Perspectives on disciplined growth, KPI systems, and building durable businesses
A family-office portfolio is not a series of unrelated deals. It's one operating system applied again and again. Here's the operator-first playbook behind it.
Read Article →L10 meetings, rocks, and scorecards are boring on purpose. That's exactly what makes them scale across very different businesses. Here's the version that actually works.
Read Article →Two buyer types, two structures, and a headline number that rarely tells the whole story. Here's what to compare in the terms, the governance, and the years after close.
'Permanent capital' gets thrown around loosely. Here's what it actually means in structure and incentives — and the liquidity and governance trade-offs that come with it.
Most of the preparation for a succession sale happens in the twenty-four months before a buyer ever sees a number. Here's the playbook we walk founders through.
Essential services are among the most AI-resilient categories in the American economy. The leverage sits in a very specific set of back-office workflows — and in the controls around them.
Fire & life safety is our flagship vertical for a reason. Legally required service, recurring revenue, deeply fragmented ownership, and AI can't inspect a suppression panel.
A buy box exists to disqualify quickly. Here's how acquisition teams define one that actually filters — sector fit, geography, cash-flow quality, management depth, and the worksheet to build your own.
Two fire & life safety operators with identical recurring revenue can trade at very different multiples. The variable that matters is route density — and it is buildable.
A one-page weekly scorecard is the cheapest piece of operating infrastructure you can install in a lower-middle-market service business. Here's the version we use.
A full sale converts equity to cash and hands over the keys. A minority recap takes chips off the table and keeps the founder in the seat. The right choice depends on more than the math.
Surface infrastructure — sealcoat, striping, crack repair, ADA — is one of the quietest good businesses in essential services. Here's why it's a core vertical for us.
Executive protection sounds glamorous. The real economics are much more industrial — recurring corporate contracts, professionalized procurement, and personnel retention as the moat.
Interior and exterior finishes is a fragmented $350B market. Local GC and homebuilder relationships are the moat — a smart consolidator keeps them intact.
Chemical-free, non-abrasive, and increasingly the specified method where sanitation and compliance both matter. Here's why dry-ice cleaning sits adjacent to our fire & life safety flagship.
The first 100 days after close decide whether the business you bought is the business you can scale. Here's the integration playbook — in order, with what to change and what to leave alone.
By 2030, millions of boomer-owned businesses will change hands. Most owners have never sold a company, and most PE buyers aren't a fit for a $3M–$15M essential-service business. Here's the landscape.
Underwriting a lower-middle-market business is mostly about the risks that survive a good purchase price. Here's the five-gate framework we apply to every opportunity.
Most $3M–$15M businesses transact at 3x–6x adjusted EBITDA — but the same EBITDA can be worth twice as much in a clean, owner-independent business. Here's how buyers actually price you.
Most $3M–$15M businesses leave 30–60% of enterprise value on the table by selling before professionalizing. But sometimes 'sell now' is exactly right.
If you're profitable on paper but watching payroll on Friday wondering if it clears, you're in the working-capital trap. Here's the 90-day fix.
The single most useful financial tool a $3M–$15M business can install. Build it in a day, update it in 30 minutes a week, and see the cliff six weeks out.
Most owners learn what a bank wants after they've been declined. The package is well-defined, the math is straightforward, and the fixes are predictable.
Fractional CFO, operator-advisor, M&A broker — they sound interchangeable and they're not. Hire the wrong one and you spend money to no effect.
An educational look at the middle path between 'keep grinding alone' and 'sell the whole thing' — not a description of structures currently offered by 2-Squared.
Add-backs are where deals are won and lost. Defensible normalizations lift value; aggressive ones get re-traded in diligence and cost you credibility.
Owner dependence is the single most common reason a great business sells for two turns of multiple less than it should — and one of the most fixable.
Customer concentration is one of the few risks a buyer can quantify in a single spreadsheet — and one of the most fixable if you start early.
Founder-facing playbooks from our resource library.
The L10, rocks, and scorecards that keep a portfolio aligned.
How to build a weekly scorecard that actually drives accountability.
The structure behind long-hold ownership and how it differs from PE.
Continue exploring how we partner and invest.
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