June 1, 2022

Take Five #010: Our Beta is Live!

Take Five #010: Our Beta is Live!

Subscribe to Take Five to get our top 5 quick weekly reads on the world of SMB, M&A, and EtA from the team at Kumo. Kumo aggregates thousands of deals into one easy-to-use platform so that you can spend less time sourcing, and more time closing deals.

Before we jump into our take five, some big news: our beta for Kumo is finally LIVE!

What is Kumo?
Kumo is a powerful deal aggregator to help supercharge your deal sourcing.

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What can you do with Kumo?
With Kumo, explore the 60,000+ deals we’ve sourced so far (from 184K+ listings monitored) — and see hundreds of new deals each week from 40+ sources (we’re adding more data sources weekly!) Plus, you’ll be able to:

  • Filter deals by industry and category
  • See where the same deal is shared across multiple sites
  • See when deals are updated for the most recent information
  • Save deals for easy browsing later

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Take Five #010: Our Beta is Live!

1. Start here with valuation—a great basic framework on how to approach deal valuation:


2. A brand new EtA podcast from Axial (they’re only two episodes in!):

“A bi-monthly podcast featuring dealmakers from the SMB M&A community. Hosted by Axial founder and CEO, Peter Lehrman.”


3. How to use acquisitions to strengthen your existing home service business:

John Wilson on how he uses acquisitions to add service components to a install business, and vice versa:

"We have had tremendous success in buying companies that fill a weak spot in our business.

A “good” home service company can withstand economic shock, has a service and install component, has daily revenue coming in, can generate install leads without marketing, and is durably profitable. If that sounds attractive, read on."

Lots of practical examples here, such as adding gutter cleaning services to a roofing install company:

"Usually, when I tell operators in these types of [install] businesses that they should add a service division, they look at me like I’m crazy. The average sale is a few hundred instead of 10k. Customers need a lot more hand holding. It looks like a distraction! Totally, I get it.

But-what if your business:

• Could generate install leads from its service team which reduces your marketing spend AND massively increases your closing rate?
• Could gain control of your market because you controlled the entire value stack in that install
• Could have more consistent cashflow every single day AND chase your money less because your service division is COD
• Could have an incredibly profitable small division that churns cash

I know. I know. I’m like a late-night telemarketer guy. But this is the reality."

Using Acquisitions To Strengthen Your Business” from the Owned and Operated Newsletter


4. Monthly breakdown of SBA numbers, for some sweet sweet data:

Pulled out some of the top tweets in this longer thread:


5. How do you know you have a great deal?

Old but gold: 28 points from Clint Fiore on what makes a great deal, which feels even more relevant in today’s market.



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Take Five to get our top quick reads every week from the team at Kumo. Kumo aggregates thousands of sources into one easy-to-use platform so that you can spend less time sourcing, and more time closing deals.