Matthew Kane

You can turn $100,000 into a $50 million business through acquisitions. This is closer to capital allocation than traditional entrepreneurship. Here's the deal structure. First, the capital stack. You buy a business the same way you buy a house. Equity in, bank covers the rest. With SBA loans: 90% loan, 10% equity. A million dollar business might require $100K to $200K down. Target companies with $1 to $3 million in earnings. Go to sellers that are NOT at market. Brokered deals are competitive and sellers want cash at close. This only works off-market. Here's what you propose: Seller keeps 20% equity in a new entity. Asset sale, their company moves into newco, they keep running it at fair market salary. You write them a check for 60% via bank loan. Remaining 20% is a seller's note: 10% straight note, 10% performance earnout. From the bank's perspective, you created 40% equity. The truth? It's really only 20%, and it's the seller's. Your money in? Approaching zero. But you own 80% of Enterprise Value. Why would a seller agree? Tell them: my goal is to make your 20% as valuable as the 80% we're giving you today. What are the odds you double the value on your own in 3 to 5 years? Now stack earnings. $2 million average per company. Buy 10 just like this. $20 million combined earnings under one entity. Centralize marketing, accounting, HR, governance at HQ. You bought each at 4 to 4.5x. A $20 million earnings business sells for 7 to 7.5x or more. That's multiple expansion, just by combining them. Close the first one. Negotiate the next $100K for the next business. Then newco sells to PE for 7, 8, 9x your $20 million in earnings. That's the path from $100K to $50 million. If you're considering buying a business in the next 12 to 24 months, we built Acquisition Lab for exactly this. walkerdeibel.com

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Great overview of the Florida VC ecosystem 👇 What stands out is not just the ~$2.85B raised, but how distributed and specialized each region is becoming. • South Florida → crypto, fintech, LatAm access • Tampa Bay → strong early-stage pipeline • Orlando/Space Coast → deep tech, defense, space • North Florida → emerging operator-led funds Tax advantages help, but the real story is growing density of founders, angels, and operators building locally. Still early compared to SF and NY, which is the opportunity. Who are the next Florida-based funds or angels getting active?

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🚀 Stop chasing investors blindly. Here's the 5-step system that gets startups funded: Define financial needs (12-18 months) Research aligned investors Build a killer pitch deck Systematize outreach Prep due diligence docs Most founders skip steps 1 & 5. Don't be like most founders.

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Fundraising isn't dating. It's a sales funnel. And most founders don't track it, so 3 months go by while they're still "in conversations." Here's the brutal math (seed round, current selectivity): 100-200 investor outreaches → 15-20% reply rate → 15-30 first meetings → 5-10 partner meetings → 1-3 term sheets → 1 close If you're not tracking conversion at each stage, you're not fundraising. You're hoping. Founders who close faster don't have better luck. They have better systems: 1. They track the funnel weekly Where are leads dying? Outreach, first meeting, partner meeting? Each bottleneck has a different fix. 2. They iterate the narrative Every week: one sharper answer to the question that killed the last meeting. 3. They batch meetings 10 meetings in 2 weeks beats 10 meetings over 2 months. Compression creates urgency. Urgency creates leverage. 4. They treat "no" as data A fast no is worth more than a slow maybe. It frees you to find the real yes. If your fundraise feels stuck, stop asking "Who else can I talk to?" Start asking "Where is my funnel breaking?" I stress-test fundraising packages for founders. Deck, model, cap table, assumptions. You get a written findings memo and a 90-minute call showing you what breaks before investors do. Link in comments. #fundraising #seedstage #venturecapital #startups

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Over the past few years, fundraising has become significantly tougher, especially for smaller funds. This, unfortunately, is the case even for VCs delivering solid returns. In my recent Crunchbase piece, I talk about how emerging managers can survive (and even thrive!) in a challenging fundraising environment. I discuss why the process today is more about familiarity than performance, and highlight places where managers should look for capital that others ignore. Check out the full column via link in comments. Curious to hear from other managers who have recently raised successfully. Which part of this rings true?

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If your local startup ecosystem doesn't run its own capital as a fund, it's not a complete ecosystem. Internal capital is key for these to work because just making intros to local Angels who see 50 deals per month isn't a strategy. Do some work without internal capital? I'm sure they do, but are they as efficient as they could be? I doubt it...

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