80 platforms and 1,300 add-on acquisitions

Buyers and Builders -

A quick announcement.

Thanks to you, 3,741 people reading this, I get to speak to and meet with great investors, capital allocators, and business buyers every week - mostly in the lower middle market, typically around $1M-$10M of EBITDA.

That means we regularly come across interesting deals, investment opportunities, fundraising situations, and other ideas worth exploring.

I’m looking for the right person to work with us on analyzing these opportunities, doing additional research, and helping turn the best insights into written content we can share with the world.

We have a growing platform, and your work could be published under your own name or anonymously. Based on the reach of our platform, your work could be seen by millions of people each month.

If this sounds interesting, just reply to this email.

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“If you believe in your ability, you gain the capability.”

Another standout speaker at the Serial Acquirers Conference in New York City was Cameron Perkins, Partner at Shore Search Partners.

Shore Search Partners has raised more than $290 million to back acquisition entrepreneurs buying businesses with $1-$10 million of EBITDA

They focus on industries with deep target universes, typically at least 500 potential acquisition candidates. Their minimum check size is $5 million, with a typical total equity commitment of $10-$20 million, including add-ons. Their holding period usually ranges from 5 to 8 years.

Cameron brings real operating credibility to that role. In 2001, he co-founded FastMed Urgent Care in North Carolina, helping build it from an independent urgent care and family practice clinic into one of the leading urgent care platforms in the country. He ultimately sold the business to Comvest Partners in October 2010.

After that…

Justin Ishbia called him and invited him to join Shore, which Cameron did.

If you look at Shore today, they’re highly entrepreneurial in how they operate, but the mission is to provide searchers with exceptional support, infrastructure, and research. In his words, the goal is to “redefine excellence in search.”

What does that actually mean?

According to Cameron, Shore’s model rests on three pillars

1.Mastering the fundamentals. The idea is simple: if you can avoid making the same first-time mistakes over and over again, you accelerate results. Searchers backed by Shore get access to playbooks, scorecards, and 100-day plans that have been refined across many companies and transactions.

2.Pattern recognition. This is where Shore’s scale really matters. Since inception, Shore has helped form more than 80 platforms and completed over 1,300 add-on acquisitions. That creates real institutional memory. They have seen enough situations to recognize what good looks like, what tends to go wrong, and what operators should prioritize early.

3.Creating a compounding advantage through board composition and network. Cameron must be a fan of Roger Federer, as he used him as an analogy: Federer always had 5 to 7 people around him, each offering a different perspective, from coaches to physiotherapists to hitting partners. Shore tries to apply the same philosophy to business building. The best boards do not simply tell CEOs what to do. They help them improve judgment, sharpen prioritization, and make better decisions over time.

I’ll add one more point Cameron made:

How many of you are practicing how you present yourselves to business owners before you ever walk into the room?

Cameron talked about the importance of being able to walk in, sit down with founders, and immediately build trust.

At Shore, they go as far as to do role play and actively practice how they introduce themselves, explain their story, and communicate with traditional business owners.

We spend endless hours on outreach lists, deal criteria, and financial models, but very few of us rehearse the actual conversation that may determine whether a founder wants to sell to us in the first place.

Cameron also highlighted one of the biggest areas where search-backed acquisitions can stumble: post-close integration

He pointed to two common failure points:

1.Building financial visibility too slowly. Shore pushes to get the right financial processes and reporting in place within the first 90 days to six months.

2.Underestimating the bandwidth of the management team after the acquisition closes. Too often, leaders are expected to absorb integration work on top of already demanding operating responsibilities

One practical solution Shore uses is holding a pre-close board meeting. That forces alignment before the deal is finalized:

-who is doing what;
-what the first 100 days should look like;
-where the bottlenecks may appear;
-and which resources need to be in place immediately after closing.

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What is your true edge when buying and building companies?

One could be your network.

My recent trip to NYC got me thinking even more about its importance, so right after I got back, I went through my notes on the lessons I’ve learned about building and maintaining one…

Building a world-class network is a skill like any other. Done well, it can be both a MOAT and an alarm system - a true competitive edge.

A great network doesn't just sit still like infrastructure. It breathes, it adapts, it learns, and probably the most important part, it warns you.

A strong network acts like a moat when things are good, surfacing opportunities, giving you leverage, extending your reach.

But it also acts like a margin of safety when things are shaky, protecting your downside, pointing out blind spots, helping you course correct before it's too late.

This is definitely not my most popular episode (as I don’t cover acquiring businesses...), but if you take the time to listen, you’ll start thinking about this a little differently. Having a great network can really be your true MOAT.

Links to the short episode: Apple podcasts, Spotify and YouTube.

That’s all for today.

Best,
Mikk Markus / PrivateEquityGuy