me a better diligence reader
Running SEYA and then looking at other companies' numbers in the same year was really useful. When I see a high return rate or a “one-time” expense that shows up every year, I remember explaining away the same kinds of things myself.
It makes me more understanding of founders, and also more skeptical.