Vincenzo Belpiede

“When evaluating a potential acquisition, the cash flow the company generates is what sets the sale price of the company. It’s the driver behind the valuation and ultimately what you’re paying for. Anything outside of the company’s ability to generate cash is commonly not worth paying for at all. At its core, what you are buying is an asset that provides cash flow.”
― Walker Deibel, Buy Then Build: How Acquisition Entrepreneurs Outsmart the Startup Game

“The truth is that there is no correlation between having strong organizational skills and a successful CEO. None. In business, ambiguity reigns. Being laser-focused is actually a bad thing. Entrepreneurs need to be able to deal with managing ambiguity and a changing landscape; the best ones do this extremely well. In 2003, I was in business school. My professor asked us to cut a piece of paper into eight pieces, then write the following words, one on each piece: sales, marketing, financial measures, competition, process, suppliers, and incentives. Then he instructed us to mix them up, then randomly remove half and throw them away. “In real life, business looks more like the paper left in your hand—you don’t have all the information when it’s decision time.” It’s an academic exercise, but illustrative of the ambiguity innate to running a business.”
― Walker Deibel, Buy Then Build: How Acquisition Entrepreneurs Outsmart the Startup Game

“According to the Small Business Administration, default rates of small business loans are currently right about 2 percent. Similarly, according to the Thompson Reuters/PayNet Small Business Delinquency Index (SBDI), the amount of small business loans that go delinquent on the national level has been running under 1.5 percent since 2012.29 This means the $1 million at risk when acquiring a business has about a 2 percent chance of failure. This is a drastically different profile than building from scratch. If you equate not failing with success, then buying a company has an approximate 98 percent success rate.”
― Walker Deibel, Buy Then Build: How Acquisition Entrepreneurs Outsmart the Startup Game

“A common question is, once we have a sense of our strengths and weaknesses, how do we measure the relative strength of the attributes we do have? In a recent interview, Dr. David Weller, founder of Leadership Alliance and a true expert in assessing top talent, told me that about a third of the variants for success are simple competencies. These include, but are not limited to: Possessing a drive for results and being able to get results from others The ability to make decisions, including unpopular decisions Strategic agility when dealing with ambiguity A certain level of risk tolerance Financial acumen Critical thinking, which is an innate trait Tactical ability Perseverance Self-awareness, which includes the ability to work through your weaknesses and not have blind spots Interpersonal skills The last one is worth noting. When you are CEO of a company, you must be able to sell; it’s a requirement. This does not mean that you need to commit your time to being a salesperson—that will depend on the type of opportunity you choose. The ability to grow small companies into big companies will always include the skill of selling, which is a learnable skill, despite the thought that salespeople are either born with this talent or not. Whether you’re selling your services to a prospective customer, selling the vision of your company to the employees, or selling the model to a potential investor, sales skills are a fundamental requirement of growing a business. Having strong interpersonal skills makes it possible to connect people and activities and grow a business.”
― Walker Deibel, Buy Then Build: How Acquisition Entrepreneurs Outsmart the Startup Game