👋 What’s New
Hey friends,
Deep in the trenches with RaffleLink 2.0 this week. Heavy QA, polish work, and a hard sprint to launch with our first beta customers by end of March. It's been a 6-month journey and it's cool to finally see it coming to life.
Here's the thing I keep coming back to: the worst mistake in app building is spending months creating something and then... nobody uses it. But when you acquire an existing business (like I did with RaffleLink), you already have users. You know exactly what you're building and who you're building for. That changes everything.
This week was all the small stuff that matters — custom branded verification emails, polish on the flows, the details customers notice. Also started peeking into the future: API architecture planning, thinking about making features AI-agent friendly. Not quite there yet, but interesting to learn and keep in the back of my mind.
Let's get to the deals - this week has some bangers…I will be reaching out to a few.
💼 3 Businesses For Sale
1. Medical Billing & Revenue Cycle Management - USA ⭐
Asking Price: $1,800,000 (~3.7x cash flow) | Revenue: $563,805 | Cash Flow: $484,808 (86% margin!) | Founded: 2017 (9 years)
What It Is: Remote medical billing firm serving behavioral health and addiction treatment centers. Handles claims, payment posting, A/R tracking, denials/appeals, and payer communication
The Details:
12 active clients generating $3K-$5K/month each in billing revenue
$30K-$70K average annual contract value
Team: 1 FT billing specialist + 2 PT billers
Owner time: 1-2 hours/week (!)
5-star Google reviews driving organic inbound
Fully documented SOPs with screenshots for every workflow
Why It's Interesting:
85% net margin is insane for services. Most agencies are 20-30%.
Behavioral health niche = specialized, sticky, growing sector
Minimal owner involvement = true semi-passive income
Documented processes = easy handoff
Growth levers: No outbound sales exists. No paid marketing. No structured referral program. Just add any of these and the client base expands.
SaaS News Intelligence API - Global
Asking Price: $2,147,000 (~2.8x revenue, 4.4x cash flow) | Revenue: $769,551 | Cash Flow: $488,449 | Growth: 114% YoY | Founded: 2021 (5 years)
What It Is: Developer-ready API providing structured global news data. Covers 10,000 domains, 80,000 sources, 200+ countries, 89 languages.
The Details:
270 paying customers (startups to enterprise)
LTV:CAC ratio of 7:1 ($1,450 LTV vs $200 CAC)
5,300 signups/month → 35 new paying customers
Team: 9-10 employees (engineers, ML specialists, marketing, support)
Tech Stack: React frontend, Python/Flask backend, MySQL/MongoDB/Elasticsearch
Why It's Interesting:
Infrastructure SaaS = once integrated, high switching costs
114% YoY growth = strong momentum
7:1 LTV:CAC = healthy unit economics
AI-enhanced data = positioned for the current wave
Growth levers: Enterprise pricing tiers, real-time webhooks, specialized datasets for finance/compliance, premium historical data packages.
3. Staffing & Recruiting Firm - USA (SBA Pre-Qualified)
Asking Price: $1,100,000 (~3.2x cash flow) | Revenue: $674,758 | Cash Flow: $344,130 (51% margin) | Founded: 2002 (23 years)
What It Is: Retained executive search firm specializing in building products, commercial interiors, flooring, tile, and related industries.
The Details:
Retained/mini-retained model only (no contingency, no contract staffing)
20-25 active clients/year with 95% retention
Clients pay upfront at search initiation = strong cash flow
26,000-contact proprietary database
Team: Owner (50 hrs/week) + 2 commission-based recruiters
10-15 active searches at any time
Why It's Interesting:
SBA pre-qualified = 10% down, 10-year loan, competitive rates
23 years operating = survived 2008, COVID, everything
95% client retention = deep relationships
55% margins = excellent for services
Retirement-driven sale = motivated seller, clean transition
Growth levers: Add recruiters (could scale to $1.5-2M), reactivate dormant clients, expand outbound using 26K database, reopen prior verticals (HVAC, architectural interiors).
💡 2 Insights This Week
Insight #1: "Keep Your Aperture Wide" — Lessons from BYU's 2026 ETA Conference
The BYU SMB | ETA Conference happened March 6. One panel on search tactics had this advice from active searchers:
On deal flow: "If a broker posts a good business, they probably have 200–300 people emailing them. You have to build relationships so they see you as a legitimate buyer, not just someone kicking tires." — Kyle Poll, CEO of GetOut
On criteria: "You're never going to get all three perfectly — industry, size, geography. Narrowing too much kills deal flow. Being industry-agnostic keeps the pipeline full." — Riggs Powell, Spreckles Capital
On starting: "Don't be afraid to fail. Just start." — Ryan Price, Legendary Pediatric Therapy
Insight #2: Big Customers Are Often Your Least Profitable
Customer concentration feels scary. But here's the counterintuitive part: large customers are often less profitable because they use their leverage to negotiate harder on price.
Why this matters: If your biggest customer (say, 30% of revenue) leaves, your effective acquisition multiple goes up. But if that customer was low-margin, the hit is smaller than it looks.
Example from Mineola Search Partners:
Two $2M EBITDA companies, both acquired for $10M (5x), both have 30% customer concentration
Company A: Big customer has 20% margin (same as others) → if they leave, effective multiple jumps to 7.1x
Company B: Big customer has 10% margin (negotiated down) → if they leave, effective multiple only hits 5.9x
Company B is actually the safer buy.
The move: During diligence, break out profitability by customer. A concentrated customer base with low-margin whales is less risky than it appears — and you can structure around it with contingent seller notes tied to retention.
Source: Mineola Search Partners
📖 1 Story
The Contrarian Retention Play
I met an owner of a small business staffing firm (similar to Deal #3) and it has 95% client retention over 23 years. How?
The owner calls every client on their birthday. Not the company anniversary. The hiring manager's personal birthday.
No automation. He makes the calls himself. 2-3 hours per month for 23 years.
The lesson: In an era where everyone's automating customer touchpoints — AI chatbots, automated emails, robo-calls — this guy does the exact opposite. And it works.
Be honest: the second you realize you're talking to an AI on a support call, what do you do? You hang up and ask for a human. Lots of people feel this way.
Being contrarian on automation can be a moat. When everyone zigs toward AI, sometimes zigging toward human is the play that makes you stand out.
See y’all next week,
@eddieacquires