The Difference Between a 3.5x Exit and a 10x Exit Is Not Your Revenue
Two agencies of roughly the same size sold in the same year, one at 3.5x EBITDA and the other at 10.1x. What separated them had nothing to do with revenue, headcount, or the logos on the client roster, and everything to do with how much of that revenue recurred, how concentrated it was across clients, and whether the business could run without its founder in the room.
Most founders learn which of those two companies they resemble somewhere in the middle of a live process, by which point the number has already been set. Stellamont M&A Intelligence exists so that you learn it well before then.
What Buyers Are Actually Paying For
Acquirers are not paying for your content, your campaigns, or your creative work, and they will tell you as much once the diligence starts. What they are underwriting is the data and revenue engine running underneath all of it.
That is why an agency carrying 70% recurring revenue clears 9x while a project-based shop doing identical numbers struggles to get past 5x, and why a media business with an owned audience and four revenue streams reaches the 8.5x to 10x range while a single-platform business with comparable traffic sits between 2x and 3x. The same pattern holds in talent, where a firm whose largest creator accounts for under 15% of income trades around 8x and one sitting above 30% concentration trades closer to 3x. Same sector, same revenue, roughly triple the multiple.
What we publish are the specific levers that move a business from one band into the next, along with the transactions that show where those bands actually sit.
What You Get
Each week you will get analysis covering recent acquisitions with named buyers and disclosed values, the sector multiple ranges and what moves a company between them, which revenue models command premiums and the reasons they do, what makes a business transferable once its founder steps away, and how timing, structure, and negotiation change the final number. Every piece is written to answer the same question, which is what any of it means for the value, timing, or sellability of your business.
Alongside the writing, there are interviews with the founders, investors, and operators working inside these markets.
More than 3,000 readers have subscribed, and it is free.
Who This Is For
The publication is written for founders and operators across four markets:
Marketing infrastructure and martech
Software and vertical SaaS
Tech-enabled marketing services
Creator commerce and UGC infrastructure
You do not need to be selling anything to get value from it, because the best time to understand your options is well before an inbound offer arrives and a buyer anchors the conversation at a number of their choosing.
Why We Publish It
Stellamont is a sell-side M&A advisory firm, and we represent owners rather than buyers.
We help owners understand business value, prepare for buyer scrutiny and run confidential, competitive sale processes. We assess each opportunity individually based on the business, its financial performance and the owner’s objectives; we do not apply a fixed transaction-size or valuation range. This publication focuses on the creator economy, martech, software and tech-enabled services, translating public market developments into practical insights for business owners.
Before You Talk to a Buyer
A buyer may only approach you once, and what you understand going into that conversation tends to shape everything that follows it.
Subscribing is free, and if you are somewhere between 12 and 36 months from an exit, you can reply to any edition and get a straight read on where your business sits today, with no pitch and no process attached.
Learn more about Stellamont at stellamont.com.
