Rick, Bruce Nelson of Vertilocity, and Jeff Hamons of Computol close out the series by turning the question around: what is a buyer actually screening for when they look at an MSP? The answer has less to do with EBITDA than most owners assume.
Short version: buyers aren’t looking for a founder with a great story. They’re looking for a team that doesn’t need one.
Watch the episode and be sure to subscribe: Watch Cogent Conversations Episode 21
Key takeaways from this episode
- Founder-dependent businesses are a red flag, not a selling point. If the whole identity of the company is the founder, Bruce says plainly: “that will fall apart.” Buyers want organizations built around a team.
- Employee turnover is a leading indicator buyers actually check. High turnover — team members averaging two or three years — gets flagged in diligence as a culture problem, not just an HR statistic.
- Good people relationships and good client relationships travel together. Teams that treat their people well tend to have stickier clients too — the two aren’t a coincidence.
- Real fit is found through genuine common ground, not the biggest offer. Shared platforms, shared vendors, overlapping service lines mean the team already knows how to work together.
- The owners who plan two to three years ahead get better outcomes than the ones who wait for a breaking point. A compressed, forced timeline means taking whoever shows up with the biggest number — fit becomes an afterthought.
- Rick’s framing stuck with the room: this is an on-ramp, not a walk-away. Neither Jeff nor Bruce left anything behind — both describe their deal as the start of something bigger than what they built alone.
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If you’re building toward a future deal, the businesses buyers want aren’t the ones with the best story — they’re the ones that don’t need their founder to keep running them.
