Profitable and stable
Several years of earnings, recurring customers, and no single client that holds the business hostage.
Check three years of financials and customer concentration.
Buy a business.
Automate it. Sell it.
Acquire a profitable business that still runs on people. Put AI agents to work with our automation providers. Then bring it back to market as an autonomous business, on our platform.
Once the business is yours, we help you automate it.
The deal, in three numbers
Illustrative scenarioBuy on today’s profit. Automate. Sell on the result.
Exit multiple
1.8× entry, aiming for an 80% Autonomy Score
Profit change
EBITDA after automation, in a range of +20 to +50%
For reference, the middle half of sold small software businesses traded at 2.4–4.0× SDE (BizBuySell, United States, 2021–2025).
Gain before fees and taxes+$630,000
Annual profit (EBITDA) × multiple, with automation cost added to the price paid. Profit after automation is a fixed +30%, net of AI and software costs, in a range of +20 to +50%. It is an assumption, not a forecast. The entry multiple is an example. The exit multiple is 1.8× the entry multiple, our estimate for a business brought to an 80% Autonomy Score; it is not an established market result, and the actual multiple depends on the business and its Autonomy Score. Holding-period cash flow, financing, fees and taxes are excluded.
Three moves.
One playbook.
The value is in the gap between how a business runs when you buy it and how it runs when you sell it.
- 01 / BUY
Buy on today’s operations.
Find a profitable business whose work still depends on people. Its price reflects how it runs today: owner time, staff costs, and manual processes.
- 02 / AUTOMATE
Put agents on the repeatable work.
Our automation providers take on sales follow-up, support, and back-office work, with human approvals and fallbacks. Measure owner hours and net savings as you go.
- 03 / SELL
Sell on the operating record.
List it on our marketplace as an autonomous business, with documented workflows, recorded owner hours, and an Autonomy Score buyers can inspect.
The roll-up equation
Buy on operations today → automate the work → sell on the record.
Not every business
is worth automating.
The best candidates are already good businesses. Automation should improve how they run, not rescue them.
Repetitive, rules-based work
Quoting, onboarding, support, scheduling, invoicing: work that follows a process an agent can learn.
Check how many hours go to tasks with a clear procedure.
Dependent on its owner
The owner is the bottleneck. That’s the discount you buy at, and the work automation can take over.
Check what stops when the owner is away for a week.
Tools already in software
A CRM, a helpdesk, accounting software. Agents work best where the data is digital and exportable.
Check the tool stack, data access, and API availability.
With you from
the search to the sale.
You bring the capital and the decisions. We help with the parts that take specialist knowledge. Scope and any fees are agreed before work begins.
01 / Before you buy
Know what to look for.
We help you turn your budget, skills, and time into acquisition criteria, then assess candidates for automation potential and owner dependence.
- Your criteria
- Sector, deal size, and how hands-on you want to be.
- Automation potential
- Which work can move to agents, and what stays with people.
02 / After you buy
Automate it with the right provider.
We introduce you to automation providers in our network, scoped around the work that matters for your exit.
- Focused projects
- Start with a workflow that has a clear baseline and outcome.
- Proof as you go
- Owner hours, net savings, and reliability, recorded over time.
03 / When you sell
Bring it back to market.
List the business on Autonomous Buyout, with the handover documented and buyers who can run what they acquire.
- Listing and Autonomy Score
- Operations, owner involvement, and financials, presented together.
- Buyer matching
- Buyers with the budget, skills, and time to take it on.
Before you
buy to automate.
The questions to ask before your first acquisition.
How much higher is the exit multiple?
We aim to bring each business to an Autonomy Score of 80%. At that level, we multiply the usual exit multiple by 1.8×, because a business that runs without its owner can be priced closer to a managed business. This is our estimate, not a guarantee or a published benchmark. The actual multiple depends on the business and its Autonomy Score. Buyers still assess growth, profitability, concentration, technology risk, and market conditions, and automation projects can cost more or deliver less than planned.
What exactly is a roll-up?
Traditionally, buying several businesses in a sector and running them with shared systems. Here, the shared system is automation: the same playbook applied to each business you buy. You can start with one acquisition and decide whether to repeat it.
Where do the businesses to buy come from?
Our marketplace lists businesses already run by AI. For a business to automate, we help you define your criteria and assess candidates, including ones you find through brokers, other marketplaces, or your own network. We don’t promise deal flow.
How long between buying and selling?
Long enough to show a stable record. Buyers want months of evidence after automation: owner hours, costs, service quality, and how failures were handled. Plan for the holding period, and for the work of running the business during it.
Do I need technical skills?
Not to start. Providers build and maintain the workflows. You still own the outcome: you set priorities, approve important decisions, and need a plan for when a system fails. Tell us in your brief whether you’ll run the business yourself or hire an operator.
Tell us what
you want to buy.
Share your budget, sectors, and how you’ll run the business. We’ll review your brief, reply by email, and help you work out what to look for.
- 01We read your brief.
- 02We reply with questions and a view on fit.
- 03We help you define and assess targets.