There is a rule we set for ourselves before we bought a single company. If we would not walk in on Monday morning and be proud to run the business, we do not make the offer. It sounds soft. In practice it is the strictest filter we have.
Plenty of businesses look attractive on a spreadsheet. Profits are steady, margins are decent, the numbers pass the first look. Then you visit. The team seems tired. The customer list has three names on it doing sixty percent of revenue. The founder cannot answer a basic question about how a contract gets renewed. On paper it is a deal. In reality it is a headache dressed up as an opportunity.
We are not looking for turnarounds
A turnaround is a specific business. It has broken. Its customers are leaving. Its staff are on the way out. Somebody has to arrive with a plan and a hard hand and try to save it. That work has a place, but it is not our work. We are not restructurers. We do not want to spend two years unpicking a mess somebody else made.
What we are looking for is the opposite of a turnaround. A business that already works. That already has customers who pay on time. That has a team that shows up and knows what to do. Our job is not to save it. Our job is to steward it, professionalise it, and grow it.
We are not looking for startups either
Startups have a different problem. They have not proven anything yet. Every meeting is a hypothesis. Every quarter is a fresh test of whether the model works. There is nothing wrong with that. It is just a different sport. We have chosen to play a game where the fundamentals are already proven and the value we add is measurable in months, not years.
What we are looking for
The businesses that pass our test share a common feature. Their customers do not really have a choice about buying. Something in the law, or a piece of infrastructure, or a compliance obligation, means the work has to happen. That means revenue is predictable, churn is low, and the business has a floor beneath it during the years when the wider economy is not being kind.
This is not a glamorous position to take. Nobody writes a case study about a company that quietly does the same thing every month for twenty years. We think that is exactly what makes these businesses undervalued and worth owning.
The founder test
The other filter is human. We only buy from founders we would want to stay in touch with after the deal is done. That sounds obvious until you have sat through a sale process where the seller treats every question as an attack and every request for information as an insult. Those deals do not work. The handover falls apart. The staff pick up on it. The customers pick up on it. What starts as a promising acquisition ends in a bad memory for both sides.
When we meet a founder who cares about who takes over their business, who wants to know we will look after their people, and who is willing to answer honest questions and expect honest answers back, that is when we know a deal has a chance. Everything else is process.
What this means in practice
Most of what we do is say no. Most of the businesses we are shown are not for us. Some are too dependent on the outgoing founder. Some are in sectors we do not understand well enough to run responsibly. Some are priced for a buyer with a very different plan. That is fine. Saying no is a large part of being a serious acquirer.
The businesses we do buy tend to look boring from the outside. That is by design. Boring, in our world, means dependable. Dependable means we can build.
If you are thinking about succession
If you are a UK business owner who has quietly been thinking about what happens next, and you would rather your business kept running, kept employing your team, and kept looking after your customers, we would like to hear from you. There is no pitch. There is no obligation. Just a conversation. That is where every deal we have ever been proud of started.
