Fully Baked #36: Business Brokerage

💡 A marketplace idea

🔬 We validated this idea - here’s what we found

🚀 The go-to-market playbook for this

🤑 What the unit economics look like

⚔️ What’s the competitive landscape looking like?

❓ Our verdict: is this a go or no-go idea?

The greatest wealth transfer in history is under way as we speak. Cerulli expects 124 trillion US dollars to change hands through 2048, across all kinds of assets. And some of that wealth is tied up in the local businesses their owners spent a lifetime building.

Back in the day it was a given that the owner’s kids would step up and take over the business, but these days that’s not always a given. Times have changed and unfortunately a lot of small, main street businesses are staring down the barrel of a succession crisis, something that needs to be solved. Here’s the idea.

Create a marketplace and brokerage service that helps Main Street businesses to get acquired.

Owners get hands-on help preparing a sale and reaching qualified buyers, while buyers get a place to discover businesses that fit their location, budget and experience.

You operate as a marketplace with a brokerage on the backend so you can facilitate these transactions and get the deals done.

In U.S. Bank's 2025 survey of 1,000 small business owners, only 54% had a succession plan. Sixty-two per cent found the process overwhelming and 53% said they lacked the guidance to plan for their business's future.

In that same survey, 36% of Gen Z and Millennial owners said they planned to acquire a business from a retiring owner. Separately, 54% of prospective buyers in a BizBuySell survey had never owned a business before. These are signs of interest, not proof that either group will pay this brokerage.

45% of owners in the U.S. Bank survey said they planned to pass the business to their children, meaning more than half of these businesses will need to find new owners.

Use intermediaries to get your first customers - give accountants, bookkeepers and industry advisers a useful reason to introduce owners: an exit-readiness assessment that shows what records or operating processes a future buyer would need. Offer the owner a credible plan even if a sale is years away.

Recruit a small pool of buyers who have funding, operating experience and a clear acquisition brief. Bring them prepared opportunities instead of another feed of thin listings.

Turn the first closed deals into sector-specific case studies. That material can attract owners searching for an exit and reassure referral partners.

Repeat the owner-outreach and adviser-referral playbook in neighbouring regions to scale the business region by region.

Start with a negotiated seller success fee. BizBuySell describes broker fees of roughly 10-15% on sales below about $1 million, depending on the deal.

The original idea from the newsletter included a buyer subscription. I would leave that for later on reflection. Charging buyers for access before there are distinctive, sale-ready opportunities risks becoming a more expensive search tool.

Assume a $500,000 sale at an 8% success fee. That is $40,000 in revenue if the deal closes.

Assume outreach, owner preparation, adviser time and tools cost an average of $5,000 for each signed seller mandate, including mandates that fail. Five mandates would cost $25,000. If only one of those five closes at the assumed price, you’d take home $15K in profit. It’s all about maximizing fees and close rates to make sure you don’t deploy resources on deals that don’t close.

BizBuySell is the established marketplace. It proves that people already search for and sell these businesses, but a listing does not prepare an owner to withstand buyer and lender scrutiny.

BizScout, associated with Codie Sanchez, already offers off-market leads, direct owner outreach and AI deal analysis. Its Pro plan is $199 a month, while its dedicated acquisition-adviser service is aimed at buyers pursuing deals typically worth $5 million or more. Another general buyer search product would be a difficult sell.

Transworld Business Advisors offers the traditional local brokerage model at scale. Its broker network validates the value of human advice and relationships. A new entrant has to outperform in a particular sector or workflow, not claim that brokers do not exist.

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