By 2035, about six million American small businesses will change owners as their founders retire. More than a million of them are good enough to buy, and together they are worth up to $5 trillion (according to McKinsey).
Most of them sell cheap. And plenty of them still run on phone calls, paper folders and spreadsheets.
What changed? AI can now do the part of the work that can be checked. At Crete, a network of more than 30 accounting firms backed by Thrive Holdings, a tax system built with OpenAI prepared 7,000 returns this season and saved accountants about a third of their prep time.
📚 By the end of this guide you’ll have a ranked list of industries, a list of owners to call, a valuation, a map of every hour of work inside the firm, a redesigned process and the first agents running next to the team. Along the way you’ll get 10 Claude skills.
Inside you will find:
How to Pick an Industry Worth RenovatingScore niches on what makes a small business last and on how much of its work AI can already do.How to Find Owners Ready to Sell Before a Broker DoesBuild a list of firms that never hit the market and write the first letter to the owner.How to Map the Firm’s Work Before You Make an OfferClaude estimates every process from the outside, then rebuilds it with the seller’s data and shows where the hours go.How to Simulate the Firm Rebuilt With AI Before You Own ItRedesign the work, test the agents on the firm’s past jobs and see what the business earns after the renovation.How to Decide Whether to Buy and What to PayRecast the numbers, investigate the firm from the outside and get a buy memo with your offer and your walk-away price.
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