Sarah Moore: The Background

🐣 Sarah Moore wasn’t your typical Ivy-League kid with a financial cushion. She grew up in a tough environment, shuffling between homes with absent parents and a reputation as the “problem child.” But two families, the Brackens and the Greens, saw potential where others saw trouble. 

🐣 The Brackens offered her stability, opening her eyes to life’s fundamentals. Meanwhile, the Greens, regulars at a diner where Sarah worked, offered to finance her education. With their support, Sarah turned her life around, hustling through high school, making it into Northeastern, and later Harvard Business School.

🐣 She was determined to buy a business. She had no cash, no experience, and her biggest asset was her car, a RAV4.

The Acquisition of EggCartons.com

🐣 Sarah spent a year sifting through over 20,000 businesses before landing on EggCartons.com. Her criteria were specific: a business with strong historical cash flows that she could pitch as “collateral” for a loan. She wanted full ownership without putting down any capital, so debt financing was her only option.

🐣 Here’s the crazy part, she started a private equity firm - just for herself - with no actual office (her “headquarters” was her undergrad library) and no fund. Over 50 unpaid interns, recruited through Craigslist, helped her reach out to over 400,000 private companies over 1.5 years.

🐣 She eventually found EggCartons.com, a niche powerhouse in speciality packaging. The business wasn’t just about egg cartons; it was an SEO juggernaut, holding not just the eggcartons.com domain but also over 100 similar domains like eggcartin.com and eggcarton.com, creating a fortress of online search dominance. It was profitable since its founding in 2001, had high customer retention, and served an evergreen market with a massive barrier to entry due to the machinery needed for the product.

The Deal Structure

🐣 The actual deal to buy EggCartons.com was a feat of persistence. Sarah reached out repeatedly to the owner, and after finally getting a response, they hit it off and negotiated a valuation together. She then cold-called over 100 banks until one agreed to give her an uncollateralised loan.

The deal breakdown:

• 75% financed by bank debt

• 25% covered by a seller’s note

🐣 The sellers note is the true genius play. It serves two purposes; 1. Sarah paid less and had to find less capital 2. The bank needed some kind of reassurance that this business is stable enough to use the business itself as collateral. A sellers note is when the seller agrees to receive a portion of the sale as a debt payment. So this proved to the bank that the seller thought the business was stable enough to agree to a sellers note in the first place. 

🐣 To ensure she was on solid ground, Sarah hired an accountant to double-check her audit work, rolling his fees into the loan itself. In the end, she got the business with zero cash down!

Recommendation 🌟

The Weird and Wonderful Parts of the Hustle

Sarah’s journey to finding and growing this business is truly wacky:

🐣 Faxed Photos: To get noticed by business owners, she sent out photos of herself in a sweatshirt that said “I want to buy your business” to thousands of companies. Even today, she runs into people who recognise her from those faxes.

🐣 Fake Library IDs: Since she was operating out of her university library, and most of her interns weren’t students there, she created fake IDs so her interns could get access.

🐣 Research Studies for Cash: While searching for a business, Sarah participated in research studies to make ends meet. In one study, she temporarily lost her vision from a deodorant test and had to pause her work.

🐣 India Trip Gone Wrong: While inspecting egg cartons on a solo trip to India, she rejected a shipment from a Northern Indian vendor. This caused such an uproar that the vendor and his family chased her, forcing her hotel to hide her under “incognito mode” for safety. She narrowly escaped, thanks to her driver.

🐣 Product Expansion via Specialty Packaging: Sarah quickly realised that EggCartons.com was bigger than eggs, it was about protection and separation. Around 40% of the business now comes from non-egg items. They’ve secured major contracts with companies like Boeing, SpaceX, Disney, Crayola, EOS, and Madison Square Garden.

Laying Out The Figures 💵

The business isn’t publicly traded, so there’s no official valuation or revenue figure beyond hints. But the scale Sarah’s hinted at includes:

🐣 Annual Revenue: Estimated at $20M+.
🐣 Funding: 100% debt-funded, no cash out of pocket
🐣 Team Size: Less than 10 employees, operating lean and agile.

What’s the cherry on top? 🍒

Final thoughts 💭

This is sick. I read about a butt-tone of businesses now, trying to find the diamonds in the pile of “we’re Tesla for x”. This one stood out like a sore thumb. How many other businesses can you point to with a story like this?

Sarah effectively bought a monopoly with $0 down.

Sarah’s particular brand of “it factor” is her ability to manipulate any situation to work for her. No money? Turned herself into a science experiment, and relentlessly chased banks. No employees? Craigslist. No office? Fake IDs in the library. Not enough people who need egg cartons? Put other stuff in them and sell them far and wide.

Pure. Magic.

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