How This Harvard MBA Bought A $50 Million Dollar Business For $0

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 the library at school. There was no fund, like no money. I had a lot of help. I had over 50 unpaid interns come from Craigslist and I had them sift through over 400,000 private companies for a year and a half before I found eggcartons.com. So a while back, maybe a month ago, I came on here and I was like, um, dude, there's this business. Have you heard of this business called eggcartons.com? And you're like, no, what is that? Well, it's exactly what it sounds like. You go to eggcartons.com and it's a place where you can buy the packaging, the carton for eggs. Um, 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 an old school looking website, you know, it's like dial 1-800-eggs.com, you know, 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 24 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 is like got it up to his neck and he is like sitting at a messy desk. And I was like, oh, This looks like the guy who started eggcart.com 25 years ago. But now I was, 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 Lululemon or something like that. Why is she getting into egg cartons of all businesses?

She's like beautiful Harvard graduate. Yeah. Like you looks like a celebrity a little bit.

She's the, um, And so I tried to reach out to her. I couldn't get ahold of her. And so, but I couldn't resist. So I came on the pod and I told the story. I was 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 a format that I wish people used 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. In fact, if you have a bunch of questions, like just send me a Google Doc, I'm gonna look at it and if I want to 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, egg cartons, like with 5 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. Um, I have 5 questions for you on this Google Doc. If you answer them with bullet points, I'll tell your story on the podcast. We get $20 million a year. It'll be great for your business. I go, this is me on Twitter, by the way, whatever. I sent it. No reply for 20 days. Then 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 this answers your questions. I would've responded earlier if I didn't think this was spam, blah, blah, blah. Send me your address. I'll send you some world-class egg cards. So I want to read you what I wrote to her and what she replied.

But did you want any, Are you gonna, are you gonna accept those cartons? Very nice. 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, I have toys forever, all shapes and sizes. All right. So, all right.

What did she say?

So I basically said, here's my question. I go, you go, you bought eggcartons.com. Did you buy it alone as part of a PE firm? She goes, alone-ish. 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, uh, like no money. I had a lot of help. I had over 50 unpaid interns come from Craigslist and I had them sift through over 400,000 private companies for a year and a half before I found eggcartons.com.

What?

Yeah, I know. Then I go, I, so that was my first question. Second question, I go, how the heck did you buy it? Uh, 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 it? She goes, my goal was to buy a business with all debt so I could have 100% ownership. I had no collateral though, except for my 2012 RAV4. So, uh, 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 RAV4. Um, that, so I needed historical cash flows. This business fit because it had been profitable since it started in 2001, had a high barrier to entry given the domain name. And 100+ other similar domain names that they own, like eggcartins, like misspelled, eggcarton.com, uh, 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, uh, and average intelligence, me, could operate if they tried hard enough. I was like, wow, this is incredible. Then I said, I said, I live in Silicon Valley. People here are obsessed with crypto, AI, blah, blah, blah. They would underestimate eggcards.com. Can you give us a sense of the scale of the business?

That's a really good way to frame that.

10 million revenue.

That's a, that's a beautiful way to frame that question. 'Cause 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. Yeah. But you know, I, I'd love to be surprised. You know, 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, of something that prevents me from sharing the numbers publicly. Uh, all I can say is that our revenue is less than $50 million. And I was like, oh, okay, okay. But that you not less than $20. If it was less than $20, I feel like you would've said less than $20. I feel like that, that would be the case. Um, I said, how'd you negotiate the deal? She's like, ah, there's a bunch of context here. She goes, in summary, I harassed the owner until he replied. Then we hit it off. We came up with evaluation together. Then I contacted over 100 banks, most of which told me to fuck off. One of them threw me a bone and agreed to an under— uncollateralized loan. The final deal was 75% bank debt and 25% the seller's note. So she bought this with no money down, like the bank financed it and the seller financed it. She said, before buying the business, I had, uh, 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, uh, she used an accountant to cover her ass, but also paid him out of the deal itself.

This one is 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, uh, while searching for the business, I participated in several research studies just to make money. Uh, like to, while I was doing my search, I went from, I went legally blind from a deodorant study for a bit. So I had to take a break from working, from working until I could read again. Um, she goes, my response rate was awful. I started doing borderline insane 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 grin, and I faxed it out to thousands of businesses a day. Um, 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— before COVID I used to fly to China and 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. Uh, related to India, I almost got killed there. I rejected a shipment from an Indian vendor. 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. Um, she goes, when I bought the business, I considered it an egg company, but now I think of it as specialty packaging. 40% of our business comes from things unentirely 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, et cetera. Anything that requires protection and separation is fair game. Um, anyways, there's one, one more she said, but dude, What's the other one? Is Sarah Moore not my hero? Is she my hero? 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'm in the fucking game, right? Like, that's the feeling I get from her. I've met some people that are like this, that they're sort of like, it's a combination of they kind of don't realize how storyworthy 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 kind of braggy and kind of 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, they're 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 this 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 20. When you— if you Google her, you basically can't find anything. I mean, there's next to nothing on her. There's like 1 or 2 pictures. There's very little. I found 1 article where it says that she's 28 and she, uh, it says she 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— and like, she answered nothing. This woman's amazing. Why can't we find anything about her? There's a lot, there's a lot going on with her. We need to, uh, we commit her to come on.

There's a 30% chance she's a fat guy named Craig. So like, you know, we could be getting catfished here. I wouldn't put it past her, uh, but I'm going to go with the— with what I see. I think, I think she's amazing.