What I Learned Last Week 8.22.2025
Curating the best M&A, SMB, and EtA-related content since 2020.
Hello Friends!
Late August is here, and with vacation season in full swing, things will be a bit quieter than usual on the content front.
In this week’s issue of What I Learned Last Week:
📰 Articles
🧵 Online Highlights
🗓️ Events
⚒️ Tools & Resources
💡 How I Can Help
This issue of The Business Inquirer is brought to you by:
Don’t Risk Your Deal.
The wrong advisor can cost you time, money, and opportunity. DueDilio connects you with pre-vetted attorneys, deal coaches, and due diligence experts who know SMB acquisitions inside and out.
✔ 600+ Transactions supported
✔ 300+ Verified independent professionals & boutique firms
✔ Focus on $500K–$20M deal size
📰 Articles
I summarize, so you capitalize.
How to Buy an Ecommerce Business
This guide from DueDilio outlines how to buy an ecommerce business, offering a step-by-step roadmap for aspiring buyers. It emphasizes the advantages of buying over starting from scratch, such as inheriting revenue, customers, and operations. The article details business types, valuation methods, due diligence checklists, and actionable tips, making it suitable for both beginners and experienced entrepreneurs.
Key insights include:
Why buy instead of build: Gain immediate revenue, proven systems, loyal customers, and trusted supplier networks.
Business types: Covers dropshipping, private label, wholesale/retail arbitrage, and affiliate/content sites—each with distinct pros and cons.
Where to buy: Use marketplaces like Flippa, Empire Flippers, BizBuySell, business brokers, direct outreach, or industry networking.
Valuation methods: Most deals are based on 2–4x SDE (Seller’s Discretionary Earnings); asset and DCF methods also apply for larger deals.
Due diligence checklist: Includes financials, operations, traffic sources, legal, supplier relations, and digital marketing assets.
Tips for success: Start with smaller deals, negotiate seller support, secure financing early, and plan transition strategies carefully.
Common mistakes to avoid: Inadequate due diligence, overconfidence, ignoring red flags, poor planning, and lack of capital reserves.
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Designing a Strategic Post-Merger Integration
The CFO Secrets newsletter offers a candid and structured overview of financial integration during mergers and acquisitions, highlighting the complexity and demanding nature of the process. The framework is divided into three clear phases—Continuity, Integration, and Synergies—each with specific goals and timelines.
Key insights include:
Phase 1 – Continuity (30–90 days): Focuses on maintaining stability during ownership transition. Key tasks include communication with stakeholders, securing financial operations (bank control, payroll), and legal compliance.
Phase 2 – Integration (6+ months to years): Involves aligning systems, processes, and cultures. ERP migrations and organizational restructuring are common. Cultural integration is emphasized as the most challenging and prolonged component.
Phase 3 – Synergies: Aims to realize value from the acquisition. Quick wins include procurement savings, eliminating executive redundancies, improving payment terms, and initiating product/channel cross-sells. These should be approached pragmatically—targeting early, achievable gains before tackling more complex synergies.
Common pitfalls: Rushing synergy extraction, neglecting core business operations, and underestimating cultural integration needs.
Best practices: Make board-level decisions on integration scope early, start with low-hanging fruit, maintain core business focus, and communicate consistently.
The approach balances strategic discipline with operational pragmatism, underscoring the importance of patience, prioritization, and cultural awareness throughout the M&A integration process.
Here’s a link to a longer article on this topic.
🧵 Online Highlights
I scroll, so you don’t have to.
For SMB buyers, margin pressure in trades is a warning sign to watch…
Fund incentives can distort outcomes in distressed small businesses…
Multiples may look steady, but the underlying deal quality is probably shifting…
Bankruptcy wave signals tougher conditions for SMBs. Especially in industrials and consumer sectors…
Don’t just focus on the numbers during due diligence…
🗓️ Events
Acquisition Conference (Sept 3) - Sandy, UT
Stanford Search Fund CEO Conference (Sept 3-4) - Stanford, CA
Southeast ETA Conference (Sept 5-6) - Charlottesville, VA
iGlobal Independent Sponsors Summit (Sept 29-30) - New York, NY
McGuire Woods Independent Sponsor Conference (Oct 14-15) - Dallas, TX
Main Street Summit (Nov 4-6) - Columbia, MO
M&A Source 2025 Fall Conference (Nov 9-12) - Phoenix, AZ
Booth-Kellogg ETA Conference (Nov 19) - Chicago, IL
iGlobal Independent Sponsors & Capital Providers (Dec 9) - New York, NY
🎵 Listening: “Blinding Lights“ by The Weeknd 🎵
How did you like this issue of the newsletter?
⚒️Tools & Resources
I want to share some tools & resources that I have found helpful. Please note that some of these are paid sponsors or affiliates of the newsletter.
PrivSource - PrivSource helps you source deals and connect with transaction partners without ever paying a success fee.
X5 Deals - Proprietary deal sourcing for a great price. They do the tedious and time-consuming job of deal sourcing so you can spend more time on DD and closing.
Rejigg - Platform that connects searchers/investors directly with owners of off-market small businesses ($200k - $3M EBITDA) considering exits. All deals are sourced by the Rejigg team. Their team adds 15 to 20 new deals each week.
Kumo - 100,000+ deals sourced from thousands of brokers and marketplaces. Plus, AI-powered listings, robust data & analytics, and more.
BizNexus - Marketplace + off-market origination in one platform. The marketplace averages about 10k active listings & pre-CIM opportunities, and the off-market origination focuses on data & multi-channel.
Secret - Say goodbye to overspending on SaaS. With Secret, you get access to up to $1,000,000+ in savings on the best software to run your search, operate, and scale your business.
Deal Sourcing Guide (2025) - Discover 100+ platforms to supercharge your deal flow and find your perfect acquisition target—from flagship marketplaces to AI-powered deal sourcing tools, all updated for 2025.
💡 How I Can Help
Whenever you’re ready, here are a few ways for us to work together…
Schedule 1:1 consulting on deal sourcing, due diligence, M&A ecosystem, newsletters, entrepreneurship, or anything else you’d like to discuss
Promote your brand to business buyers, investors, SMB owners, and other M&A participants by sponsoring this newsletter
Assemble your M&A deal team with DueDilio
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