Acquiring Minds Leaving Wall Street to Buy a $1m Manufacturing Business
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Mar 19, 2026 Brian Anderson, a former hedge fund portfolio manager who bought, scaled, and sold Deco Manufacturing. He shares the pivot from Wall Street to hands-on manufacturing. He discusses buying with little debt, learning every operational role, a costly COVID consolidation, hiring COOs to rebuild operations, and ultimately selling to his COO.
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Model Manufacturing Cashflow With CapEx
- Always normalize cash flow for CapEx and model multi-year reinvestment needs in manufacturing.
- Brian treated CapEx like free cash flow analysis and negotiated purchase price down when legacy machines implied future capex.
Delay Aggressive Leverage Until You Understand The Business
- Avoid heavy leverage at acquisition if you don't yet understand the business; use owner capital and add debt later.
- Brian paid mostly cash with modest seller financing so he could later choose an optimal capital structure after proving performance.
Stress Test Leverage Against Realistic Downside
- When planning leverage, test how much revenue decline the debt can tolerate before cashflow turns negative.
- Use a realistic downside scenario after you've run the business to set safe leverage, not a blanket 10–20% assumption.