1st 8-fig fund with 20-25 committed LPs while portfolio growing 23%

Your edge when buying, building, and selling businesses can be that people know you mean serious.

Not just because you say it, but because you always show up.

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I believe your next phase of B2B growth starts here:

If you run a company doing between $1M-$20M in revenue and you are looking for a flexible growth team…

Insert: Spacebar Studios

They partner with founders, marketers, and RevOps leaders to create and distribute high-quality content that drives growth, brand authority & pipeline.

• Build a robust outbound engine

• Craft compelling messaging that converts

• Optimize owned media for maximum reach

People always ask about past results so here they are:

They took a vertical payments company from $1M → $7M ARR in under 2 years

Not only that…

They scaled a creative SaaS platform from $500k → $5M ARR in 30 months

For a limited time, Spacebar Studios is offering free growth strategy calls for your business.

Click here or the image below and book a free call.

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I asked ChatGPT what Jonathan D. Gray, the COO of Blackstone Group, would do if he were starting over today at 32 years old, $150k in savings but with zero track record and no one knowing his name.

All he has is the following distribution:

• X account with 50,000+ investors/business people

• Podcast with 11,000 monthly downloads

• Weekly newsletter with 3,000+ readers

• Investor list with 200 contacts

• Organic weekly deal flow with 3-4 deals

What he would do over the next 12–18 months to build a long-term investment firm:

Define a clear, repeatable investment thesis

1. Focus on one vertical: industrial services, vertical SaaS, healthcare, financial services, etc.

2. Must be fragmented, durable, with recurring cash flow and operational leverage

3. Write a 5-page investment memo as if pitching himself to Blackstone -- IRR logic, downside protection, thesis clarity

Close one anchor deal

1. Target <$2M deal with strong cash flow and upside

2. Use SBA loan, seller note, or soft-circled capital from the investor list

3. Integrate with rigor: dashboards, SOPs, a 90-day post-close playbook

This is the proof-of-concept deal

Turn distribution into a capital & deal flow flywheel

1. X = top-of-funnel attention

2. Podcast = trust engine

3. Newsletter = warm funnel for LPs, operators, and founders

4. Monthly LP-style updates to 200+ investors

5. Share deal memos, post-close case studies, and acquisition lessons

Build a fund without calling it one

-After deal #1: report updates transparently

-For deal #2: offer co-investment to audience/investor list

-Month 12: raise $3–5M in commitments from 5–10 LPs

-Focus: cash-flowing deals with a shared ops backbone

Find a 10/10 co-founder (months 3–9)

-Ideal profile: 28–40 y/o operator with real P&L and team management experience

-Distribution-based sourcing: podcast callout, Twitter post, newsletter request

-Filter for ambition, grit, and obsession with ownership

-Trial 2–3 in 60-day shadow or deal projects

-Finalize based on execution, chemistry, and aligned vision

By month 18, Jonathan would have:

• 1-2 acquisitions in stable verticals

• 5-10 soft-circled or committed LPs

• A clear, public HoldCo thesis

• Full SOP playbook + internal systems

• Operator-aligned co-founder

• Audience compounding faster than capital

Want to know what I did next?

I reposted this with a following message:

What happened?

People with VERY good credentials started sending me direct messages.

People in their 30s, 40s and 50s with deep operating and investment experience.

Time for some introductory talks. I'll keep you posted. It might lead to something…:)

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If you too would like to meet like-minded business people, but you don't have a social media account, I highly recommend booking a FREE call with Rand Larsen from Scalepath.

He has done all the hard work – a network of over 2,000 biz owners.

If you book a call with him today, he will introduce you to up to 3 business owners in your area. (Relationships run the world, never forget that).

So don’t miss out and get to know your next mentor, a GP/LP, business builder, investor or a founder who is on the exact same journey as you.

Book a free call with Rand.

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There is this conventional wisdom that businesses must grow, get to the NEXT level... or die.

And there are tons of investors who demand constant growth in sales, profits, market share and EBITDA.

And if this doesn't happen, or if the companies even decrease, they look for an exit.

IMO what's even more interesting:

I've met a lot of private companies that don't grow much, if at all, and they don't die either.

On the contrary, they're quite healthy and stable.

As a result, the founders have been running it for 20+ years and are still crazy rich.

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How has been the week in the small holding company world?

Traditional company

I'll let you know how the heavy equipment company financing and negotiations go. But regarding banks, the month of July is slow so far.

Consumer loan company

Modena Capital continues to scale with discipline and clarity—prioritizing performance over noise. June was no exception:

• 23% growth in our loan portfolio

• €450K+ deployed in active SME lending

• 76.19% investor retention—a signal of growing trust

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One MASSIVE insight after talking to and meeting with nearly 1000 traditional biz owners:

Too many businesses under <$15M aren’t sellable…

• owner is the business

• sloppy financials

• one customer = 40% of revenue

• declining sales/profit

• no systems

But not this one below:

Good news: Let me know by replying to this email if you’d like to get access to full financials, SKU data & traffic insights.

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This week’s podcast

It's hard to find a more scalable way to invest and acquire traditional $1-5 million EBITDA companies.

8-10 deals per month shows how exceptionally good they are at their job.

Favorite quotes from this episode:

1. If you haven’t talked to 50 HVAC owners, don’t tell me you want to buy an HVAC company.

2. We've reviewed thousands of deals and only backed 10%. We build scorecards, standard docs, systems.

3. Blue-collar operators outperform the MBAs. Almost every time.

4. Less ego, more grit. They've managed teams, solved real problems, and know how to earn trust. That’s who you want leading an SMB.

5. In our deals, operators often end up with 60-80% of the business. After repaying capital, they start with real wealth building.

6. Over-leveraging and underfunding working capital is the most common mistake.

7. New buyers underestimate how much cash the business actually needs to operate, and that kills deals faster than anything else.

8. The best operators are obsessed with the journey, not the outcome.

9. If one is chasing a shortcut to $100M, they probably won’t even close their first deal. But if they love the grind, you’ll quietly build something great.

10. Eliminate capital as a barrier, and the right people win.

11. Most sellers don’t want just the richest buyer, they want someone they can trust to take over.

12. We unlock that by backing strong operators who otherwise couldn’t compete.

Here are the links to Spotify, Apple Podcasts and YouTube.

That’s all for today.

I really appreciate you taking the time to read and look forward to talking to you again next week.

Take care,

PrivateEquityGuy / Mikk Markus