Inventor of the 2 hour lunchbreak. started 6 companies, ☠️3 failed, 💰2 sold, 1 still going 🏋️♂️
I have a new hero and her name is Sarah Moore. • Under 30 years old • Had no money, no experience. Biggest asset was her car (a RAV4) • Spent 1 year hunting through 100,000+ businesses to find ONE to buy • Bought a $20M+ business called Egg Carton”, all debt Sarah goes to Harvard. Decides she wants to buy a business. Creates a private equity fund (PE) But.. • her "office" was the school library. • her "fund" was non-existent as she had no money • her "analysts" were 50+ interns she found on Craigslist I asked her how she paid for life during the search: She said she participated in random research studies to make side $$. But she went legally blind from a deodorant study and had to take a break until she could see again. Sarah wanted to buy a biz with all debt so she could have 100% ownership. but she also had no collateral. so she had to find a business that was SO stable that it could itself be the collateral. she had her 50+ interns look through >400,000 private companies in a year and a half. she was looking for: • high historical cash flow • high barrier to entry Eggcartons had both. 1/ Cash flow - a lot of farmers / comapnies are selling eggs 2/ Barrier to entry - the old founder already copped the best domain name But to make his moat stronger, he bought the closest 100+ domains (ie. eggcartin) ok, so she found the perfect business. But how did she convince them to sell? "In summary, I harassed the owner until he replied. When we actually met, we hit it off and came up with a valuation together." she reached out to 100+ banks pitching her crazy idea. 99% told her to f*ck off. One of them threw her a bone. an uncollateralized loan: 75% in bank debt and 25% in the seller's note. she had done it. she owned the business. Eggcarton's website looks like it's straight out the 1970s. It might not look like it, but 40% of their revenue actually comes from clients like: • SpaceX • Boeing • Disney • Crayola The crazy thing, you can't find anything about her online. I got the deets because I e-mailed her an empty g-doc with 5 questions. 20 days later, she filled them out with details about her crazy life.
John Brandes
1y
Incredible story. Shared this with my wife when it came up in my twitter feed last night. Persistence pays off.
Sarah 'Gets-it-done' Moore
Podcast episode?
Sid Smith
1y
Why does everybody ignore the fact this was built off the back of 50+ unpaid interns? Did they become staff or was it just unpaid labour to get an advantage? It's a great story but it feels like there's a missing piece of the puzzle.
Saw this on the YT episode recently, it was amazing!! What shocked me the most was getting 50 unpaid interns from craigslist and making fake Harvard ID for them for office access (the library). 🤣
It sounds like Sarah owes a lot to those 50+ interns :)
Loved the episode and the story is incredible. However, how do you hire 50x unpaid interns with the right skillset to work their way through the balance sheets of private companies? Asking for a friend..
HR technologist dedicated to driving HR transformation on a global scale for leading organizations. Founder AI for HR newsletter Futturwork
1yI recently became a fan of your podcast and this was one of the first episodes I watched. First of all, you and Sam together are surreal enough but Sarah's story is simply mad. She's pure resilience! These are the true heroes no one else has the initiative to talk about!