Preface

This book takes a big idea from our popular courses at the Harvard Business School and for the first time shares it beyond campus. The big idea is that you can buy an existing small business, right now, and run it as a CEO. Each year, we teach hundreds of MBA students about this kind of entrepreneurship, and dozens of them follow this path immediately after graduation.

About five years ago, we developed a course on small businesses to fill what we saw as a gap in the school’s offerings. We chose to study small businesses because it allowed us to apply our skills and experience to a vital segment of the economy that we believe should get more attention —especially from entrepreneurially minded men and women who can become owners and managers of these companies.

We became even more fascinated with smaller businesses the more we learned about them. Our students became engrossed as well; last year, every seat in the courses we offered was filled. And the number of students who go on to buy a small business directly after graduation continues to rapidly grow each year. We are not surprised: These businesses give our students the opportunity to be leaders early in their careers, to apply their common sense and their general management expertise, and to fashion a work environment that meets their goals.

While our primary interest in small businesses is in teaching and research, we have also become investors in some of the businesses our former students have acquired, including some of those described in this book. We’ve put our money into these opportunities because we are enthusiastic and confident about the potential of entrepreneurship through acquisition and because we’ve been excited to see so many individuals succeed—on so many levels—when they decide to follow this challenging, often tortuous, often fun, and always exciting path.

As we’ve seen the demand for our course increase, we wrote this book to bring the idea to a wider audience, beyond the walls of our classroom, and to guide you through the process of buying a small business. We hope that many of you find the idea as compelling as our students do—and as we ourselves do—and that you find success in pursuing one of the many unique opportunities available in this little-known market.