About Seller Notes

Seller Notes is an opinion and analysis publication covering the lower middle market — the arguments, incentives, and quiet conventions that shape how small companies actually change hands. Deals under $50 million don't get written about. Most people doing them learn by doing, and often by making expensive mistakes. We close that gap.

Who publishes this

Seller Notes is written and published by Vik Venkatraman, an entrepreneur and investor who has spent twenty years building, buying, and selling companies in the lower middle market.

Vik is a two-time founder and operator. He co-founded and ran Clothes Horse, a venture-backed software company (digital fit for apparel) that he took through the New York Fashion Tech Lab and eventually exited. He has been an independent sponsor — sourcing, underwriting, and leading multiple acquisitions — and has completed two exits across his operating and investing career.

In other words: he's not a journalist watching this market from a desk. He's in it — the person on the other side of the table in the deals this publication writes about. Seller Notes exists because he's nerdy about how these deals actually work, and because too much of the good stuff about selling a business is stuck behind a broker's paywall, a lawyer's billable hour, or a buyer's poker face.

What we cover

• Interviews with capital — SBA lenders, search funds, family offices, independent sponsors, and private equity on how they price, structure, and diligence deals right now.
• Seller stories — owners who closed, in their own words: what the process cost them, what surprised them, what they'd negotiate harder on.
• Buyer tools — models, diligence request lists, add-back schedules, and LOI templates, published openly so owners can run them on themselves first.
• Service provider insights — M&A attorneys, QoE accountants, brokers, and wealth advisors on where deals break.
• Deal term guidance — earnouts, seller notes, escrow, working capital pegs, reps and warranties, non-competes: what they mean on both sides of the table.
• Valuation, market, and timing — multiples by sector and size, what moves them, and what's changing in credit and buyer appetite.

Who reads us

Owners deciding whether, when, and how to sell. Capital providers who fund these deals. Advisors who work on them. And operators — searchers and first-time buyers learning the mechanics.

Our principles

Plain language. Specific over general. Both sides of the table. No manufactured urgency, no villain of the week. We assume you're intelligent, not that you're already familiar.

We participate in the space we cover, and we say so on every page. Articles are written with AI assistance and reviewed by Vik before publication.