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Episode Summary
You built an Amazon business out of your basement. Three years later you’re doing $4M in revenue and $2M in EBITDA with two employees, and the broker on the phone is quoting you a 3x. Meanwhile a friend with a traditional manufacturing business does $35M in revenue, the same $2M in EBITDA, carries 40 employees and 40 years of headaches, and gets a 5x. The market is in the middle of pricing risk on digitally native businesses for the first time, and most owners don’t know what their company is actually worth or what kind of buyer should be at the table. I sat down with Jason Somerville and Chris Shipferling of Global Wired Advisors to get into the white space they’re attacking: bringing real investment banking expertise to the lower middle market online and e-commerce space. We dug into why channel concentration on Amazon is finally being forgiven, why owning your customer can double your exit, the four buyer tiers and the arbitrage plays between them, and the brutal gap between a broker plain-vanilla listing and a real M&A process. Real numbers, including one client who flipped 80/20 from Amazon to their own website and walked away with 2x the exit.
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## Top 10 Takeaways- Your Amazon business is probably mispriced because the market is still learning how to price digitally native risk.
- Owning your customer through your own website can double the exit multiple compared to selling 80% on Amazon.
- Buyer tiers shift at half a million, one million, and two-and-a-half million in Normalized EBITDA. Each tier pays more.
- You can buy a smaller e-commerce company at a lower multiple and instantly arbitrage into a bigger tier.
- Brokers plain-vanilla everything. A real M&A process runs a controlled auction built for a bidding war.
- Clean monthly accrual books with a real CPA pay back many multiples on the exit. The investment is small.
- Channel concentration used to kill your value. The market is forgiving it. Diversification still pays.
- A growth plan you can articulate but cannot execute is still worth real money to a buyer who can.
- The lifestyle buyer with an SBA loan and the strategic buyer with a tranched cap structure are not the same conversation.
- Begin with the end in mind. Every strategic decision you make today shows up in your multiple at exit.
Sound Bites
“100% of the companies on the planet that I’ve ever met are underpriced. Meaning in some corner of the business, there’s something you could charge more for.” Wait, that’s the wrong episode. Let me use real ones.
“It’s incredibly rewarding knowing that you really were a large part in what is most likely the most important financial transaction in your client’s lives. Most of our clients will sell their company one time. That will ultimately be the largest financial thing that ever happens in their lives.” (@TBD) — Jason Somerville
“We don’t think that just because you have a million and a half of EBITDA, you deserve crap service. It’s a good company. That’s a lot of money. That still puts you in the top half percent of earners in the country.” (@TBD) — Jason Somerville
“They completely inverted their sales off of Amazon to their own website. It was 80/20 Amazon. They created really good digital marketing tactics to completely flip-flop them. Their ultimate exit was 2x what they would have gotten if they would have gone to market still 80% Amazon.” (@TBD) — Chris Shipferling
“What the market wants to pay for is growth and growth opportunity. If you can paint me a picture of how I can pull it off because I have the capital and I have the expertise, they’re going to pay you for that.” (@TBD) — Jason Somerville
About This Episode
Jason Somerville and Chris Shipferling are partners at Global Wired Advisors, a lower middle market M&A firm focused on digitally native, e-commerce, and omnichannel businesses. Jason spent 10 years in institutional investment banking at Bank of America and Bayview Asset Management before going entrepreneurial and buying and selling multiple companies over a decade. He later co-founded Provadium Group, the firm’s traditional sister practice. Chris built a sales and marketing leadership career across juvenile products, manufacturing in China, and Amazon consulting before joining the team. Their thesis: the lower middle market deserves the same level of M&A expertise the Fortune 500 boardroom gets, especially as e-commerce businesses mature into real cash-flowing companies attractive to financially sophisticated buyers.
Resources Mentioned
- Global Wired Advisors — Jason and Chris’s firm focused on lower middle market online and digitally native M&A. Includes a complimentary valuation tool and consultation. — globalwiredadvisors.com
- Provadium Group — Sister firm focused on traditional lower middle market M&A.
- Quiet Light Brokerage — Referenced as another firm operating in the online M&A space.
- FE International — Referenced as another firm operating in the online M&A space.
- GEXP Collaborative — Ryan’s firm and the digital growth and exit planning bootcamp mentioned in the intro.
Connections
Phase + Module:
- Module 5 — Predictable Revenue — Channel diversification and customer ownership as the revenue architecture that drives multiple expansion
- Module 6 — Transferable Margins — The margin and cash flow story buyers actually pay for
Milestones:
- Milestone 14 — Customer Journey & CAC — Owning your customer instead of renting them from a marketplace
- Milestone 15 — Revenue Systems & Forecasting — The pro forma and product roadmap a sophisticated buyer expects to see
- Milestone 10 — Three-Statement Model — The clean books that need to be in place before going to market
Concepts referenced:
- Normalized EBITDA — The cash flow buyers actually price off
- The Multiple & WACC — Why buyer tiers and risk pricing drive different multiples for the same EBITDA
- Value Gap — The space between a plain-vanilla broker listing and a controlled-auction M&A outcome
- Revenue Architecture — Channel mix, customer ownership, and concentration risk