How the desk underwrites.
Underwritten exists to find the few businesses worth owning and show the work. Every edition starts with the brokers' listings and ends with five verdicts. Between the two sits one method, applied the same way to every business, and shown in full to the readers who want it.
Found
1,000 listings this edition, from brokers' public sites, asking €300k or less with a stated financial figure. No submissions, no paid placement.
Filtered
413 passed the screen. Rules cut what cannot be bought as an operating business: franchise resales of a seat, real estate dressed as a business, startups, equipment sales, listings whose language says sold, numbers that cannot be true for the trade.
Checked
7 researched to the end. Round by round, each listing is read against a playbook of checks for its trade; each answer is traced to a source or marked “could not establish”. A finding without a source is not a finding.
Priced
Every survivor is rebuilt three times: the seller's figures as stated, our normalized view as a range, and the ownership economics: what you make if you run it, and what is left after a manager is paid. Then the buyer's cheque, the debt and the year-one cover.
Decided
5 published with a verdict. The verdict answers on the conservative end of every band. The rest are killed, and we say why. Underwritten decides. Not a person, not a feed: a method.
The absence is the discipline.
The name is the one thing that lets a reader act without paying for the work, so it is the one thing the free file withholds. Everything that shows the method stays open: the figures, the ranges, the verdict and the count of conditions. Members see the name, the address and the original listing, and every figure they see is the same figure the free reader saw.
They coexist. One never replaces another.
What is the listing marketing?
The seller's revenue and earnings, with the basis the listing states: SDE, EBITDA, or “as listed” when it does not say. Labelled Seller Provided. Useful, never a warning, never the answer.
What does it appear to produce?
Our rebuild of the cost structure from evidence, not solved backwards to the seller's figure. Where it rests on sector defaults it is a range. It may land above the seller's claim; normalization is not a synonym for conservatism.
What could you make?
The same business, two ways. If you run it: the owner's seat, the owner's week. If someone else runs it: the owner's actual tasks priced as replacement roles, subtracted, and a few hours of oversight left.
A range never collapses to its best case.
Showing the strongest number we actually have is confidence. Showing the strongest end of a band as if it were a point is false precision wearing confidence's clothes. Wherever a figure derives from a ranged input, it is published as a range, or it leads with the conservative end and says so. The band mark under a figure is that promise made visible.
A verdict derived from a band answers on the conservative end. A band that runs from below zero to well above it does not “support a manager”; it straddles the question, and the page says exactly that.
Three words the desk can say.
Nothing found that changes the price or the decision. Ordinary diligence still applies.
Material concerns exist that must be closed before an offer is credible. We count them in the free tier and name them for members, each with what would soften it.
A critical red flag, or a price the economics cannot carry on the conservative case. We publish these too; a killed deal teaches as much as a featured one.
Verdicts are price-curable where the facts allow: a “do not offer” at the asking price may say what price would change the word.
Nothing is featured unless it passes six gates.
Identity
The business is resolved to a name and an address with stated confidence, or the deal is capped and labelled “anonymous by construction”.
Consistency
Every figure reconciles: if a manager costs $X anywhere in the file, earnings after a manager equal earnings before, less $X, everywhere.
Bands
No scalar sits on the flattering end of its own band. An automated audit walks the whole record before publication.
Provenance
Every figure carries its class: seller, our estimate, computed, market. Seller figures are never shown without their basis label; “as listed” is the smallest allowed.
Conditions written
A verdict with conditions ships with the conditions and their mitigants, or it does not ship.
Liveness
At publication the original listing is checked for sold, under-contract or removed language. A weekly product cannot feature a business that sold in August.
The words the files use.
- SDE
- Seller's discretionary earnings: profit before the owner's pay, interest, tax, depreciation and one-offs. Assumes the owner works unpaid.
- EBITDA
- Earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation. In a listing it does not prove the owner's labour is expensed; we check.
- Earns after a manager
- Normalized earnings less the market cost of the roles the owner performs. The figure a passive owner would actually keep.
- Replacement cost
- The priced roles that replace the owner. A single declared figure used identically everywhere in a file.
- Band
- A published range. The mark beneath it is solid at the conservative end. Ranges never collapse.
- Close comps
- Similar listings in the same trade, on asking prices, not completed transactions. We say how many and how thin the set is.
- Asking multiple
- Asking price divided by stated earnings, on one basis only. Compared to the peer median and expressed as a percentile. What each trade asks this year, by the median, is on the market index.
- Buyer cash
- Down payment plus transaction costs plus a working-capital reserve, modelled as an SBA-style purchase.
- DSCR
- Debt service cover: free cash after a manager, one-offs, maintenance capex and working capital, over the year's debt service. Deliberately harsher than a lender's EBITDA cover.
- Identity confidence
- How sure the desk is that the resolved name is the listed business, from the independent signals that matched.
What readers ask first.
What is SDE?
Seller's discretionary earnings: the profit of the business before the owner pays themself, before interest, tax, depreciation and one-off items. It assumes the owner works for free. Most small-business listings state SDE; we label it as the seller's figure and build our own view beside it.
What does “earns after a manager” mean?
What is left after you pay someone at market rate to do the owner's actual job. We list what the owner does (sales, scheduling, the books, the counter), price each role, and subtract. Shown as a range, because our rebuilt cost structure is a band, not a point. If the band crosses zero we say the deal does not pay a manager.
Why no names in the free tier?
The name is the one thing that lets a reader act without paying for the work. Free shows the method: descriptor, metro, the four figures, the ranges, the verdict and the count of conditions. Members get the name, the address, the listing link and the conditions themselves.
Where do the listings come from?
From business brokers' own public sites in the United States, pulled each week. We only consider operating businesses asking €300k or less with a stated financial figure. We do not take submissions, we do not take listings from sellers, and we are not paid to feature anything.
What is Underwritten not?
Not a broker. Not an adviser. Not a marketplace. We hold no stake in any deal, we earn nothing when one closes, and we are paid by readers only. That is the whole edge: we can make an attractive deal look attractive and publish its weakness in the same breath. Nothing here is investment advice.