For my first business I decided to not go the traditional Searchfund route and start a service based business from scratch. Due to the low barriers to entry, I decided on commercial cleaning. I immediately noticed that the majority of companies are focused on local markets, there are only a few that go after high value contracts (Fortune 500's, Department of Defense, Universities, etc.). Naturally, I decided to only market to high profile companies and in less than a year we secured $1mm in long term contracts. The only downside is that due to long term contracts governing the relationship, the sales cycle is very long.

As a result, I decided to look into potential acquisition targets with a similar client portfolio in order to maintain our growth rate. There are a lot of opportunities to acquire these companies at a steep discount (around 2.75x EBITA). They're not efficiently ran and their solid relationships with clients that have locations across nation offers the opportunity to significantly increase revenue as more companies are consolidated. There are also a lot of cost synergies to be created as well (centralized back office). All in all, the potential seems incredible and the large players in the industry are paying over 5x EBITA to acquire national/regional commercial cleaning companies. Has anyone had any success with this strategy, securing capital, integrating, etc.? I would love to connect.