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Baton, a marketplace for buying and selling small businesses, has publicly posted valuations and local competitor rankings for two million small businesses across the country: a bid to do for Main Street what Zillow did for the housing market a decade ago.<\/p>\n
The launch, called Business Profiles, comes from a company literally built by a former Zillow executive. Chat Joglekar, Baton\u2019s co-founder and CEO, spent years at Zillow before starting Baton, and he\u2019s explicit that he\u2019s running the same playbook: publish a free, public number, and let curiosity do the rest.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur biggest competitor isn\u2019t someone else trying to sell small businesses,\u201d Joglekar said. \u201cIt\u2019s the small business owner who hasn\u2019t considered selling and thinks the only option is to shut their business down.\u201d<\/p>\n
In an interview with Fortune, Joglekar argued the real obstacle isn\u2019t rival marketplaces or traditional brokers, it\u2019s that most owners don\u2019t know Baton exists at all. \u201cAwareness is our biggest competition, not other competitors,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s almost frustrating that millions of small business owners still aren\u2019t aware of us. That\u2019s why we\u2019re so excited about Business Profiles.\u201d<\/p>\n
The stakes behind that framing are large. Roughly 41% of the country\u2019s small businesses are owned by baby boomers, or about 2.3 million companies, employing more than 25 million people and holding an estimated $10 trillion in assets. More than half of those owners have no documented plan for what happens next. McKinsey projects some six million small-business transitions are coming by 2035, representing up to $5 trillion in enterprise value. The firm\u2019s data found that fewer than one in three owners has an exit plan, and fewer than one in 10 can name their company\u2019s value within 10% of what it\u2019s actually worth.<\/p>\n
McKinsey\u2019s Institute for Economic Mobility found that of the roughly 510,000 small and midsize businesses that exited the market in 2022, 92% simply closed, compared with just 5% that were sold and 3% that transferred to new owners, often within a family. That\u2019s the number Joglekar has in mind when he frames Baton\u2019s real rival. \u201cThe competition is kind of the 92% of people that just shut their business down,\u201d he said, a reframing that turns a demographic crisis into a market opportunity, and positions Baton not against brokers or rival marketplaces but against inertia itself.<\/p>\n
Baton says it has data to close the gap: millions of data points on small businesses, including estimated revenue, team size and customer satisfaction, plus tens of thousands of comparable sales, all folded into a public valuation and a local competitive stack rank. Type in a business name, and an owner can see roughly what it\u2019s worth and how it stacks up against the shop down the street, all before they\u2019ve ever talked to Baton, listed anything, or paid a cent.<\/p>\n
\u201cOver the past five years, we\u2019ve built the most sophisticated database of small business valuations in America,\u201d Joglekar said, \u201cand we\u2019re hopeful that by revealing this data we can get small business owners to start thinking about their company as a valuable asset.\u201d<\/p>\n
The free valuations are a funnel, not the whole business. If an owner decides to sell, Baton runs the process for a monthly retainer and a success fee. The company has operated for nearly five years, has worked on hundreds of sales, and is now closing seven deals a week\u2014a notable jump from the roughly 2,000 valuations and 100 total sales Baton had reported just months earlier, a gap worth clarifying directly with the company.<\/p>\n
To be sure, small businesses are a messier asset than houses. There\u2019s no MLS, no standardized square footage, no comparable-sale database anyone can query for free. Baton\u2019s valuations lean on inputs like PPP loan data and other public records\u2014not an owner\u2019s actual financials, which the company only incorporates if and when someone claims their listing and engages. That means the first number two million owners see may be closer to a guess than an appraisal, generated for businesses that never asked to be valued in public.<\/p>\n
For its part, Zillow discloses a median error rate of roughly 2% for homes currently on the market\u2014but that number climbs to around 7% for homes that aren\u2019t listed, and the company\u2019s own fine print says only 99% of Zestimates land within 20% of the actual sale price.<\/p>\n
Baton\u2019s counter is that a rough number beats no number. The company points to owners who had no idea what they were sitting on\u2014sellers who came in through an early, low-commitment version of this product, tested buyer interest, and ended up with real offers.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf every small business in America understood their valuation, I believe the U.S. would be a better place,\u201d Joglekar told Fortune. \u201cIt\u2019s such a key bit of information that\u2019s locked away and almost hidden from small business owners, even as they grow \u2026 most of the supply is ill-equipped for that discussion. We\u2019re just trying to equip them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Whether the new public valuations hold up as more of that data becomes visible\u2014or whether Baton ends up relitigating the same accuracy debate Zillow has fought for years\u2014is the test Business Profiles is now setting up for itself, in full public view, two million times over.<\/p>\n
#Exclusive #great #boomer #business #handover #Zestimate<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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