I bought my first business for just $4,000, a student AI tool. I sold it 15 months later for low six figures.
That first deal turned into the job. I run Kautilya now, an M&A buyside advisory firm. Most of what we look at is off-market, because the businesses worth buying are rarely listed. Right now that means B2B SaaS, B2G businesses in Canada, and fire safety in Australia.
Most of this job is searching. I look at 30 to 50 businesses a week and pass on nearly all of them. So I write it all down. That's the newsletter below.
Kautilya to date
- Founders contacted
- 25,000+
- LOIs submitted
- 9
- Deals closed
- 6
- Advised on
- $53.2M
- Deal size
- $1M–$25M
What an engagement looks like
About three months, start to finish.
- 200–300seller conversations we generate
- 60–70calls between you and owners
- 10–20live deals held in your pipeline
Featured on
Still Searching
My weekly log of buying businesses: the deal I'm digging into, the one I walked away from, and the numbers behind both.
Read by 9,000+ people.
Selling a business? Send me the numbers and I'll tell you within a week whether I'm a buyer. What you send stays between us, and nothing moves without your say so. dev@pocket-fund.com
