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. Profitable agencies with a strong growth trajectory.

• $2+ million in annual revenue (our sweet spot is $3-$6 million)
• SDE of at least $400k or 15%+ EBITDA margins  
• Focus on a niche: vertical, platform, and/or technical specialty (brand, design, web, email, CRO, analytics, SEO)
• Strong non-founder leadership personnel / executive leadership team
• Revenue and profit growth the past 3 years

2. 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
• Focus on a niche: vertical, platform, and/or technical specialty (brand, design, web, email, CRO, analytics, SEO)
• 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 or absorb into an existing agency

We typically aim for a complete or majority buy-out of the owner, but in rare cases, we are open to coming on as a minority shareholder.
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