Hi ^redacted‌, Self-funded solo searchers are often the ideal candidates for smaller acquisitions due to their flexibility, lower risk profile, and ambition to operate a smaller company and build their portfolio. Their personal investment aligns their interests with the success of the acquisition, and their unrestricted decision-making allows for rapid response to potential deal targets. These searchers can focus on identifying and pursuing niche or overlooked opportunities that may not be attractive to traditional search funds, which typically require larger acquisitions to justify fundraising efforts and $1 million+ EBITDA expectations.

I don't mean to bash anyone, but frankly I very rarely see a deal on acuire.com that is reasonably valued. Most of them are incredibly overvalued, and as somebody mentioned above, it is essentially VC. Which is fine, you just need to understand that you need to come at it with the VC angle instead, i.e., with your 100k buy 20 5k businesses, invest 50-100k back into them and see which one takes off. Caveat of this is you won't get access to any leverage, and you have to be organized and skilled at resource allocation to ensure you are actually giving the potential businesses oxygen to grow.

Speaking from experience, I've bought probably 7 or 8 of these under -$10k online assets. Most of them end up declining after a couple of years, but one of them has grown to a mid six figure business which has made up for all the other ones (just like VC).

What I've found is that the absolute worst deal size is actually the messy middle, which is low six figures in SDE, mid six figures in EV. At this stage, usually the owner has tapped out on being able to grow themselves and they're doing most of everything. You can get debt financing for the acquisition, but what you'll quickly find is that in order to grow, you'll need to invest in people, processes and systems, but since the business wasn't pumping out a lot of cash in the first place, you'll be hard pressed to find the funds to make those investments without having to go back into your own pocketbook.