How to Acquire a Company for Free

The author's advice is trite. Who would ever go knocking door to door at a business park looking for failing businesses? It often makes sense to aquire businesses in a field in which you're already established, but doing it essentially at random? That's just stupid.

It's also bad advice because it's pitched at a general audience, but it's really a specialist field for people who know how to cut costs and turn around a business (during a major recession btw). It's the business equivalent of learning to surf on a 20' break - astonishing if you pull it off, far more likely to end in tragedy.

One sentence from that paragraph "If you cannot bring fresh ideas, energy, and skill to a business--any business--then it will not succeed." perfectly describes what makes or breaks every entrepreneur (and her/his business). He probably reminded a few people who have "fresh ideas, energy, and skill" that there is another path to being an entrepreneur (taking over a company).

And it's the path taken by quite a few people. Warren Buffett (according to Wikipedia, Berkshire Hathaway - a textile manufacturing company - was in trouble before Buffett) comes to mind. Another example (especially for the last sentence: "Don’t worry about what the business does in terms of revenue right now; look at it as a start--a platform that over time can be morphed into what ever you want.") is Martin Sorrell (WPP, the largest advertising network was, prior to Sorrell, "Wire and Plastic Products plc" and made wire shopping baskets).

PS - Kudos to the OP, great blog that I didn't know of even though I visit and read inc.com quite often.

http://www.platinumequity.com/site/action/home

did this on a much larger scale. They were always doing the deals no one else wanted.

It's a ready-to-go free asset without which I wouldn't be able to bootstrap my startup.

Of course, we don't own the "asset" and as such, the distinction.

Only if you want the leftovers that the insiders have passed over. OP is in a time warp. Anything worth acquiring gets acquired long before in reaches the advertising stage. You'll need a network to find these.