- The SMB Scoop
- Posts
- 🟠 02 The SMB Scoop - The Crawl, Walk, Run KPI Framework
🟠 02 The SMB Scoop - The Crawl, Walk, Run KPI Framework
Welcome to the second SMB Scoop - sending you my favorite things in the world of small-medium sized businesses (SMBs) and entrepreneurship through acquisition (ETA). Something for everyone. I promise to deliver value.
For Owners and Operators: Developing KPIs (key performance indicators) is a huge opportunity for current small business owners. In this thought piece, Thomas Ince, Managing Director of LP First Capital an independent sponsor group based in Austin, TX, distills down the Crawl, Walk, Run framework for ultimately developing a set of quantitative standards to help you supercharge business. What's really special about Thomas is how he can take complex models & tools and distill them down into something understandable and actionable.
Buying a business is the easy part (37 closed, 2 this year, through 7 platforms). Integrating and growing a business is much tougher.
Knowing what KPIs to track, how to track it, and when to track it is tough.
We use the Crawl, Walk, Run Framework
10 Takeaways from it 🧵👇
— Thomas Ince (@thomasince)
3:49 PM • Jan 22, 2023
2. For Aspiring Entrepreneurs: Steve Ressler of the Brydon Group is an investor partnering with "CEOs in Residence" to acquire SMBs. The questions he answers are applicable to all business buying (not just traditional search fund operators) and is worth a read:
"What do investors look for in a potential traditional searcher?"
"What should I be doing during my MBA time to maximize my chances of success?"
"Why are Searchers Interested in SaaS businesses?"
How do you search, acquire, operate, & grow a SMB or SaaS Business?
I talked to 500+ acquisition entrepreneurs and I generally hear the same questions
As such, I wrote up my answers to common questions.
Here are 5 of my popular 🧵 on search funds, SaaS, GTM, & Mgmt
— Steve Ressler (@steveressler)
1:31 PM • Jan 22, 2022
3. For Operators & Investors: I learned quite a lot about business buying during my time in private equity. Mostly through trial and error, it is quite an apprenticeship business when I think about it. There are hundreds of these little tactics that just make the process of diligencing & buying a small business a little bit easier. Investors can also benefit from using this hack to understand and get up to speed on a potential SMB investment. Here's a hack that super charged my ability to get up to speed on an industry or topic in record time. I do this frequently when both diligencing a SMB to buy or investing passively in an SMB deal:
Hack I learned in private equity when buying a small business
Read 10Ks and investor presentations of publicly traded companies in the same space (competitors, customers, vendors)
➡️ Strategy playbooks, industry insight, risks, financials
Thank me by commenting "Ben you rock"
— Ben Tiggelaar 🟠 (@bentigg)
3:08 PM • Feb 2, 2023
Accredited Investors: Want to get in the flow of passive SMB and ETA deals? I'm starting a LP/investor list where I'll send you off-market SMB deals through my network.
Feedback? Have any questions or topics you want to see relating to SMBs or ETA? Or just have a question? Send them my way by replying. I intend to play around with the format of this newsletter so open to ideas & suggestions.
Talk soon,
Ben Tiggelaar