Ethan Bloch

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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🚀 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 Is a Sales Funnel Takeaway: Treat investors like prospects. Context: Too many founders pitch randomly. Fundraising works when you build structure. Advice: Create a lightweight investor CRM (Airtable, Notion, HubSpot). Track stage: intro, 1st call, due diligence, soft commit. Follow up weekly—investors invest in the founders who stay top of mind. Closing thought: Your investor funnel is just like your customer funnel—build it, track it, close it. At SKIN STUDIOS, we help founders cut through the noise, launch scrappy, and evolve fast. Because in the startup game, speed of learning is your greatest edge. → sitg.studio | dom@sitg.studio | DMs open #foundertips #fundraising #venturecapital #startupadvice #skinstudios

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Hot take: lot's of #LP's are growing underwhelmed with traditional venture investing. 💰 Fees are high given the level of engagement with the company operators. ❓ Access is opaque - LP's are unclear on the portco operations and outcomes. Outcomes are scattered - power law investing can certainly work, but many feel that venture capital investing is just a numbers game. There's another way. I'm biased, but I think it's better: #VentureStudios as an asset class. They blend: 🤜 🤛 Control and ownership 💡 Thematic focus 👬 Partnership with operators Studios offer a fund-like structure — but with more alignment, higher value conversion and less noise. If you're interested in understanding more about the studio model, we have resources to share. Please reach out and let's connect!

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🔐 Thrilled to share a major launch from boldstart ventures portfolio company Keycard - Keycard for Coding Agents. Every coding agent right now is running in god mode. Your credentials. Your permissions. No guardrails. Developers click "Allow" 50 times an hour until they stop reading...or use dangerously-skip-permissions and pray. Static API keys in .env files. Agents with admin access when they need read on one endpoint. Keycard fixes this: 🔑 Four-part identity: user, agent, runtime, task - for every session ⚡ Short-lived, scoped credentials gone when the session ends 🛡️ Step-up approval for sensitive ops, autonomous for routine 🔗 One command across Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, and OpenClaw Agents aren't humans and they aren't workloads. The identity layer has to be rebuilt from the ground up. That's what Keycard is doing. Proud to have backed this team at inception. Early access live → keycard.ai 🚀 Congrats Ian Livingstone, Jared Hanson, Matthew Creager and team! Full post in comments: "Announcing Keycard for Coding Agents: Unlocking Autonomy without Sacrificing Security"

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Thread Bank's $30.5M Raise Validates Finxact's Embedded Banking Architecture Thread Bank just closed a $30.5M funding round led by Portage Ventures, bringing their total Tier 1 capital to over $100M. The real story here isn't just the money. It's what institutional investors are betting on: cloud-native core banking infrastructure that actually works for embedded finance at scale. The numbers tell a compelling story. Thread manages over $2 billion in partner deposits and grew embedded deposits 3x in under two years (75% annualized growth). This kind of velocity is only possible with a modern payments and deposit infrastructure built for API-first integration. Here's why this matters for Finxact: Thread conducted extensive due diligence before selecting their core banking platform. They needed a solution that could handle real-time payments, embedded deposit products, and compliance at scale across multiple partner channels. They chose Finxact. When a fast-growing bank with $823M in assets and nationwide embedded banking partnerships raises this level of institutional capital AFTER selecting Finxact as their core, it sends a clear market signal. Venture investors aren't funding legacy core conversions. They're funding scalable banking infrastructure that supports multiple revenue streams through embedded channels. Community banks and credit unions take note: Thread started as a traditional community bank in Eastern Tennessee in 2021. Four years later, they're a tech-forward national player with digital branches embedded in SaaS platforms, marketplace apps, and B2B supply chains. Their partnership with Finxact and Infinant provides the technical foundation that makes this transformation possible. The embedded banking market is consolidating around platforms that can deliver compliant, scalable, real-time banking services through APIs. Finxact's selection by Thread, combined with this funding validation, positions them as a critical enabler for community banks looking to compete in the embedded finance economy. If your institution is evaluating core banking modernization to support embedded banking strategies, let's discuss how specialized implementation partners can accelerate your transformation. The window for community banks to establish embedded banking capabilities is still open, but it won't stay that way forever. #EmbeddedBanking #Finxact #CoreBanking #FinTech #Payments #DigitalTransformation #CommunityBanking #BankingAsAService #PaymentInnovation #FinancialServices #API #CloudBanking #EmbeddedFinance #BankingTechnology #FinServInnovation #fiserv

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I’ve spoken to over 2 dozen MDs at PE firms I can confidently say that the arb of figuring out how to implement Vertical AI at portfolio companies is very real right now It will fundamentally change underwriting for those who can do it predictably and unlock generational returns. Most are aware they need to act. Very few have.

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