Buying a business to become an entrepreneur isn’t new. But whoever’s running the marketing campaign for this idea lately is killing it.
Harvard started offering courses on buying businesses back in 2010. Then, in 2017, two star professors dropped a popular Harvard Business Review article: “Buying Your Way into Entrepreneurship.”
A year later, Walker Deibel took it mainstream with his book Buy Then Build, making Acquisition Entrepreneurship the hottest term in the game.
Brokers, business marketplaces like Flippa, and acquisition funds are loving this renewed excitement. And honestly? So are we.
My First Acquisition—The Lightbulb Moment
One of my first plays in the business world wasn’t starting something from scratch. It was buying an existing retail store from a retiring owner.
At the time, I wanted to escape my corporate job badly. I even had a long list of business ideas (yes, an actual list), but every time I looked at them, I saw the same problem:
💰 Too much risk. Too much time before I’d see real money.
And with a mortgage, a wife, and three kids, that kind of risk didn’t feel like an option.
The Profit Effect
Around that time, I stumbled on a show called The Profit with Marcus Lemonis. Unlike Shark Tank, where investors bet on raw startups, Marcus walked into struggling businesses and turned them around.
Bad finances? Bad leadership? Sales team slacking?
He fixed them—and the business thrived.
And I thought, I could do that.
If I bought a small business, at worst, I could fix sales, marketing, and operations. At best, I’d inject fresh energy into a business that just needed a second wind.
That first acquisition worked better than I expected. And it flipped my mindset:
👉 Buying a business > Starting from scratch.
Then I Met Dan ->The Acquisition Machine
Fast forward almost a decade. I met Dan, my now business partner.
Dan figured this out a long time ago. He’s bought nearly 200 online businesses—and held onto all but two. (And the only reason he sold those? The original owners begged to buy them back.)
Together, we launched LTV in early summer 2024.
And we’re doing Acquisition Entrepreneurship differently.
The LTV Playbook. Why We’re Built Different
We’re not just buying businesses—we’re playing the long game.
🚀 We raise funds to buy great businesses because there are so many out there.
📈 We run a portfolio instead of betting on just one. Diversification = risk management.
🔄 We leverage economies of scale. One accounting team. One legal team. One marketing team—supporting multiple businesses.
This is Acquisition Entrepreneurship 2.0.
We’re not here for quick flips. We’re not here to take a bet and hope it works.
We’re here to build.