$250k SDE Acquisition: Limited Downside, Big Upside

After paying the owner's salaries, the business that today's guest bought generated about $150,000 of earnings, which would not typically be large enough for a self funded searcher.

Jumping into Entrepreneurship through Acquisition But Ville-Matias Vilén of Helsinki saw that the business's flagship product enjoyed sustained demand despite being under marketed and the bones of the business high quality manufacturing, patented design, a network of dealer relationships abroad were good. So while very small, Ville saw a risk worth taking and so far so good.

The business grew 20% last year and that was despite a three month manufacturing pause. While Ville moved operations from one part of Finland to another, he's eyeing 50%. Growth in the year ahead and his.

Longer term goal is 5x over five years. That's the bull case. Ville and I also discussed the bear case, so listen for how he thought about the downside here.

Also listen for how he financed the acquisition. To his surprise and mine in Finland there turns out to be a government backed program not unlike the SBA loan. Here in the us. Obvious lesson for non US See if there is a small business acquisition loan product offered by your government.

Such programs may be more common than we all thought. Okay, here is Ville-Matias Vilén, owner of FinnEasy, maker of the EasySwing cattle brush Welcome to Acquiring Minds, a podcast about buying businesses.

My name is Will Smith. Acquiring an existing business is an awesome opportunity for many entrepreneurs and on this podcast I talk to the people who do it. The team at Aspen HR recently published a short white paper targeted at searchers Entitled A New CEO's Guide to Human Resources.

It lays out the key items you should be thinking about as you transition into CEO and owner of the business you bought. The link to download that is in the show notes Aspen HR is a professional employer organization or peo, which provides HR compliance, flawless payroll, robust HR technology and Fortune 500 caliber benefits, all for a fraction of the cost compared to using multiple vendors.

Reach out to Aspen HR for your complimentary HR diligence checklist and benchmarking analysis. Go to aspenhr.com or contact Jenny Thier directly at jennypenhr.com. Ville-Matias Vilén welcome to Acquiring Minds.

Thanks a lot Will. Pleasure to be here. Vile.

Your story is a bit different than the typical guest. We will get into why that is. But start us off with some background on you please, including where you're based.

I'm based in Helsinki, Finland, which is a small country between Sweden and Russia. I was born and raised in Finland. I grew up in an entrepreneurial family on actually both sides.