Dipping my Toes Into Acquisition Entreprenurship

Recently I started reading the book “Buy then Build” by Walker Deibel. While I’m no where near done the book I find the subject rather interesting. “Acqusitiion Entrepreneurship” may sound sacriligious at first; when people imagine an entrepreneur they tend to think of a guy in casual jeans on his laptop trying to make his Web 3.0 startup into something at all. While making a startup has it’s merits and I respect those who are persistent about it, it’s rather risky. Not that I think that it’s a secret by any means. According to the U.S Bureau of Labor Statistics, small businesses fail by about 20%, 67%, 80% by year 1, 10, and 20, respectively. There are a variety of reasons why startups fail, but the point is that having a successful startup is difficult and risky. Even if you do everything right yourself, there is a chance your company fails simply because it “wasn’t the right time”, what to do about this? I believe the motiviations for creating a startup falls into 3: You want to build wealth, you want to be a leader, and you want to solve a problem. Unless the product is radical, you could probably achieve all 3 by just…

Buying a business that’s already doing it

It’ll cost money, it’ll be a committment, but it CAN be done, and not for much more expense than a normal startup. Assuming you do it right, the business would already have cash flow, meaning you could buy it off a bank loan at (according to Deibel) up to 90% of the cost of purchase. Walker Deibel goes into more about why to go this path, but all I’m saying is that it’s a route people can take to essentially skip the start up phase. Of course it’s still a lot of work, but putting in the right time and effort will lead to astronomically better results than an average investment, plus it gives you control as the business owner.

I might write more about this topic later as I learn more, maybe if I do a book review of “Buy Then Build”