Acquiring Minds vs Acquisitions Anonymous
Which acquisition podcast deserves your commute?
Acquiring Minds
Interview podcast (and growing media platform) about buying, owning, and operating small businesses — roughly 470 in-depth acquisition stories since 2021, publishing about twice a week.
Free · Podcast free; platform also runs webinars and a community (pricing for extras not separately verified).
- Huge library (~470 episodes) of real acquisition stories with real numbers
- Very active: ~2 episodes/week, with sessions scheduled weeks ahead (verified through Jul 30, 2026)
- Expanded formats — webinars and community — beyond the podcast
- Interview subjects skew toward people whose deals worked — calibrate for survivorship bias
- The platform co-launched its own fund (Minds Capital), so it now has investing interests in the space it covers
Verified Jul 10, 2026 · Full review →
Acquisitions Anonymous
A twice-weekly podcast in which four SMB investors/operators — Michael Girdley, Bill D'Alessandro, Mills Snell, and SBA lender Heather Endresen — break down real business-for-sale listings, discussing valuation, add-backs, red flags, and whether a deal is financeable. A free companion newsletter sends the deals reviewed each week.
Free · Entirely free: 500+ episodes on all major platforms with no paywall or premium tier, and the weekly deal newsletter is free per acquanon.com/newsletter. Monetized via sponsorships (current sponsors listed at acquanon.com/sponsors include Acquisition Lab, BuyAndSellABusiness.com, Plane, and Acquire); sponsorship rates are not published.
- Free and prolific: 500+ episodes, twice-weekly cadence, still publishing as of July 2026
- Breaks down real listings with concrete numbers (SDE, multiples, add-backs) in the $500k–$10M range self-funded searchers actually target
- Co-host Heather Endresen is an active SBA lender (Viso Business Capital), so deals get a genuine lender's-eye view on financeability
- Analysis is based only on public listing teasers, not real financials or CIMs, so conclusions are directional speculation rather than diligence
- Random deal-a-week format means coverage of your specific industry or thesis is hit-or-miss; there is no structured learning path
- Hosts and sponsors have commercial stakes in the ETA ecosystem (an SBA lender co-host, Acquisition Lab as sponsor), so recommendations are not fully disinterested
Verified Jul 10, 2026 · Full review →
Our take
Choose Acquiring Minds for depth on single stories — one buyer, one deal, the full arc — the best calibration for what ownership actually feels like.
Choose Acquisitions Anonymous for deal-tear-down energy: real listings dissected live, which trains your screening eye faster than any checklist.