Forward Motion
The deals, the prices, and what killed the ones that died.
Forward Motion is the letter. What crossed the desk, what businesses actually sold for, and the transaction that fell over that month with the reason it fell over. Sent when there is something worth sending, not on a schedule.
What is in it
Three things, and nothing else.
What crossed the desk
The shape of what is coming through. Sectors, sizes, and how the asking prices compare with what the businesses are actually worth. The gap between those two numbers is most of what there is to know about a market.
What things sold for
Prices, multiples and structures, from transactions rather than from a survey of what people hoped for. The same numbers that sit behind the market data pages.
What went wrong
The deal that collapsed and the reason it collapsed. Concentration nobody tested, financials that needed explaining, an owner who turned out to be the business. This is the part that is hard to find anywhere else and the part worth the time.
Who reads it
Written for buyers. Useful to owners for the same reason.
If you are buying
It is a read on the market you are buying into, from someone underwriting in it rather than reporting on it. Where the prices are moving, and where they are only being asked.
If you own a business
It is a straight look at how a buyer will price you when the time comes, years before you need the number. Nothing here is a pitch, and reading it does not put you in a pipeline.
The archive
Every issue is published here the day it goes out.
Nothing is held back for the list. If you want to read Forward Motion without subscribing, you will be able to, and you can decide from the writing rather than from a description of it.
No. 001
The first issue has not gone out yet.
It will carry the same three things every issue carries: what crossed the desk that month, what businesses actually sold for, and the transaction that fell over with the reason it fell over.
Subscribe below and the first one you get is the first one that exists. Until then, the market data pages carry the same figures, sourced and dated.
Subscribe
Your email, and that is the whole transaction.
No onboarding sequence, no call booked on your behalf, no deal details and no client names. Unsubscribe in one click and the link is in every send.