Questions, answered
Selling a business: the questions founders ask
Selling a business with FNDRS starts with the Go-To-Market Analysis, $10,000, flat, and credited in full against the fee for the sale; the sale runs seven to twelve months from signing to the wire for a company that is ready, an estimate from past engagements, not a commitment. A buyer pays us nothing.
The questions
What founders ask before they ask anyone
A multiple of its normalized earnings, set by the risk a buyer sees in them.
Net debt and working capital adjust that figure before anything changes hands, and smaller businesses are usually priced on seller's discretionary earnings (SDE), larger ones on EBITDA. For scale, in the IBBA and M&A Source Market Pulse Survey for the second quarter of 2026, the multiple reported for businesses with an enterprise value of $5 million to $50 million was 5.8 times EBITDA, from 255 business brokers and M&A advisors reporting on 181 deals they closed in the quarter. Where yours lands depends on growth, recurring revenue, customer concentration, and how much of the business depends on you; the exit score shows where it sits today.
Scott Stepanik, our Director of M&A, leads every FNDRS sale.
He leads it from the first read of the numbers to the close, with the deal team behind him.
A sale usually takes seven to twelve months from signing to the wire, for a company that is ready.
It runs in four phases, prepare, market, select, and close, after the Go-To-Market Analysis. How ready and how complex the company is, the buyers and their lenders, and the lawyers on both sides set each sale's own calendar, which we agree with you at kickoff. Every time given here is an estimate drawn from past engagements, not a commitment.
A sale costs a retainer and a success fee, and the Go-To-Market Analysis before it is $10,000, flat.
The analysis is credited in full against the fee for the sale if you go on to engage us, and the retainer is credited against the success fee. The figures depend on the size of the business, so we set them with you on a call. On a sale we run for you, you are the only one who pays us; a buyer pays us nothing.
What size of business does FNDRS sell?
Founder-led businesses of typically $1 million to $25 million of adjusted EBITDA, where the founder is still central and a sale will be the largest financial event of their life.
Usually a buyer wants your team, because it is paying for what continues after you leave.
Your people are a large part of that. What happens to them is a term, not a hope: roles, retention, and when and how they are told are agreed before you sign, not after.
It depends on the buyer and the structure.
A strategic buyer with existing management may need three to twelve months of transition. A financial buyer buying a platform may want you for longer, sometimes with a continued equity stake. Your post-close role is one of the terms we negotiate.
Only the people you agree to, because nothing that identifies the company reaches a buyer before an NDA.
Buyers first receive a blind teaser with no identifying details, and anyone who wants more signs a non-disclosure agreement before receiving the CIM. We control who is contacted, in what order, and what they receive, and competitors and customers can be excluded at your direction. Your employees and customers learn about the sale when you decide they should.
A confidentiality agreement with FNDRS, which your company can enforce directly.
It holds the buyer to using what it learns for this sale only, to no contact with your people, to not hiring them or going around us for twenty-four months, and to no teaming up with other bidders. That is a summary of our standard form; the agreement each buyer signs governs.
No: on a sale we run for you, you are the client and the only one who pays us.
A buyer pays us nothing, and nothing a buyer offers us changes the advice we give you.
Yes: our advisory model is built so that we can afford to say not yet.
Many founders who complete a Go-To-Market Analysis spend the time it takes moving up the range before they go to market.
What a buyer pays for
What do buyers pay more for?
A buyer pays for revenue it can count on and discounts revenue that has to be won again every month. Two businesses with the same profit can sell for very different numbers. Across the founders we have assessed, customers love the business, and the revenue is the weak spot.
- Recurring and contracted revenue moves you up the range
- Revenue that walks out with the owner moves you down it
- A buyer prices the risk with a lower multiple, a longer earn-out, or both
Their customers love them. Their revenue is another story.
Founders on the questions
What founders asked before a sale
Short films from owners, in their own words, on what surprised them, what took longest, and what the work asked of them.
Bring us the question this page did not answer
One call with a dealmaker about your business, your numbers, and your timing. No obligation, and nothing signed.