PEF: Buy, Don't Build: The Founder's Playbook for Acquiring Cash-Flowing Businesses

​A 90-minute live session with Tom Shipley and Matt Bodnar.

​Buying a cash-flowing business is one of the most powerful moves a founder can make. Most founders never do it because they don't know how. Tom Shipley and Matt Bodnar have collectively executed dozens of acquisitions and helped hundreds of founders do the same. On August 19, they are bringing that playbook directly to the PEF community.

​Tom is a serial M&A strategist who has executed 16 acquisitions and exits, launched brands generating over $2 billion in revenue, and teaches 7 to 9 figure founders how to scale, plug capability gaps, and engineer premium exits through acquisitions. Matt is a Forbes 30 Under 30 alumni, Goldman Sachs veteran, founder and managing partner of Eidolon Capital, and a private equity sponsor who has scaled businesses across multiple industries with more than a decade of acquisition experience through his family office.

​This is not a sales pitch. It is a working session built around how acquisition actually happens at the operator level.

​The first 60 minutes covers the core framework: how to identify the right target, how to structure a deal without overpaying, how to access outside acquisition capital, and how to use an acquisition to solve a business problem rather than create a new one. The final 30 minutes is live deal work and open Q&A, including a live deal review hot seat open to any PEF member who wants real-time feedback on an active search or deal in progress.

​You will leave with a framework you can apply immediately, a real example of how it gets done, and a live look at what the process looks like when it is happening right now.