Experience on both sides of the table.

Before any of this, I spent my career in finance: investment banking and equity research on Wall Street, finance leadership at WeWork, then running finance for venture-backed startups.

In 2023 I left my last startup to build something of my own. The first lesson came fast: whatever business you start, if you can't get customers, you don't have a business.

So I went all in on sales and marketing. I taught myself Facebook ads and started a small agency running ads for landscaping and design-build companies. Several grew from $200,000 or $300,000 in revenue to over seven figures in nine or ten months. Then some of them got seven-figure offers to sell.

That changed my thinking. If I could grow these companies, why collect a monthly retainer when I could buy one, grow it, and own the upside? I started searching for a business to buy, and along the way I talked to a lot of brokers.

Brokerage pulled me in. I could source deals for myself and list the ones that didn't fit my criteria. Then I fell in love with the work, and saw how broken the industry is. Books are a mess. The level of service is low, and many brokers never had a finance background. That is why so many deals never close.

So I started Cove Spring Advisors to bring investment banking rigor to Main Street: well-packaged deals, organized financials and dedicated data rooms.

And I kept seeing the other half of the problem. Buyers send twenty-one questions and lose the broker. Brokers stop answering buyers. There is no bridge between the two. SMB Deal Insider is that bridge.