Established, profitable, boring-in-the-best-way American companies — with a management team already running them and an owner ready to step back. We keep the team, keep the name, and hold for the long term. Not turnarounds. Not a roll-up. No resale clock.
IS HAPPENING NOW.
Between 2.3 and 3 million U.S. small and mid-sized businesses are owned by baby boomers. Together they employ roughly 32 million people and generate about $6.5 trillion in annual revenue. Roughly half have no succession plan at all.
These aren't struggling companies. They're profitable, decades-old, deeply embedded in their local markets — plumbing and HVAC contractors, specialty distributors, dental and behavioral health groups, industrial service providers, niche manufacturers. Businesses that solved a real problem for thirty years and made money doing it.
What they don't have is a next owner. The founder's children went into something else. The strategic buyer wants to strip the overhead and fold it into a regional platform. The private equity fund wants a five-year exit and a management change on day one. The employees who could run it can't finance it.
That gap is the opportunity —
and the reason a seller picks us over a higher number is usually what happens to their people after the wire clears.
Forbes, “The Silver Tsunami Is Reshaping Small Business,” January 2026.
A decade or more of operating history and consistent, verifiable earnings across the full cycle — not one strong year. No startups. No turnarounds. If the earnings need to be created rather than continued, we’re the wrong buyer at any price.
This is the first thing we check on any listing, before we look at a single financial. Who runs day-to-day when the owner is on vacation? How long have they been there? What are they paid? A business that only works because the founder is in it every day isn’t a business we can own — and we’d rather say that in week one than in month four.
Recurring, contracted, or non-discretionary revenue. Services people buy when times are good and still buy when they aren’t. Repeat customers, renewable contracts, route density, referral flow — anything that makes next year’s revenue something other than a hope.
We like industries where the competition is a hundred owner-operators rather than three national players. It protects pricing, and it means a good business has room to become the one everyone else sells to.
Texas, Florida and the Southeast are easiest for us to support, but we’ll travel for the right business.
“We have a default valuation range and we'll go meaningfully above it when there's a path to upside we can actually underwrite:”
Gross margin below what the industry normally runs, and a specific explanation we can address.
Rates that haven't moved in years in a market that would absorb it.
Rather than one-off project work.
Trucks, crews, chairs, beds, routes, a second location the owner never opened.
In a fragmented local market.
The people running the business keep running it. The name stays. The customers don't get a letter about a transition. We take ownership at the board level, bring capital and a longer time horizon, and get out of the way of a team that has been doing this well for years. We're not assembling a roll-up and we're not on a fund clock that forces a sale in year five. If the business is performing, we're happy to own it for a very long time.
“IF SUSTAINING THE EARNINGS WOULD REQUIRE REBUILDING HOW THE BUSINESS OPERATES, WE'RE THE WRONG BUYER AT ANY PRICE.”
This is the part of our platform most buyers don't have. A large share of the businesses we look at own the property they operate from — a shop, a warehouse, a clinic, a yard. For most acquirers that's a complication: a separate asset, a separate valuation, a separate negotiation, often a separate buyer who shows up late and reprices everything.
For us it's the same conversation. We've underwritten U.S. commercial real estate for eight-plus years, and we can value the operating business and the property together, in one process, with one closing.
We buy the business and the property together, single close, single counterparty.
We buy the property, the business signs a long-term lease on terms set before closing, and the owner takes the real estate equity off the table separately from the business sale.
The owner keeps the building and becomes our landlord on a properly structured, market-rate lease we help paper. Retained income, clean business sale.
DAYS FROM LOI TO CLOSE
No SBA contingency.
Proof of funds provided with the NDA — before anyone asks for it. NDAs signed same day.
A clear yes or no within days of a complete CIM — and if it's a no, our reasoning, so you know whether to bring us the next one.
We'll also move at the seller's pace when that's what's needed.
We underwrite the full cycle, not one strong year — and we don't use diligence as a renegotiation tool. The number we sign is the number we close at.
A complete CIM works. If it's easier to send materials directly, these five let us move fast:
Org chart for the layer under the owner, with tenure and compensation.
Monthly P&L preferred.
Owner compensation and an itemized add-back schedule, labeled SDE or EBITDA.
The largest customers' share of revenue, and how work is awarded: contracted vs. re-bid.
Proposed lease terms in writing.
WE RESPOND TO EVERY COMPLETE SUBMISSION WITH A CLEAR ANSWER AND OUR REASONING.
YOUR NEXT STEP
Whether you are a business owner exploring what comes next, or an investor seeking disciplined exposure — we built OTIMA to serve both sides with the same transparency and conviction.
Every conversation is confidential, and most of ours start years before a sale. If you're just beginning to think about it, that's the right time to talk.
We co-invest in every acquisition on the same terms as our partners, and we buy for the distribution rather than a forced exit. Cash-flowing lower-middle-market companies, bought at a price the cash flow supports. Request the private equity overview and we'll walk you through how we're deploying now.
