Make the meeting personal 🤝

Welcome back to another edition of The Wise Exit!

In today’s newsletter: 

• 4 buyers looking for businesses to acquire in our Buyer Spotlight 

• 3 lessons from Jay B Sauceda about his exit from Sauceda Industries 📦

• Our round-up of interesting M&A transactions from the past week 💰

Let’s dive in!

Buyer Spotlight

Every week we feature 4 buyers who are looking to acquire businesses in specific industries:

• Buyer seeking industrial businesses, light manufacturing, field services and industrial distribution - with EBITDA > $4M.

• Buyers looking for tech-enabled services companies (B2B businesses with strong cash flow that have or could enable technology to gain an edge) - with EBITDA > $2M.

• Buyers seeking healthcare staffing companies, ideally nursing related, as well as IT/technical staffing - with EBITDA > $2M.

• Buyer seeking niche custom US-based fabrication and precision manufacturing - with EBITDA > $1.5M. 

If you’re interested in learning more about these opportunities, reply to this email and let us know!

Featured Founder

Jay B Sauceda founded 3PL company Sauceda Industries in 2013 with his wife Priscilla. He built it to fulfill logistics for his e-commerce business, TexasHumor.com, and took on other company’s logistics during his slow times. 

Starting with $3,000, he bootstrapped the company to $13 million in revenue. It was bought by Cart.com in July 2021.  

M&A Lesson 1: Have a strong culture

Sauceda worked hard to build a strong company culture from the start, while other 3PL companies were churning out employees in their effort to cut costs.

This was one of the main things that attracted Cart.com CEO Omair Tariq when he was looking to acquire a logistics company. 

Tariq told Sauceda that he wanted to learn from this approach to company culture because he could see how it extended throughout their operations, the warehouse and to every team member.  

M&A Lesson 2: Make the meeting personal

When Sauceda was approached for the acquisition (by a direct message on LinkedIn), Priscilla was skeptical. She asked that Tariq travel to Texas to meet with them in person.

It was during this initial meeting that the Sauceda’s saw the passion Tariq had for his e-commerce vision, and how Sauceda Industries could help entrepreneurs on a much larger scale.

By spending time together, they could tell that their company would be in good hands. This allowed the Sauceda’s to feel that it was the right decision to sell. 

M&A Lesson 3: Recognize your personal limitations

As his company grew, Sauceda began to see that he lacked the skills to grow his business as fast and as far as he thought it could go. 

“Every time you grow your business by another 20 to 50 people, business is fundamentally different in a lot of different ways,” he told Business Insider.

Recognizing his own limitations allowed the acquisition to be possible. He could see that his vision would be supported by the capital, resources and infrastructure that Cart.com provided in order to scale the business up and take it to new heights. 

M&A News 📰

• Entertainment: Canada’s Entertainment One (eOne) is acquired by Lionsgate for $375m after four years under Hasbro.

• Software Applications: ParkPoolr, a parking management app launched in 2019 by a student, has been acquired by national parking services provider, Parking Management Company.

• Cybersecurity: SonicWall acquires Banyan Security to boost its cloud security portfolio for the remote work environment.

• Technology: Level Access acquires AI tech developer UserWay in a $99 million deal, to help websites, apps and digital documents achieve compliance with accessibility regulations.

That’s all for now. 

Tune in next Wednesday for another set of M&A lessons, and have a great rest of the week. 👋