Latest news with #Owner
Int'l Business Times
29-05-2025
- Business
- Int'l Business Times
Before You Sell: What 2025 Business Owners Need to Know About Valuations
After decades of running the show, a growing number of business owners are preparing to step away. The so-called "great retirement wave" isn't just a demographic shift, it's triggering one of the biggest handovers of private businesses in recent history. However, in today's economy, exiting simply isn't as straightforward as it once was. Aspects like high interest rates, buyer sentiment doubt, and tighter lending standards are currently changing the market for business sales. For many owners, it's no longer just about finding a buyer, it's about providing value in a more scrutinized and competitive landscape. At the center of that challenge is valuation. How much is your business truly worth? Not based on gut feeling or what a friend sold for, but grounded in real numbers, risk, and market reality. In 2025, successful exits won't be driven by timing alone, they'll be based on owners understanding and positioning their value the right way. 2025: A Turning Point For Business Owners? After years of delayed transitions, 2025 is looking to become a critical point for small and mid-sized business ownership. Baby boomers, who own an estimated 41% of businesses in the U.S. are exiting the workforce in large numbers. In their place, Gen X is beginning to inherit or acquire companies, often with a very different set of expectations around risk, growth, and liquidity. But this generational shift is colliding with economic headwinds. Persistent inflation, higher financing costs, and muted consumer demand are all putting pressure on buyers and sellers alike. Business owners who had hoped for a smooth or high-priced exit are now facing tougher conversations about real market value. Despite growing urgency, many business owners remain underprepared. According to the Exit Planning Institute's most recent State of Owner Readiness report , 75% of owners say that they are planning to exit within 10 years starting 2023, yet many still lack formal transition teams or documented strategies. While awareness of exit planning has grown, there's still a significant gap between intention and execution. With deal timelines becoming longer and $15 trillion in ownership expected to be handed over or sold over the next ten years, delayed planning can lead to missed opportunities or undervalued exits. 2025 isn't just another year to consider an exit. For many private businesses, it may be the last optimal window before market conditions shift again. The owners who prepare now will be the ones best positioned to make a clean, confident transition. Business Valuations For a Successful Exit When it becomes time to sell, many business owners simply ask themselves what their business is worth. However, getting to a real answer requires more than intuition or a matter of opinion. A valuation isn't just a price tag, it's a structured analysis of how your company generates value and how that value would hold up in someone else's ownership. There are a few main ways to approach it. Earnings-based valuations focus on profitability adjusted for risk and future growth potential, often using EBITDA as a baseline. Asset-based methods are more grounded in physical or financial holdings, typically used for companies with significant tangible assets. Additionally, market comparables look at what similar businesses are selling for, offering a reality check that ties expectations to current trends. According to reports, the average sale price of small businesses has increased 4% year-over-year that reached $349,000. This data tells us that while demand remains steady, buyers are moving more cautiously and scrutinizing deals more closely. In this kind of environment, a clear and credible valuation can be the difference between a deal moving forward or falling apart. But valuation isn't just a financial exercise, it's a strategic tool . It gives owners a much better idea of what exactly makes their business valuable and how they can improve it. This insight can impact how they plan for taxes, negotiate sales, or hand it over to the next generation. Whether selling to a competitor, passing it on to family, or attracting private equity, accurate business valuations are the foundation for any deal. Without that clarity, deals tend to delay, or worse, close at prices far below what the business is truly worth. Ultimately, knowing your value isn't just about preparing for a sale. It's about owning your story, on your terms, before someone else defines it for you. What Buyers Are Looking For Now Since interest rates have increased, buyers are more risk-averse and careful. They are more interested in secure foundations than ever, and less so in flashy growth promises. Businesses that are resilient, stable, and easy to step into are highly favored. Nevertheless, there are definite red flags from a buyer's point of view that may delay deals in the early stages, such as relying too much on the owner for daily operations, unclear financials, or businesses whose revenue largely comes from a single client. On the other hand, green flags consist of a well-documented and detailed handover process, multiple streams of income, a strong management team, and recurring revenue. When businesses present vague financial reporting, it's not surprising that owners might struggle to attract serious buyers and offers. Business value becomes much easier for buyers to assess once the revenue is broken down by transparent cash flow trends, customer segments, and clearly outlined debt obligations. This means that stronger offers can be facilitated by improved reporting, even potentially far beyond expectations. In the current climate, it's how clearly a business is presented and not necessarily about what it does. When buyers are more confident in certain systems and numbers, they become much more likely to pay for the true value of the business. Common Mistakes Before Selling Unrealistic Expectations During the sales process, lots of business owners can adopt unrealistic expectations due to past scenarios from different economic times and outdated market multiples. Valuations that may have held in 2019 can simply not accurately be applied to the more fundamentals-based and cautious economy of 2025. As buyers have become more aware of risk, pushing on too high a price at first can potentially cause serious buyers to back out. Owner Reliance Being too reliant on the founder or owner can commonly cause issues as well. This might indicate that a business cannot properly function without them. The confidence that operations, decision-making, and client relationships will flourish after the sale is essential to buyers. Inadequate Records Another deal breaker is improper record keeping like missing documentation, informal financials, or when reports aren't easily accessible. These indicate higher risk and make due diligence more difficult. Timing Proper timing of a sale plays an important role for buyers. Sometimes owners will be rushed to make a sale without the proper and needed foundations. Conversely, some owners might take too long and miss optimal market windows. Either way, both approaches may jeopardize the final outcome. It's possible to avoid these common snags by planning earlier, honest assessments, and making use of expert advice. Besides being more appealing to buyers, a well-prepared, clean business is much easier to value, trust, and more likely to sell at a price that reflects its true value. The 12-24 Month Planning Rule Executing a business exit successfully won't happen immediately. If owners are serious about their goals to avoid unexpected problems and maximize value, it can take anywhere between 12 to 24 months to properly prepare to sell. Rushing the process may cause deals to fall apart, opportunities to be missed, and lower offers to fall through. During the first year, owners need to prioritize preparing the business by using professional valuation, commissioning the right advisors, whether tax-related, financial, or legal, as well as making sure financials are cleaned up. This might also be the time to look at any other possible aspects that could delay a sale. It's essential to not treat valuations like just numbers on a page, but rather a living tool. Valuations aren't static, they must be adjusted throughout the whole process to accurately reflect shifting market conditions, business improvements, and updated financials. This can ensure the timing of an exit is more strategic and sellers can respond with confidence during serious opportunities. The Future of Valuations What buyers value in businesses has started to change. While metrics like profit and revenue certainly still matter, more and more buyers are looking beyond just the basics. Once viewed as secondary, things like digital infrastructure, ESG credentials, and if a business can readily adapt to AI are increasingly considered, especially in fast-changing industries. According to Deloitte's 2025 M&A Trends Survey , buyers are increasingly emphasizing strategic alignment, digital capability, and operational resilience. These non-financial factors are becoming essential parts of how value is being assessed, particularly in competitive or disrupted sectors. Meanwhile, intangible qualities like proprietary tech, customer data, brand recognition, and a reliable team are now essential aspects of the long-term value of a business, especially those that are tech or service-based. M&A activity is also becoming more stable after a few volatile years. That's pushing pricing strategies back toward fundamentals and making clear, reliable data more important than ever. For business owners, staying ahead of these trends isn't just about commanding a higher price, it's about making sure your business reflects what serious buyers care about today. Understanding Value Before You Exit At the end of the day, valuation is about clarity. It's not just a financial figure, it's a lens into how your business performs, where its strengths lie, and what it might be worth to someone else. Even if you're not planning to sell tomorrow, there's value in knowing where you stand. The earlier you start that process, the more options you'll have, whether that means selling, scaling, or passing the business on. You don't have to guess. With the right advisors, tools, and preparation, you can understand your worth and step into any future with confidence.
Yahoo
14-05-2025
- Yahoo
Police make 3 a.m. arrest of 16-year-old armed with stolen gun on E. State Street
ROCKFORD, Ill. (WTVO) — A 16-year-old was arrested Tuesday after Rockford Police responded to reports of a teen with a gun on E. State Street. Around 3:30 a.m. Tuesday morning, officers were called to the 4400 block of E. State for a report of an armed subject. The teen was detained and found to be in possession of a loaded gun that had been reported stolen, a large capacity magazine, and a bottle of Xanax. The teen was charged with aggravated unlawful use of a weapon, possession of a weapon without a valid Firearm Owner's Identification, and possession of a controlled substance. The suspect was booked into the Winnebago County Juvenile Detention Center. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Forbes
13-05-2025
- Business
- Forbes
This Tech Startup Is Using AI To Help Local Restaurants
CEO and cofounder Adam Guild, who is both a Thiel Fellow and Forbes 30 under 30 alumnus, first launched Owner, then called Placepull, in 2018 after he built a website to support his mother's dog grooming business. Boris Zharkov Photography 2023 Local chains and mom-and-pop restaurants are perhaps the last places you'd envision using AI. But thanks to Owner, a startup that provides digital services like mobile app creation and now AI-powered marketing and website optimization for more than 10,000 restaurants, Florida-based Talkin' Tacos has been able to increase the number of locations it operates and grow annual sales to more than $60 million. "We've had hundreds of customers drive hundreds of thousands of dollars in additional profit,' Owner CEO and cofounder Adam Guild told Forbes. 'We saw this coming when we started playing with GPT-3 at the time, and the way it's evolved has surpassed our wildest expectations,' referencing OpenAI's earlier large language model released in 2020. That success helped Owner close a $120 million fundraise co-led by Meritech Capital and Headline Growth, vaulting it to a $1 billion valuation just over a year after raising a $33 million Series B — and just eight months after being on Forbes Next Billion-Dollar Startups list. Owner provides software to manage mobile food orders, organize marketing campaigns, generate a search engine-friendly website, build a mobile app and set up a loyalty program, all without needing to write a single line of code. To start the process for free, a user simply enters their restaurant's name into a search bar, and Owner pulls information from the web to evaluate its current standings. With the purchase of a monthly $499 subscription, it then automatically generates a website based on what it finds online and creates optimized text that the user can edit. The websites also implement ordering and delivery systems, where Owner takes a smaller fee than other delivery platforms, and use an image editing AI program to improve photos of menu items. Owner's website said it can do all this in about a week or less. From there, it continues to recommend ways to boost the website and expand sales with other offerings. It's 'leveling the playing field and making it so that independent restaurant owners don't get crushed by large corporations, but instead get empowered by this tech,' Guild said. He envisions Owner as a one-stop shop for restaurant owners to manage and market their businesses. The company has also incorporated generative AI into these tools to help draft emails or to improve website text to bolster search engine rankings. Its biggest upcoming product, which is currently available but expected to be released broadly later this year, is a set of what the company calls 'AI executives' to provide advice on finances and marketing. Restaurant owners can chat with these bots, which can do things like remind a business owner that they're out of an ingredient and disable that dish on the menu, or share how sales performed that chatbots are 'cobbled together' from several different AI models from companies including OpenAI, Anthropic and Stability and trained on data collected from the menus and orders of the thousands of restaurants using its platform, Guild said. Owner's own revenue has grown, too. Guild declined to share a specific number or discuss profitability but said that it has now reached 'multiple tens of millions.' The company currently has 200 employees. Besides expanding its offerings, Guild said the new raise enabled Owner to bring on strategic investors like Shalini Rao, a partner at Headline Growth and co-lead on the round, who is known for being part of Toast's Series C round. 'This is a company that has been on our radar for a very long time,' Rao said. Guild, who is both a Thiel Fellow and Forbes 30 under 30 alumnus, first launched Owner, then called Placepull, in 2018 after he built a website to support his mother's dog grooming business. He raised millions in a seed round from angel investors like Tinder founder Sean Rad and Kimbal Musk in 2020. (Guild says Musk's investment came from his interest in restauranting, adding the two remain connected.) The new billion-dollar valuation is a big jump from its January 2024 funding round, which valued the company at just $200 million and landed the company on Forbes' list of Next Billion Dollar Startups. Jack Altman, an Owner investor who founded management tech firm Lattice, told Forbes it's less of a surprise to him. 'It's been doing well for a while now, and it's definitely accelerating and the momentum builds,' he said. Altman first invested in his company at the seed stage in 2020 and has reinvested in each round, he said. Even Guild admitted he hadn't intended to raise additional funding so quickly. 'About a month ago, I poked my head up from building product and talking to customers, ' he said. 'I had a few conversations with investors and sharing our data, and within six days of sharing our data with investors, we had six offers.' Several angel investors also joined the round, including Fidji Simo, the CEO of Instacart who was recently appointed CEO of Applications at OpenAI; Jonathan Neman, the CEO of Sweetgreen; and Brett Schulman, cofounder and CEO of CAVA. Investors point to Guild's devotion as a big reason for their bet. Guild told Forbes that he hasn't taken a day off since he founded the company, and that he spends his Saturdays filming videos and marketing materials for the company's YouTube channel, which rakes in millions of views with videos catered to the restaurant world. The channel's most popular video provides information on calculating food costs, while his most recent video is an interview with an Owner success story. He took some inspiration from his younger brother, Topper Guild, who has a following of more than 62 million on YouTube. That channel helped bring Alex Kurland, a general partner at Meritech Capital and co-lead of the round, on board to invest. He told Forbes that Guild's YouTube videos helped him understand Owner's potential, which he views as similar to DoorDash, another of his investments. 'In the restaurant vertical, with cloud, you saw the Toast point-of-sale be built; with mobile, you saw DoorDash being built, and I think with AI, you're going to see Owner build a very large company,' Kurland said.
Chicago Tribune
30-04-2025
- Chicago Tribune
Column: Crimo the latest murderer sent to Stateville
Authorities quickly hustled convicted mass murderer Robert Crimo III out of the Lake County jail last week and to his new home at Stateville Correctional Center. Surely, Lake County corrections officers weren't sad to see him pack up and go. While the county jail has never been known for posh surroundings, it will seem like a country club compared to the aging state prison in Crest Hill in Will County, which is what the 24-year-old deserves since Illinois unfortunately doesn't have the death penalty. 'Due to the hard work of the Circuit Clerk's Office quickly processing all of the post-conviction paperwork, our Corrections Team was able to transfer the defendant to an Illinois prison,' Lake County Sheriff John Idleburg told one news outlet. 'Our correctional officers did a terrific job getting the defendant transferred quickly, to the place he will spend the rest of his life.' After unexpectedly pleading guilty last month to the first-degree murders of seven spectators at the July 4, 2022, parade in Highland Park and the attempted murder of 48 people wounded in the attack, he will spend the rest of his life in an Illinois Department of Corrections facility given that Stateville is scheduled to be closed. He has no chance of parole. Lake County Circuit Court Judge Victoria Rossetti sentenced the gunman to seven consecutive natural life sentences for each victim he killed, plus 50 years for the other parade-goers he was convicted of shooting. 'The court finds that the defendant is irretrievably depraved, permanently incorrigible, irreparably corrupt and beyond any rehabilitation,' the judge said at sentencing. Nineteen victims of the shootings and their loved ones testified with emotional victim-impact statements of grief, trauma and loss from the attack, which killed or injured people ranging in age from 8 to 88. The killings devastated the Highland Park community. Murdered along the parade route were Katherine Goldstein, 64; Irina McCarthy, 35, and her husband, Kevin McCarthy, 37; Stephen Straus, 88; Jacki Sundheim, 63; Nicolas Toledo-Zaragoza, 78; and Eduardo Uvaldo, 69. They were there on a sunny summer day to celebrate the nation's birthday. Crimo remained absent during the two-day sentencing hearing last week as he continued to play with authorities, and the families and friends of his victims killed when he unleashed 83 high-powered bullets from a rooftop along the Independence Day parade route. Changing his pleas since the horrific parade shootings and even one time blaming the FBI for the murders, Crimo has failed to acknowledge the evil he accomplished at the parade by using an assault-style rifle his father enabled him to purchase, despite numerous indications that the young man should not have gotten anywhere near any firearm. Robert Crimo Jr. sponsored his son's state Firearm Owner's Identification card, which allowed him to buy the AR-style weapon he used in the massacre. The father pleaded guilty to misdemeanor reckless conduct and was sentenced to 60 days in county jail in 2023. A lawsuit against Smith & Wesson, the manufacturer of the weapon used, gun shops, and Crimo III and his father is winding its way through the judicial system. This, while survivors of those murdered will be reminded of their losses daily. Crimo may be placed in solitary confinement for his initial stop at Stateville, a maximum-security state prison which holds some 3,500 inmates. Illinois taxpayers will pay for his stay at an estimated $32,000 a year. The worst mass-murderer gunman in Illinois, Crimo will follow other monsters who have called Stateville home over the decades. Like John Wayne Gacy, the Norwood Park Township serial killer who murdered at least 33 young men and boys during the 1970s. Gacy, convicted of his crimes in 1980, was executed by lethal injection at Stateville on May 10, 1994, when Illinois still had a Death Row. Richard Speck, who stabbed and strangled eight student nurses in Chicago in 1966, died of a heart attack in Stateville in 1991, just before his 50th birthday. Other members of the Stateville rogues' gallery include William Heirens, convicted of three murders in 1946; and Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb, the infamous 'thrill killers' of 1924 who were spared the death penalty. Lake County State's Attorney Eric Rinehart, whose prosecution team had insurmountable evidence that Crimo was the only suspect in the parade shootings, said the murderer laughed and made jokes during his initial police interrogation, and has never shown remorse for his actions. Maybe that contrition will come as Crimo ages in the cage in which he will reside for the coming decades. That is, if he lives that long. Notorious killers have a way of losing their lives at the hands of fellow inmates, like Loeb, who was killed by another Stateville prisoner; the 'Boston Strangler' Albert DeSalvo, who was found stabbed to death while in a Massachusetts prison infirmary; and Milwaukee serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, who was beaten to death while in a Wisconsin prison.
