For small business buyers
Buy your first business
with confidence.
Business-type briefs on what makes a small business worth buying, calculators that model the SBA-financed deal in front of you, and a sourced corpus of practitioner wisdom from real acquisitions.
The signature interactive
Will the cash flow cover the debt?
Most acquisitions look profitable until you put the SBA debt service against them. Adjust SDE, multiple, down payment, rate, and owner salary — and see whether the deal will get approved and whether the cash flow leaves any room for surprises. Pre- loaded with a typical small-business position; switch to a specific business type for tuned defaults.
Will the cash flow cover the debt?
Open the standalone calculator and load defaults for a specific business type →
Buyer's guides
Browse by business type
HVAC
Heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning service and replacement businesses.
Plumbing
Residential and commercial plumbing service contractors.
Landscaping
Landscape maintenance, design, and installation businesses.
Commercial Cleaning
Janitorial and commercial cleaning route businesses serving offices and facilities.
Auto Repair
Independent auto-repair shops including general mechanics and specialty work.
Pool Service
Residential and commercial pool maintenance route businesses.
Self-Storage
Self-storage facility operators with owned or leased real estate.
Daycare
Licensed childcare, daycare, and preschool operators serving families and employers.
Restaurant
Full-service, fast-casual, and counter-service restaurant operations.
Liquor Store
Off-premise alcohol retailers operating under state license.
Pool Construction
Residential and commercial pool design and construction businesses.
Pest Control
Recurring-route pest-control businesses serving residential and commercial customers.
Business Spotlight
HVAC, profiled across five dimensions
HVAC has become one of the most institutionally contested niches in small business — a flood of private equity rollups and search funds is pushing multiples up while making clean targets harder to find. The opportunity is still real for first-time buyers, but only if you understand what's actually being sold: typically a phone number, a Google footprint, a fleet, and a labor pool whose loyalty you have not yet earned.
Every guide opens with the same five dimensions — recurring revenue, capital intensity, owner dependency, newbie suitability, and PE rollup activity — so you can compare business types at a glance before you go deeper.
Read the HVAC guide →- Recurring revenueModerate
- Capital intensityModerate
- Owner dependencyHigh
- Newbie suitabilityLow
- PE rollup activityHigh
Free tools
Calculators for the moments that matter
Deal Viability
Will the cash flow cover the debt?
SDE
Calculate Seller's Discretionary Earnings.
DSCR
Will the SBA approve the loan?
Financing Comparator
SBA 7(a) vs 504 vs conventional vs seller note.
Deal Risk Scorer
Six diligence signals into one composite.
Seller Note Builder
Standby + balloon + total-cost math.
Side by side
Stuck choosing? Compare two business types.
Auto Repair vs Pool Construction
Both niches sit in the trades, both consolidate around a small number of serious operators per metro, and both carry SBA-financeable deal sizes — but they're nearly opposite businesses underneath. Auto repair is a high-frequency, location-bound transactional shop with modest tickets and durable demand; pool construction is a sales-driven, project-based builder with $40K–$80K tickets, lumpy backlogs, and real exposure to interest rates and weather. The right choice depends less on which industry you like and more on whether you want to buy a location with a referral flywheel or a sales-and-project-management organization.
Commercial Cleaning vs Pest Control
Both are recurring-revenue, route-based service businesses that look almost interchangeable on a listing page — high retention, low capital intensity, SBA-financeable at typical small-business sizes. The real choice is between a labor-arbitrage business with notoriously low barriers to entry (commercial cleaning) and a license-gated, route-density business with PE rollup tailwinds and stronger pricing power (pest control). Which one fits depends on whether you're buying a labor-management challenge or a licensed, regulated route book — and on what you can credibly hold together post-close.
HVAC vs Plumbing
On the surface these look like the same deal: licensed residential trades, $200K–$1.5M of SDE, 2.5×–4.5× multiples, and a wave of PE rollups bidding alongside you. The real choice is between a business where service is structurally a loss leader feeding install jobs (HVAC) and one where break-fix problems homeowners can't ignore drive the ticket (plumbing). What determines fit is your tolerance for marketing-driven customer acquisition, how the seller's license actually transfers, and whether the revenue mix is repair-and-replace or quietly propped up by new construction.
Long-form
Articles for buyers who want to dig in
Financial Analysis
Stop Valuing Every Online Business the Same Way. SaaS Math Will Wreck You on an Ecommerce Deal.
Applying the same valuation framework to every online business model is one of the most expensive mistakes a first-time buyer can make. Here's what changes by model and why it matters.
9 min readDeal Structure & Financing
How to Read a Seller Note Before You Sign One: 6 Terms That Can Gut Your Deal
A seller note has six clauses that can turn a clean acquisition into a personal liability nightmare. Here's how to find and negotiate each one before you sign.
10 min readGetting Started
Stop Treating Customer Concentration as a Deal-Killer. It's Actually a Negotiating Tool
Customer concentration isn't a reason to walk away from a SaaS listing. It's a reason to reprice it, restructure it, and potentially buy a better business at a discount than the seller expected.
7 min readDeal Structure & Financing
How to Close an SBA-Financed Business Acquisition in 90 Days (Before the Seller Loses Patience)
Most SBA 7(a) acquisitions stall not because of bad credit or a weak business, but because buyers show up unprepared at every stage of a predictable six-step process.
9 min read