Barrel Holdings

Not Your Usual Buyers

As long-time operators of agency businesses, we understand the daily challenges of the agency owner.

We built Barrel Holdings to help our agency leaders focus on closing deals, building a great team, and delivering for clients. We handle finance ops, various admin and legal tasks, and provide supplemental support on sales, marketing, and talent acquisition. We also provide M&A support for our agencies looking to grow through acquisitions.

We aim to help all of our portfolio agencies achieve scale and have the opportunity to exit at favorable multiples while sharing significant upside with our agency leaders.

We are interested in acquiring two types of agencies:

1. Distressed agencies with agency owners who are looking to transition out of the business to explore new career opportunities.

• $500k to $3 million in annual revenue
• Financially challenged: low margins, running break-even or cash flow negative, balance sheet issues  
• Preference for agencies focused on design/UX, web development, conversion rate optimization (CRO), and digital marketing (SEO, paid media, influencer); especially interested in agencies with these focuses: HubSpot CRM implementation, Amazon, Shopify, WordPress, and Webflow
• Seller is not interested in running the business & wants to move on ASAP; we will hire and appoint a new agency leader to run the business
• Some degree of organic lead volume (more than 3-4/month), strong case studies/work portfolio, and a team capable to deliver work to clients reliably

2. Profitable agencies with a strong growth trajectory.

• $1 million to $5 million in annual revenue
• 15-20% EBITDA margins
• Recurring revenue base of at least 50%
• Agency owner(s) are excited at prospect of joining a holding company to continue scaling their agency with additional support and resources.
• Strong positioning and proven expertise in an industry (vertical) and/or service offering (horizontal); especially interested in agencies with these focuses: HubSpot CRM implementation, Amazon, Shopify, WordPress, and Webflow
• Robust organic deal flow (5-10 leads per month), a well-designed sales process, and basic marketing activities

Depending on the agency's qualities and synergies with our portfolio agencies, we may bring the agency in as a standalone brand or seek to merge/tuck in to an existing agency.
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We typically fund our deals with our own capital and lenders, but in certain cases, we may bring in 3rd party investors to join us in an acquisition.

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