I started a PE firm alone to buy a business, but it wasn't your typical PE firm. My office, my quote unquote office was just a library at school. There was no fund

like no money. I had a lot of help. I had over fifty unpaid interns come from Craigslist,

and I had them sift through over four hundred thousand private companies for a year and a half our found egg cartons dot com.

So a while back, maybe a month ago,

I came on here, and I was like,

dude, there's this business. Have you heard of this business called egg cartons dot com? And, you're like, no. What what is that? Well, it's exactly what it sounds like. You go to egg cartons dot com, and it's a place where you could buy the packaging, the carton, for eggs.

And, like, but also packaging for a bunch of different varieties of eggs, like huge shipments, small ones, eco friendly, not eco friendly, but also just like in general, like, other packaging materials as well. So I was like, yeah. Fascinating business. Right? Like, you go there. It's a old school looking website. You know, it's like dial one eight hundred eggs dot coyote or whatever, like, to to call us to place an order. And I was like, this is fascinating. So I dug in. I was like, who's behind this? And I basically found that it used to be owned by this guy. He ran it for twenty four years. I was like, okay. This sounds about right. You know, his LinkedIn picture was

him, like, with a you know, like a phone with a cord in it. And he's like, got it up to his neck. And he's like, sitting at a messy desk. And I was like, this looks like the guy who started at card dot com twenty five years ago.

But now, I noticed, oh, it says, like, he ended his ownership one year ago. So who who's behind this? And I saw that there was this woman named Sarah Moore who was, like, not what you would expect to be like it's like, oh, this person should be like the CEO of Lou Lehr, something like that. Why is she getting into bag cartons of all businesses?

Like, beautiful harvard graduate.

Yeah. Like, you it looks like a celebrity a little bit.

And so I tried to reach out to her. I couldn't get a hold of her. And so but I couldn't resist. So I came on the pot and I told the story. It's like, yeah. So, basically, it looks like she purchased this business.

She did, like, one tiny interview about it. And blah blah blah. But I had done one thing that I didn't tell you about. I don't think that day, which is

I've been experimenting with format that I wish people use more on me. Like, when people reach out to me, they're like, oh, I'd love to talk to you sometime. Like, if you have a question, just send me the question. Fact, if you have a bunch of questions, like, just send me a Google doc. I'm gonna look at it. And if I wanna answer, I'll answer, if I don't, I don't. And so that's what I did to her. I go

I sent her an email. I said Edcartons, like, with five exclamation points. I go, that's hilarious. Like, what a hilarious niche? I go, we got this podcast. I'd love to feature you on it.

I have five questions for you on this Google doc. If you answer them with bullet points, I'll tell your story on the podcast. We get twenty million dollars a year. It'll be great for your business. Go, this is me on Twitter, by the way. Whatever. I sent it. No reply for

twenty days.

Then she go she emails me out of the blue. She goes, I couldn't have paid someone to make me sound as cool as you and Sam did on the podcast last week. Thank you so much. I filled out your Google doc. I think they'll answer your questions. I would have responded earlier if I didn't think this was spam.

Blah blah blah. Send me send me your address. I'll send you some world class egg cards. Alright? So I wanna read you what she what what I read to her and what she replied. But did you want any are you gonna are you gonna accept those pardons?

Very nice.

Very nice of you, Sarah, but thank you. But, no, thank you. No, dude, everything in the house could turn into, like, a toy storage container. You you you that I have toys for all shapes and sizes. Alright. So Alright. What did you say? So I basically said, here's my question I go. You go you bought egg cartons dot com. Did you buy it alone as part of a PE firm? She goes, alone ish. I started a P firm alone to buy a business, but it wasn't your typical P firm. My office, my quote unquote office was just a library at school. There was no fund,

like no money. I had a lot of help. I had over fifty unpaid interns come from Craigslist,

and I had them Sift through over four hundred thousand private companies for a year and a half before I found egg cartons dot com. What? The yeah. I know. Then I go, I am so that was my first question. Second question, I go, how the heck did you buy it? Or no, why the heck did you buy it? What about the business made you wanna buy it? Was it the name, the customer retention? What what drove you to?

She goes, my goal was to buy a business with all debt so I could have a hundred percent ownership. I had no collateral, though, except for my two thousand twelve Rev four.

So, I was trying to find something that was already stable enough that I could pitch a bank that the business itself was the collateral instead of my RAV four.

That so I needed historical cash flows. This business fit, because it had been profitable since it started in two thousand one, had a high barrier to entry given the domain name, and a hundred plus other similar domain names that they own, like Edcartins,

like misspelled,

edcarton dot com, blah blah

blah. Then she says the founder has strategically purchased all these domains over the years to protect their, like, their demote.

It was simple enough. It was also a simple enough business that somebody with zero operational experience me,

an average intelligence, me, could operate if they tried hard enough.

I was like, wow, this is incredible.

Then

I saw I said, I live in Silicon Valley. People here are obsessed with crypto, AI, blah blah blah. They would underestimate egg cards dot com. Can you give us a sense of the scale of the business? That's a really good way to frame that.

That's a that's a beautiful way to frame that question

because you nagged her a little bit. Like, you said something a little rude. You're like, Yeah. You know, it's probably not that big, but maybe it is, you know, like, impress me. Right. I would think this is small, but, you know, I'd love to be surprised. Yeah. Would you say that this is more than this and less than this? And so she anyway, she came back with.

I'm in the middle of, something that prevents me from sharing the numbers publicly. All I can say is that a revenue is less than fifty million.

And I was like, oh, yay. Okay. But that you not less than twenty. If it was less than twenty, I feel like you would have said less than twenty. I feel like that that would be the case.

I said, how'd you negotiate the deals? She's like, god, there's a bunch of contacts here. Because in summary, I harassed the owner until he replied. Then we hit it off. We came up with evaluation together. Then I contacted over a hundred banks, most of which told me to f off One of them threw me a bone and agreed to an under un collateralized loan. The final deal was seventy five percent bank debt and twenty five percent the seller's note. So she bought this with no money down. Like, the bank financing and the seller financing.

She said before buying the business, I had, I overpaid an accountant to check my work and do an audit of the business because frankly I had no idea what I was doing. His fees got rolled into the deal itself. So,

she used an account to cover her ass, but also paid him out of the deal itself.

This sounds amazing. Any other fun tidbits or anecdotes I I could share. She here's what she says. This is where it gets great. She goes,

While searching for their business, I participated in several research studies just to make money,

like, to while I was doing my search. I went from I went legally blind from a deodorant steady for a bit. So I had to take a break from working from working until I could read again.

She goes, my response rate was awful. I started doing borderline and saying things to get a reply. At one point, I took a photo of myself wearing a sweatshirt that said, I wanna buy your business with a massive grant, and I faxed it out to thousands of businesses a day.

To this day, I run into owners who recognize me from those faxes. One of those owners is actually my neighbor.

Then she says, the library we worked out of required a school ID to enter. Most of my interns didn't go to the school, so we had to get fake IDs for all the interns to get into the library. Every time we hired someone, there was a lag because we would need to get more IDs.

During COVID, I used to fly to chan China needed to examine the egg cartons. On my first trip to India, I got held by Indian customs and interrogation for hours because they didn't believe that I was coming to India alone. They did not believe that I was coming to investigate

egg cartons.

Related to India. I almost got killed there. I rejected a shipment from an Indian vendor. The his whole family lived there. He was furious, started chasing after me. The hotel put me into incognito mode for my safety. My driver luckily was at the door that I ran out of. Otherwise, I'd probably still be there buried underground.

She goes, when I bought the business, it's considered a egg company, but now I think of it as a specialty packaging. Forty percent of our business comes from things, unentire entirely unrelated to eggs. You'd be very surprised by our customer base. You know, think big brands like Boeing, SpaceX, Disney, Madison

Square Garden, Crayola, etcetera. Anything that requires protection and separation is fair game.

Anyways, there's one one more, I should say. But, dude, what's the other one? Is Sarah Moore not my hero? Is she my hero or is she not my hero? This woman's wonderful. Why is she why didn't she talk about this publicly more often? This is, like, it I feel like there was tons and tons of stories there.

Dude, you know,

people there's some people who are so in the game that they're like

they're like, oh, yeah. What am I gonna stop and chat about the game. Like, I mean, the fucking game. Right? Like, that's the feeling I get from her. I've met some people that I like this that they're sort of, like, it's a combination of

They kinda don't realize how story worthy their story is until, like, quite a bit later. And the second thing, they're sort of, like, you know, either they just prefer privacy or they're, like, Yeah. I don't really know why I need to do that. So why would I do that? It's gonna be kinda braggy and kinda weird. And what's the benefit? And maybe I'd just rather be be personal.

So I think that, like, I know a handful of people that I'm like, dude, I wish I could tell their story on the podcast because

they're epic. But they just don't see value in this. And they're also not consumers of it. That's the other thing I've noticed. Most of those people don't listen to a bunch of podcasts or take inspiration from it. So it's kind of a foreign idea to them. They're like,

Like, people will care. It's like, yeah. Of course, people will care about this. This is awesome.

So anyways, I was totally inspired by the story, and she is,

kind of amazing. She is one of us. She no small boy stuff for Sarah Moore.

So I think she's only two when you if you Google her, you you basically can't find anything. I mean, there's nothing on her. There's like one or two pictures. There's very little. I found one article where it says that she's twenty eight and she, it says answered a question, what inspired you to start buying companies? She says, freedom. What is your mantra? Don't take counsel from your fears. Like, that's pretty much all she an like, she answered nothing. This woman's amazing. Why can't we find anything about her? There there's a lot there's a lot going on with her. We need to,

commit her to come on. There's a thirty percent chance she's a fat guy named Craig. So, like, you know, if we could be getting catfished here, I wouldn't put it past her.

But

I'm gonna go with the with what I see. I think fix this amazing.