# Barrel Holdings

> Barrel Holdings is a holding company that acquires, manages, and launches specialized digital agencies. Co-founded by Peter Kang and Sei-Wook Kim, the firm provides operational excellence, financial discipline, and shared infrastructure (finance, legal, HR, AI enablement, growth playbooks, leadership development) to a portfolio of independent agency brands.

## What Barrel Holdings does

- Acquires profitable specialized digital agencies and smaller tuck-in agencies
- Provides shared back-office and growth support to portfolio agencies while preserving each agency's brand, clients, and autonomy
- Builds a pipeline of vetted leadership talent for current and future agencies
- Operates a Scout program that pays commissions for introductions that lead to engagements, hires, or acquisitions

## Acquisition criteria

**1. Profitable Specialized Agencies**
- $500K to $1.5M in EBITDA, ideally $4M+ in revenue
- Niche focus: vertical (home services, CPG, deep tech), platform (Shopify, HubSpot, WordPress), or technical specialty (brand, design, web, email, CRO, analytics, SEO)
- Strong non-founder leadership / executive team
- Revenue and profit growth over the past 3 years

**2. Smaller Agencies (Tuck-in / Bolt-on)**
- Sub $2M in revenue
- Seller open to transitioning out or taking a non-CEO role within a portfolio agency

Barrel Holdings typically targets full or majority buy-outs but is open to minority stakes in rare cases.

## Portfolio agencies

- **Barrel** — CPG Commerce & Shopify (https://www.barrelny.com/)
- **BX Studio** — B2B Websites & Marketing (https://bx.studio/)
- **Matyx** — Home Services Digital Marketing (https://matyx.com/)
- **Prima Mode** — Health & Beauty Amazon (https://www.primamodeagency.com/)
- **AO2** — Amazon and Retail Media (https://www.ao2management.com/)
- **Vaulted Oak** — Web Development & Support (https://vaulted-oak.com/)

## Leadership

- **Peter Kang** — Co-founder & Chairman. Co-founded Barrel after a stint in investment banking and ran the agency for 18 years. Author of *The Holdco Guide: How Entrepreneurs Structure and Build a Holding Company That Lasts* (https://www.holdcoguide.com/). Writes on LinkedIn and at peterkang.com.
- **Sei-Wook Kim** — Co-founder & Vice Chairman. Co-founded Barrel at Columbia University as a self-taught coder. Former COO & President of Barrel. Leads finance, legal, and HR support for portfolio agencies.

## Resources

- **AgencyHabits** (https://www.agencyhabits.com/) — articles, podcast, newsletter, tools, and monthly knowledge-share sessions for agency operators, drawn from the Barrel Holdings portfolio.
- **The Barrel Holdings Origin Story** (podcast) — https://sites.libsyn.com/579845/site/the-barrel-holdings-origin-story-building-a-portfolio-of-agencies

## Key pages

- [Home](https://barrel-holdings.com/) — Overview, portfolio, who we are
- [Meet Our Leadership Team](https://barrel-holdings.com/meet-our-leadership-team/) — Peter Kang and Sei-Wook Kim bios
- [Sell Your Agency Business](https://barrel-holdings.com/sell-your-agency-business/) — Acquisition criteria and process
- [Leadership Talent Pipeline](https://barrel-holdings.com/leadership-talent-pipeline/) — For prospective agency leaders
- [Scout Program](https://barrel-holdings.com/barrel-holdings-scout-program/) — Commission-based referral program
- [Recruiter (Job Opening)](https://barrel-holdings.com/jobs/recruiter/) — Holdco-level Recruiter role: build a long-term bench of agency talent, fill internal hires across operations/finance/M&A, and support portfolio agencies on hires (commission-free)

## Contact

- Email: hi@barrel-holdings.com
- Address: 6 W 18th Street, 12th Floor, New York, NY 10011