I'm gonna do some management consulting along with the investment." How does that, how does that thesis work?

No, so not exactly.

So after like a few liquidity events, I was basically investing in all the different asset classes.

Like I was fairly active in venture and maybe like 50 angel investments.

Was an LP in real estate.

I never did as much myself, but LP in different funds and all, all kinds of different asset classes you could imagine.

And then kinda came back to like what made the most sense to me, and it was It was essentially private equity, but not private equity from, like, what the ginormous funds are doing.

It's not founder de- de- it's not founder dependent and it's really hard to disrupt." Now, that, that, that $2 million of, of annual profit is going to command a much higher multiple because it's checked off all those boxes, right? But what is your range?

What's the difference?

Uh, there's...

Here's, here's the easiest way to describe it.

There's probably, like, four different, you know, so we'll say, like, tiers of acquisition entrepreneurs.

The bottom tier will be the, the self-funded searchers.

These are the SBA crowd.

Um, they are predominantly using a SBA loan and maybe a little bit of their own capital, a little bit of investor capital to buy a business that's probably at max of, like, $7 million and below.

But I'm a little bit fuzzy, and maybe our listeners are as well, the difference between a, an ETA searcher and an independent sponsor, 'cause they sound very similar.

Yeah.

I actually just remembered that I had a bad experience with this.

Um, several, God, maybe 10 years ago, eight years ago I bought a tiny little business, um, put a couple people on it and manager who I had worked with before.

And then a couple years into it, it just, it was a good business but the growth wasn't strong enough for me to stay interested in it.

And so I was gonna sell it and the, the manager for it actually wanted to buy it, and I let him.

Um, gave him in- a good deal for it.

It was like a good deal for everybody but, uh, the thing that I've seen with a lot of times is somebody might be a good manager but they're not, they don't have that final X factor that makes them a good owner or entrepreneur and the whole thing just kinda disintegrated, right? Like they, they need that one person up there like making those decisions or pointing the direction or something.

So Travis, could you tell us just what the heck is a CapitalPad?

So are you looking for d- I guess if you're looking for deals, like if you're an imp- I guess you can't say this, but in general, uh, I would imagine if you're trying to raise money, you know, CapitalPad is two-sided marketplace, right? So if you're trying to raise money for a deal, you could go there.

Yeah.

So no, y- but we can say this.

Like if, if you're an independent sponsor or a sophisticated searcher, um, yeah, if you have a deal under LOI, please come show it to us.

Like we have more capital to deploy than we have deals right now.

So we're actively looking for it.

And for those who, who don't know, like we're a co-investment group, so, uh, like twelve hundred accredited investors are part of it, and we just wait for the good deals to come and then pool our capital together and invest in them.

Yeah.

It's, like, hanging off the side of the highway on like a, carved into the side of a mountain, sort of.

And, and when you, like, I think rewind to, you know, some of the original purpose of, like, these SBA loans for acquiring these companies, like, this seems like the real original, like, thesis behind it.

Like, this business that's been around forever that needs to transition.

There's no other way to do it besides SBA loan.

This seems like a nice fit for that.

I love this.

[laughs]

Um, this is a g- what a gem of a listing for someone who is, like, interested in living in the middle of nowhere, who wants to have this, like, small town life.