The Acquisition Desk — institutional underwriting for small-business buyers

The problem

You are about to make the largest financial decision of your life on a spreadsheet the broker sent you.

That spreadsheet has one job: make the multiple look reasonable. It will not tell you that 55% of the leads come from the owner's personal relationships and walk out the door at close. It will not tell you that $175,000 of the EBITDA you're paying 3.9× for is add-backs a lender will discount to zero.

And it will not run the only scenario that actually matters — revenue drops 30% when the owner leaves; can this thing still service its debt?

That question is where capital-light buyers go bankrupt. Not at the closing table. Fourteen months later, on a Tuesday, when a DSCR of 0.94 becomes a missed payment on a note you personally guaranteed.

What it does

It ends in a verdict — including the one you don't want.

Every model resolves to one of three answers, driven by a fourteen-point risk scorecard. A tool that only ever says yes isn't a tool. It's a brochure.

Actual output HIGH RISK — RESTRUCTURE OR WALK
3 red flags, 5 cautions. At −30% revenue the business cannot cover debt service (DSCR 0.94×) — the exact failure mode that bankrupts capital-light buyers. Shift toward more seller financing or a performance-linked earnout, cut the price, or pass.

It underwrites the business twice.

Once on inertia — zero growth, no margin improvement, the business exactly as it sits. Once on your plan: your growth, your efficiencies, your thesis. Then it shows the delta line by line. Now you know what you're buying versus what you'd be building — and you stop paying the seller for work you haven't done yet.

Value creation · five-year hold

	As-is	Your plan
Exit EBITDA	$280,000	$405,219
Exit equity	$1.06M	$1.66M
MOIC	5.95×	9.21×

$595,171 of that equity is your work, not the seller's — so don't pay for it twice. These are the shipped example's figures at ~86% leverage, which is precisely the exposure the stress test above is built to find.

It explains itself as you go.

Roughly sixty inputs, every one carrying a plain-English note on what it is and why it matters — written the way a seasoned buyer would say it, not the way a textbook would.

You will finish your first model understanding the deal. That is the actual product; the calculator is just how it gets delivered.

Two of the sixty Pro-forma adjustments — the most abused add-back. Be conservative, or a lender will discount it.

% of leads from owner relationships — how much demand walks out the door at close. The #1 killer of these deals.

What's inside

Two institutional models

Business Valuator — service businesses on an SDE or EBITDA basis. QoE normalization with full add-back scrutiny, sources & uses, three debt tranches with SBA seller-standby handled correctly, annual cash sweep in true repayment priority, unlevered DCF, five-year projection with DSCR by year, working-capital cycle, ROIC, and a 5×5 IRR sensitivity grid across exit multiple and growth.
Multifamily Valuator — NOI build-up in-place versus stabilized, cap rate and yield-on-cost, value-add renovation modeling, debt yield and DSCR, exit cap sensitivity.

Document import

Drop in the listing, the offering memorandum, the T12, the rent roll or a P&L, and the inputs fill themselves — with a note on where each number came from.
Runs on your own Claude API key, called straight from your browser. Your documents never touch our servers, because there are no servers.

The deal templates

Annotated LOI template — the terms that actually matter, and why
SBA-compliant sources & uses worksheet
Seller note structures: standby periods, performance-linked terms, what lenders accept
The quality-of-earnings request list — what to demand before you sign anything
Service-business diligence checklist

The reference layer

Where the money is: independent sponsors, search funds, SBIC mezzanine — and what each will actually fund
SBA's three ceilings — the $5M affiliate cap, the $19M size standard, and the 10% injection on total project cost — the rules that kill deals in week eleven

Deal library

Save every target and compare them side by side on entry multiple, leverage, equity in, IRR, MOIC and DSCR
Export to a file, or print any model to a lender-ready PDF

Fit

Built for you if

You're actively looking at businesses — not reading about looking at businesses
Deal size $500K–$5M, SBA 7(a) or seller-financed
You'll personally guarantee the debt, and you understand what that sentence means
Service businesses, trades, home services, light industrial, small multifamily

Not for you if

You need a valuation certificate for a divorce or an estate
You're buying a business north of $20M
You want software that tells you every deal is a good deal

Pricing

One payment. Not a subscription.

Lifetime updates on every tier.

Screener

$27One time

Business Valuator, complete and unrestricted
The risk scorecard methodology — all fourteen flags and where the thresholds come from
Lifetime updates

Get the Screener

The Acquisition Desk

$297One time

Everything in Screener
Multifamily Valuator
Document import in both tools
The deal templates — LOI, sources & uses, seller note structures, QoE request list, diligence checklist
The reference layer — capital sources and the SBA ceilings

Get The Acquisition Desk

Desk · Pro

$997One time

Everything in The Acquisition Desk
The screening system — how to build a ranked target list from public registries, filtered for owner age and succession risk
Two full deal teardowns, anonymized — first screen through structure, price formula and walk-away number
The owner outreach system — the letter that gets a retiring owner to call back, and the 4-touch sequence
The capital-raise deck template for raising deal-by-deal against a signed LOI
Quarterly updates and new modules

Get Pro

14-day refund · no questions · you keep the files

Straight answers

This is a screening and modeling tool, not diligence: It does not replace an accountant-led quality-of-earnings study or a real attorney. Every multiple, growth rate and margin is your assumption — the model is only as honest as you are.
The modeling simplifications, stated plainly: Depreciation and amortization in the projection are approximated at the maintenance-capex rate. The stress case flexes gross margin and holds operating expense fixed — deliberately conservative. The cash sweep pays senior debt first, then the seller note after standby, then mezzanine.
On the document import: It calls the Claude API directly from your browser using your key. By default that key is held in memory only and is gone when you close the tab; there's an opt-in to remember it on your device, and a Clear key button. Don't use the opt-in on a shared computer. AI-extracted figures are a starting point, not diligence — verify every number against the source document.
Desktop or tablet: The projection tables are wide. It works on a phone; you won't enjoy it.

The guarantee

Model your first real deal with it. If it doesn't change how you see that deal, email me inside 14 days — full refund, and you keep the files. I'd rather have the feedback than the $297.

Get The Acquisition Desk — $297