# SMB (small and medium-sized business)

A small or mid-sized business, the size an individual buyer can actually buy.

Nobody agrees on the range, which is why the word does no work until someone says which end they mean: a lender, a [private equity](https://searchspheresource.com/glossary/private-equity) firm and a software vendor each use it for a different size of company. Everything written here uses one checkable band: at least $500,000 of owner earnings, and roughly $1.5M to $5M of purchase price. When you meet the word anywhere else, ask for the number behind it before you agree to anything, because a broker and a bank using the same three letters can be describing businesses ten times apart in size.

In numbers: A business at $600,000 of [SDE](https://searchspheresource.com/glossary/sde) and a $1.9M asking price is SMB to every speaker. A company at $40M of revenue is SMB to a software vendor and [lower middle market](https://searchspheresource.com/glossary/lower-middle-market) to a banker, which is why the word needs a number beside it.

Source: https://searchspheresource.com/glossary/smb
Not dated: A definition is editorial: what a term means, why it matters, and an example. None of it reads a source that can go stale, so there is no date to take and a stamped one would be the build time wearing a costume.

Site index for machines: https://searchspheresource.com/llms.txt