Robert Graham

Buying and growing great American businesses at SIG Partners (SIG) | Tweets on Business Acquisition, Entrepreneurship and Buying SMBs

[Robert Graham @Robert_E_Graham]

The 2023 Self-Funded Search Study is now available for download and our podcast on Acquiring Minds is live. 72 pages of insightful content and never before known stats on the self-funded path of ETA:

Download the study:
https://t.co/lt9Qnoz85R

Podcast:
https://t.co/dGxD6iP8kJ

[Robert Graham @Robert_E_Graham]

@FilthyMcN @SBA_Matthias This is why my mind is boggled

[Robert Graham @Robert_E_Graham]

@FranchiseMnA We did a deal just like this in 2022. No financials really. In 2025 it will do 3x the EBITDA it did TTM as of closing.

Send this deal my way please.

[Robert Graham @Robert_E_Graham]

@sbabmarks @JordanPCarter Thank you for joining us Bruce!

[Robert Graham @Robert_E_Graham]

Two things:

1. No entrepreneur using a “search fund” has ever taken an SBA loan. The investment methodology and that program are diametrically opposed.

2. “Step up” is a horrible metric for evaluating preferred equity investments in self-funded search deals. It ignores purchase multiple, capex, CEO salary, deal/industry risks, expected growth, etc. I could go on and on. The term and concept itself within the context of preferred equity makes no sense (unlike in VC).

[Robert Graham @Robert_E_Graham]

@SFSAssociation Looking forward to this!

[Self-Funded Search Association @SFSAssociation]

We're excited to announce the 3rd Annual Self-Funded Search Conference over November 7-9, 2025, at Old Parkland in Dallas. Seats are limited. Applications are now live here: https://t.co/edryXzKxu0

Join us for the premier gathering of self-funded search experts and peers.

[Robert Graham @Robert_E_Graham]

@sigpartners Can't wait for another great conference!

[Robert Graham @Robert_E_Graham]

@SBA_Kelly @POTUS Please increase the 7(a) program to $10M! It’s past time to adjust for inflation. It will spur the transition of small business to the next generation and unleash entrepreneurial activity.

[Robert Graham @Robert_E_Graham]

@girdley Weak. Air tag.

[Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸 @pmarca]

Why AI Won't Cause Unemployment

Marc Andreessen
Reposted Jan 24, 2025

"In retrospect, I wish I had known more about the hazards and difficulties of [running] a business." -- George McGovern

Fears about new technology replacing human labor and causing overall unemployment have raged across industrialized societies for hundreds of years, despite a nearly continual rise in both jobs and wages in capitalist economies. The jobs apocalypse is always right around the corner; just ask the Luddites.

We had two such anti-technology jobs moral panics in the last 20 years — “outsourcing” enabled by the Internet in the 2000’s, and “robots” in the 2010’s. The result was the best national and global economy in human history in pre-COVID 2019, with the most jobs at the highest wages ever.

Now we’re heading into the third such panic of the new century with AI, coupled with a continuous drumbeat of demand for Communist-inspired Universal Basic Income. “This time is different; AI is different,” they say, but is it?

Normally I would make the standard arguments against technologically-driven unemployment — see good summaries by Henry Hazlitt (chapter 7) and Frédéric Bastiat (his metaphor directly relevant to AI). And I will come back and make those arguments soon. But I don’t even think the standand arguments are needed, since another problem will block the progress of AI across most of the economy first.

Which is: AI is already illegal for most of the economy, and will be for virtually all of the economy.

How do I know that? Because technology is already illegal in most of the economy, and that is becoming steadily more true over time.

How do I know that? Because, [see chart].

This chart shows price changes, adjusted for inflation, across a dozen major sectors of the economy.

As you can see, we actually live in two different economies.

The lines in blue are the sectors where technological innovation is allowed to push down prices while increasing quality. The lines in red are the sectors where technological innovation is not permitted to push down prices; in fact, the prices of education, health care, and housing as well as anything provided or controlled by the government are going to the moon, even as those sectors are technologically stagnant.

We are heading into a world where a flat screen TV that covers your entire wall costs $100, and a four year college degree costs $1 million, and nobody has anything even resembling a proposal on how to systemically fix this.

Why? The sectors in red are heavily regulated and controlled and bottlenecked by the government and by those industries themselves. Those industries are monopolies, oligopolies, and cartels, with extensive formal government regulation as well as regulatory capture, price fixing, Soviet style price setting, occupational licensing, and every other barrier to improvement and change you can possibly imagine. Technological innovation in those sectors is virtually forbidden now.

Whereas the sectors in blue are less regulated, technology whips through them, pushing down prices and raising quality every year.

Note the emotional loading of the interplay of production and consumption here. What do we get mad about? With our consumer hat on, we get mad about price increases — the red sectors. With our producer hat on, we get mad about technological disruption — the blue sectors. Well, pick one; as this chart shows, you can’t have your cake and eat it too.

Now think about what happens over time. The prices of regulated, non-technological products rise; the prices of less regulated, technologically-powered products fall. Which eats the economy? The regulated sectors continuously grow as a percentage of GDP; the less regulated sectors shrink. At the limit, 99% of the economy will be the regulated, non-technological sectors, which is precisely where we are headed.

Therefore AI cannot cause overall unemployment to rise, even if the Luddite arguments are right this time. AI is simply already illegal across most of the economy, soon to be virtually all of the economy.

[Robert Graham @Robert_E_Graham]

@Empty_America “Your life will rapidly change” - correct, once you start practicing law it will rapidly become miserable

[Robert Graham @Robert_E_Graham]

@sigpartners Almost to 30!

[Robert Graham @Robert_E_Graham]

@STLChrisH Can you stop talking about things that you don’t have any understanding of as if you do?

[Robert Graham @Robert_E_Graham]

@realEstateTrent Were you interviewing Kamala Harris?

[Robert Graham @Robert_E_Graham]

@Slackwatercap He’s unemployed and has a terrible grasp of economics. What did you expect?

[Robert Graham @Robert_E_Graham]

@sigpartners Can't wait

[Robert Graham @Robert_E_Graham]

@SFSAssociation Should be great.

[Self-Funded Search Association @SFSAssociation]

Join SIG Partners tomorrow, Wednesday, October 16th, for a happy hour at the Fairmont Dallas immediately following the McGuireWoods Independent Sponsor Conference