# Buy Then Build Alternatives

Buy Then Build has not been revised since 2018, so its market data is pre-COVID and its financing chapter predates the 2023 SBA rule changes. Reviewers also flag the arithmetic: it counts the whole of seller's discretionary earnings as a return, when part of that is the salary you would earn anywhere.

The Buy Then Build review itself: https://searchspheresource.com/resources/buy-then-build

## What Searchers Use Instead

- HBR Guide to Buying a Small Business (Ruback & Yudkoff) (One-Time, https://searchspheresource.com/resources/hbr-guide-buying-small-business): The same on-ramp from the professors who teach the course, at $21.95, with the arithmetic done conservatively rather than hopefully.
- Stanford Search Fund Primer (Free, https://searchspheresource.com/resources/stanford-search-fund-primer): Free and current, and written from what actually happened to hundreds of funds rather than from a thesis about what ought to.
- The Messy Marketplace (book) (One-Time, https://searchspheresource.com/resources/the-messy-marketplace): The seller's half of the same transaction, from a buyer who has reviewed thousands of companies, which is the half a first-timer keeps guessing at.
- Built to Sell (John Warrillow) (One-Time, https://searchspheresource.com/resources/built-to-sell): The transferability lens read backwards: what makes a company able to keep going without the person who built it is the list you are screening for.
- The E-Myth Revisited (Michael E. Gerber) (One-Time, https://searchspheresource.com/resources/the-e-myth-revisited): For the part this book spends least time on, which is the dependence on one person that you inherit on the Monday after closing.

Source: https://searchspheresource.com/alternatives/buy-then-build