Self-Funded Search Tool Box

Everything we used to buy our Small Business

After a 6-months self-funded search, we just closed the acquisition of our small business. We received a ton of support from the small business community especially on Searchfunder and Twitter. As a Thank You, I want to pass on what we learned to the next generation.

The list below shows every tool or third-party we used throughout the process.

Knowledge Platforms:

• Searchfunder

• Twitter: Alex Bridgeman‘s SMB Twitter

• Books: HBR Guide to Buying a Small Business

• Podcasts: Think Like an Owner

• Blogs: Big Deal Small Business, The SMB MBA

Search Fund Set Up:

• Website: Found a react template and then used Upwork to find a developer to make changes - Would recommend sticking with Wordpress, Wix etc.

• Domain Hosting: Netlify

• Tearsheet / One pager: PowerPoint

• Incorporate LLC: Did ourselves online

• Email / Cloud Storage: Gsuite - We worked in regular Microsoft Office / Outlook. Google Workspace Sync lets you use Google email and calendar as the back end with Office / Outlook as the front end.

• PDF Signature: DocHub - free and integrated in Google Drive, but can only hold a limited number of documents, Adobe Acrobat Pro

• IOI / LOI templates: Stanford Search Fund Starter Kit (included in the Primer)

Deal Generation and Management:

• CRM: Salesforce - There are cheaper options, but we were familiar with SF, so not worth relearning. If you use SF, make sure you get the startup discount

• List of deal platforms: Roman Beylin’s Deal Sourcing Guide

• Deal site subscriptions: BizBuySell Edge

• Mass emailing: GMass

• Note: We did not have to go into proprietary searching, so we did not use any contact databases like ZoomInfo

Deal Diligence and Closing:

• Lender: Bruce Marks, First Bank of the Lake - SBA M&A specialist, highly recommend

• Quality of Earnings: Briggs & Veselka - Had a great experience working with Kerry Kilgore. The Due Dilio platform was also helpful in sourcing providers

• Lawyer: Hajjar / Peters

• Equity Raise: Most of the investors are on Searchfunder and Twitter. Getting featured on Michael Girdley’s One Interesting Deal helped us round out the investors

• Insurance: Oberle Risk Strategies - They were able to get us more coverage for a lower price. Fast response times and great advice.

• Life Insurance: Bailey Group

There are a host of other tools you can use for your search and plenty of posts discussing the pros and cons of each. My recommendation is to do a little bit of research and free trials for the more important tools like the CRM and then pick whichever is most efficient for you, regardless of price.

As a self-funded searcher, time is your most valuable resource. If your all-in cost of living is $50k per year, you’re burning $137 per day. Finding a system that works quickly and starting to source deals will save you more money than the pricing difference between two tools ever could.