- PrivatEquityGuy
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- ex-CFO of Spotify recent $30M investment
ex-CFO of Spotify recent $30M investment
HoldCo invest vs a penthouse in NYC
A quick note before we jump in…
Many people ask us why don’t we pursue the opportunity to acquire companies with EBITDA of $1 million to $3 million.
My answer: “As soon as we learn to walk, we can learn to run,” and this can happen fast.
Seeing my 1 year old—the jump from walking to running was short 3-4 weeks. We’re looking to do the same, first acquiring small businesses in the $300-500k EBITDA range and moving on to larger opportunities from there.
We have such larger opportunities on our pipeline, so we will get there very soon.
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What if there was a proven and reliable system where you could double your capital every 5 years, like clockwork?
Instead of pulling your hair out, trying to figure out different asset classes on where to invest your capital...
Or feeling that knot in your stomach when you look at another investment opportunity in an industry you know nothing about.
Instead, you can actually sit down with confidence…
Open the quarterly report on our holding company, which has copied and pasted the Scandinavian buy-build-and-hold strategy used by some of the savviest (and richest) serial acquirers in Sweden...
Mr. Peter Sterky - ex-CFO/COO Spotify
Mr. Anders Börjesson & Family
Mr. Carl Bennet - 6th richest Swede ($9.8B)
Mr. Fredrik Lundberg - 9th richest Swede ($6B)
To name a few....
And generate winning returns — year after year.
Whether you're a tech investor with hundreds of thousands of liquidity...
Or a Family Office with tens or hundreds of millions of dollars in AUM...
This strategy I'm sharing today is a secret weapon you can use to double your capital every 5 years by investing in profitable, and "boring" small niche companies in Northern Europe.
This might sound a “little too good to be true”...
To be honest, I thought the same...
So I've spent the last 2 years talking & meeting local business owners in their 50s and 60s (niche industries $1-5M in revenue; long history; profitable; with great growth potential).
Few things I can confirm:
1. They have a strong history and a great customer base (key-man-risk is there, but we're looking for ones where it's as low as possible.)
2. Many of them have personal expenses on the balance sheet because they never planned to sell; and they are still profitable!! (interesting to see what will come out during DD)
3. They are interested in working with us (trust and rapport is built over many-many meetings)
4. Opportunity to grow these businesses as many owners do not speak English and have not been interested in expanding into wealthy markets such as Finland, Sweden, Norway, etc.
(Why, you ask? They have no desire because they've been living a good life making $250-$300k a year)
5. There is almost NO competition in deals. This is a GAME CHANGER when it comes to acquisition multipliers... if we get more dry powder from investors, we can become more aggressive with our offers.
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We have 3-4 deals under LOI – the MOST important thing is these are companies with great operators willing to continue the day-to-day operations under our wing.
It gets even better....
*Those with an operator have higher multiples, but there are competitors in the same industry that we could acquire at 2x-4x EBITDA and create excellent synergies when expanding to foreign markets in the 60-450 km range.
And I’m not the only person pursuing this buy-and-build-and-hold strategy to rake in great profits...
Just look at the valuations of Swedish holdcos...
We're talking about valuations from $1.6B to $7.9B; the portfolios of 25 to 200 companies.
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As we decided to build in public on Twitter I’ll share where we are at this stage (It's nice to see that Spotify's former CFO decided to invest $30M in this particular opportunity and not elsewhere; btw he is the biggest shareholder of Swedish HoldCo Röko).
This shows that what we do has ton of potential.
Anyway, we are in talks with few people interested being our founding investor.
Having a founding investor gives us two very important advantages compared to the current situation where we do NOT have one. Sounds obvious, but let me explain:
We can approach companies aggressively: since the deals have almost ZERO competition, we can push: Here's our take-it-or-leave-it offer, I’m sure it would give us a pretty significant multiples difference in acquiring the company.
Once the founding investor is in place and the first acquisition is made, we have another 8-10 HNWIs interested in investing in our opportunity (I'll be completely honest - they just don’t want to be first - that is what they’ve said)
An important note: In the initial stage we are open to private equity investment model as few of you may want liquidity option after 3-5 years. As a very wise person told me the other week:
I think the most imporant thing about entrepreneurship of any kind is that you are always moving forward, pivoting as you see fit and grinding.
I find it to be an excellent advice!
*Please note that pursuing this opportunity will be a bumpy road, but building in public, in front of thousands of smart folks—attracting experienced professionals to advise myself and our team—we are building something meaningful, which hopefully will also be reflected in Wikipedia (and this not by us, but by others:))
Take care,
Mikk aka PrivatEquityGuy
P.S. If this got you thinking then feel free to send me a message; I am happy to talk about what we build, and as the saying goes - Play long term games with long term people.