Owners & operators
See it like an outsider
Understand what your business is worth, where value quietly leaks, and what a buyer or lender would notice first.
Field notes on business value · by Jared Cohen
Practical lessons on M&A, investing, and operations — for owners, investors, and the next generation of entrepreneurs who want to understand what actually makes a business durable, profitable, and worth more over time.
Written by an M&A and strategic finance professional who has helped execute 100+ acquisitions at a private equity–backed services company, and invests personally across real estate, public equities, angel investments, and small businesses.
Owners & operators
Understand what your business is worth, where value quietly leaks, and what a buyer or lender would notice first.
Builders & buyers
Learn to recognize a durable, profitable, well-run business before you spend years — or dollars — on one.
Investors & the curious
See the financial and operational levers that separate a great business from a merely busy one.
Where the name comes from
In every acquisition, before any money changes hands, the buyer pays for a quality of earnings report — a hard look beneath the headline numbers to judge whether the profits are real, durable, and repeatable. Quality of Business brings that same scrutiny to everything that makes a company worth owning: how it makes money, how much it leans on any one person, how it holds up under pressure, and how easily it could pass to someone else.
That lens is useful long before any sale — whether you run a business today, want to start or buy one, invest in them, or are simply building a career around them. Each issue takes a single idea and explains it in plain language, from someone who has sat on the buyer's side of the table more than a hundred times. No jargon, no hype — just how value actually gets created.
Five recurring themes
What makes a business genuinely valuable — and the things that quietly undermine it.
The handful of metrics that tell you how a business is really doing — whether you run it, fund it, or work inside it.
How businesses become more profitable, less dependent on any one person, and worth more over time.
What public companies, real estate, and investing reveal about durable advantage and smart capital.
How businesses get bought, sold, and financed — for anyone curious about the path to ownership.
On the way
…and the difference between a good job and a sellable business, SDE vs. EBITDA, customer concentration, and how to prepare a business 24 months before a sale.
Who's writing
I write about business value from the perspective of an M&A operator and investor. I've helped execute 100+ acquisitions at a private equity–backed services company, and outside of work I invest across real estate, public equities, angel investments, and small businesses.
My goal is simple: make the lessons of M&A, investing, and operations genuinely useful to the people building real businesses.
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