What I Learned Last Week curates the most interesting content relating to business acquisitions, operations, entrepreneurship, finance, and more. WILLW is a publication of The Business Inquirer.
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📰 Articles
Parsa Saljoughian, VP of Strategy at Whoop writes about the importance of understanding and measuring CAC payback, especially in today’s environment. He writes about VC-backed businesses but this is just as relevant for SMBs.
Over the last few years, LTV/CAC has become the gold standard metric of a consumer business. Somewhere along the way, the concept of CAC payback got lost, but it has huge implications for a company’s ability to scale efficiently. In today’s evolving macro-environment, cash efficiency is becoming much more important.
The Importance of CAC Payback in Today’s Market Environment
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Captarget, one of the deal origination services I recommend wrote a short piece on the importance of sourcing proprietary deal flow instead of simply relying on deal marketplaces. The truth is that most good deals do not get mass-marketed.
While online deal marketplaces are an obvious way to find low hanging deals, the model has some significant drawbacks that buyers need to fully understand before building out a holistic origination strategy.
Why Wait for a Deal to Post on a Marketplace?
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On a similar topic as above, Quiet Light Brokerage published a podcast where they discuss the differences between business brokers and aggregators. Each one has its pros and cons. Knowing how to incorporate each into your process is important.
Brokers and aggregators can have a huge impact on your business valuation and exit process, but sometimes it is hard to know what exactly the role of each one is in your unique journey.
In this video, Quiet Light Advisors Pat Yates and Chris Duty sit down to take a look at the pros and cons of working with a broker and/or an aggregator when selling your business.
Brokers vs. Aggregators: The Power of Knowledge
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They Got Acquired newsletter has published a PDF report looking at online businesses that have sold in 2021 between $100k and $50M. There’s a lot of great data in this free PDF.
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Ben Kelly of Kingdom Builders newsletter writes about the opportunity that lies ahead. Over 13 million businesses will transfer ownership in the next 10 years.
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Mushfiq Sarker of The Website Flip goes in-depth into the interesting topic of using pragmatic SEO to increase your website ranking.
Programmatic SEO is the practice of generating lots of pages of content using templates that can dynamically insert data from a database with the goal of increasing organic Google traffic from longtail keywords.
An example is creating a template that targets the main keyword phrase with many variations like “How environmentally friendly is {City}?” by publishing 3,000 pages with dynamically inserted data about the sustainability data in 3,000 different cities or towns.
Guide to Programmatic SEO for Niche Sites
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Right Percent is a B2B ad agency. They published a guide to vertical B2B/SaaS advertising.
The Ultimate Guide to Vertical B2B/SaaS Advertising
🧵 Twitter
Devil is in the details…
Good framework for problem-solving…
Important to have the right investors…
Creative ways to structure a deal…
Reminder to nail down the LOI terms before presenting it…
Not all HoldCos are created equal…
The two types of ETA…
🤔 Thoughts, Events, Other
🛠 Tools & Resources
These are tools & resources that I personally use or have used. They may contain affiliate links so I’ll get a few pesos if you sign-up.
Cerebro Capital - Cerebro has a network of o500+ lenders who can provide debt financing for your acquisition, refi, etc. $500k minimum.
X5 Deals - Proprietary deal sourcing. They do the outreach and send you relevant, actionable deals directly into your inbox.
Curators - Proprietary deal sourcing. You need targets that fit your investment criteria, and Curators delivers week after week - we even update your personalized database on a daily basis with new information on best-fit targets.
BizNexus - Proprietary deal flow, deal aggregator, and exit prep.
PrivSource - Deal aggregator for lower and middle-market listings.
ProjectionHub - Access to 50+ CPA-developed financial projection templates. 25% discount using code “duedilio” at checkout.
Logology - Best automated logo & brand identity tool I’ve come across.
DeepBench - Access a cutting-edge expert network. $200 discount.
OpenPhone - The best business phone solution that I have found. $20 credit.
Eloquens - Knowledge marketplace. I’ve bought a few guides and templates here.
Deal Flow Scout - Peer-to-peer deal flow exchange. Free, open, transparent.
Deal Sourcing Guide - A directory I put together of online marketplaces, brokers, DFY deal flow, and more.
That’s all for this issue of What I Learned Last Week!
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Important Disclaimer: This newsletter is provided for informational & educational purposes only, and should not be relied upon as legal, business, investment, or tax advice. This newsletter may link to other websites and certain information contained herein has been obtained from third-party sources. While taken from sources believed to be reliable, it has not been independently verified. The Business Inquirer makes no representations about the enduring accuracy of the information or its appropriateness for a given situation. References to any companies, securities, listings, investments, or digital assets are for illustrative purposes only and do not constitute an investment recommendation or offer to provide investment advisory services. Charts and graphs provided within are for informational purposes solely and should not be relied upon when making any business, tax, or investment decisions. Content in this newsletter speaks only as of the date indicated. Any projections, estimates, forecasts, targets, prospects and/or opinions expressed in these materials are subject to change without notice and may differ or be contrary to opinions expressed by others.