Use hard numbers 🔢

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 Tara Bosch about her exit from SmartSweets 🍬

• 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 precision manufacturing business with > $2 million EBITDA.

• Buyer seeking Michigan-based light manufacturing with diversified customer base > $1.5 million EBITDA.

• Buyer seeking construction or related business with > $4 million EBITDA.

• Buyer seeking disaster recovery services business with > $3 million EBITDA.

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

Featured Founder

Tara Bosch chatted daily with her grandma over candy. They both wondered: is there a way to eat sweets without so much sugar? It turns out, millions of others wondered the same thing.

SmartSweets launched in 2016, offering candy with less sugar and natural ingredients. Annual sales reached $100 million in 2020, when it was acquired by private equity firm TPG Growth for $360 million. Bosch remains in the company. 

M&A Lesson 1: Don’t do it all yourself

When Bosch had the idea to create better-for-you candy, she had no business experience and was only 21 years old. 

But she knew the pain point she was targeting and surrounded herself with those whose strengths complimented her weaknesses. She had mentors, advisors, participated in accelerator programs, and did cold reach outs to founders on LinkedIn.  

By not trying to do everything herself, she was able to build a bigger business, with plenty of equity to share. “After all, it's better to own some of a business that grows huge than all of one that never grows at all.” 

M&A Lesson 2: Use hard numbers

Bosch makes sure to use numbers to highlight the value of her candy. Knowing her customers want to lower their sugar intake, she promotes the grams of sugar SmartSweets has reduced to date, currently 5.29 billion grams.

Her marketing compares her sweets (72-92% less sugar) to the stat that average adults consume triple the daily sugar intake recommended by the American Heart Association.   

Knowing her numbers also helped her succeed on the TV show Dragon’s Den with an offer of $100,000 million in funding for a small 5% stake. She was publicly applauded by Dragon Jasmin Ganie-Hobbs for knowing her financial metrics so well. 

M&A Lesson 3: Create your own funding path

To get the manufacturing process started, Bosch used her own savings, secured a $105,000 debt financing loan, and then got a convertible loan. A few early angel investors supported her enough for her to launch the company.

This allowed her to maintain majority control and give meaningful equity to employees and advisors, who she relied on for their expertise.

Over the years, she has reportedly raised a total of $6.1 million. “There are many different paths to funding your company’s growth, and being crystal clear on the ‘why’ behind the route you choose is so important,” she says.

Cashing Out Podcast 

It was a great 2023 for the Cashing Out podcast, our social channels, and for Exitwise: 

• Podcast listeners grew by 10x (vs 2022)

• 50 incredible interviews with founders, entrepreneurs, and M&A professionals

• Doubled our YouTube channel (followers vs 2022)

• Surpassed 2,000 active subscribers to the Wise Exit Newsletter

We want to say thank you for being part of our journey, and we are incredibly grateful for giving your time and support for all that we do for our fellow founders.  

New and exciting updates will be announced soon. We plan to be back with new episodes of Cashing Out on February 6th. 

In the interim, please check out our previous episodes and content, and let us know if there is anything you'd like us to change to make our content even more valuable! 

M&A News 📰

• Media: Retail trading giant Robinhood is acquiring UK-based Chartr Limited, a media company that specializes in data visualization and newsletters, to add to Robinhood’s independent media brand, Sherwood Media.

• Hair Care: Unilever has entered into an agreement to buy biotech hair care brand K18, building their Unilever Prestige portfolio.

• Cyber Security: Cisco is set to acquire cloud-native networking and security startup Isovalent, complementing its core networking and security strategy.

• Online Education: Landon Bytheway, a professional creator, acquires the online film school, Full-Time Filmmaker (FTF).

That’s all for now. 

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