Acquisitions Anonymous - #1 for business buying, selling and operating - Buying a Viral Cat Video Empire? Think Twice Before You Do

Episode Date: October 7, 2025

A “too-good-to-be-true?” SBA-prequalified cat-content brand with 3.9M Facebook followers, ~$872–$920k revenue and ~95% margins sparks a lively debate on platform risk, AI headwinds, and creative deal structures to de-risk the buy.Business Listing – https://quietlight.com/listings/17899268/Welcome to Acquisitions Anonymous – the #1 podcast for small business M&A. Every week, we break down businesses for sale and talk about buying, operating, and growing them.💰 Sponsored by:Go High Level – The all-in-one sales and marketing platform built for agencies and entrepreneurs. Automate, manage, and grow your business at https://www.gohighlevel.comAcquisition Lab – Your fast-track to business ownership. Get hands-on support, world-class resources, and join a top-tier community of acquisition entrepreneurs. Schedule your free consultation at https://www.acquisitionlab.com and mention Acquisitions Anonymous!The crew dissects a Quiet Light listing for a 15-year-old cat-content platform boasting 3.9M Facebook followers, ~2.2M monthly pageviews, and reported RPMs in the $22–$30+ range. The broker materials (as read aloud) claim ~$872k–$920k in revenue, ~$821k in net income (~94–95% margins), asking ~$2.3M (~2.8x).Key Highlights:- Asking ~$2.3M (~2.8x) on ~$872k–$920k revenue and ~$821k net (~94–95% margins).- Audience/traffic: 3.9M FB followers, ~2.2M monthly pageviews; RPM ~$22–$30+.- Under-monetized: heavy banner ads, little/no affiliate, 15k newsletter @ ~29% OR.- Financing reality: SBA “pre-qualified” but lenders wary of platform risk/volatility.- Deal ideas: $500–$800k equity + seller carry; or ~$821k upfront + 50/50 rev share until seller hits ask.Subscribe to weekly our Newsletter and get curated deals in your inboxAdvertise with us by clicking here Do you love Acquanon and want to see our smiling faces? Subscribe to our Youtube channel. Do you enjoy our content? Rate our show! Follow us on Twitter @acquanon Learnings about small business acquisitions and operations. For inquiries or suggestions, email us at [e-mail]

Welcome back, everybody, to another episode of Acquisitions Anonymous. Mills Snell, one of your co-hosts, me, Bill, Heather, are joined by Travis from Capital Pat today. And we talk about a business that totally exceeded my expectations. It is a SEO business that focuses on niche cat content has 95% net margins. It's incredible. The business does over $800,000 in revenue, over $800,000 in net income. It's staggering.

But Travis is an amazing guest today. He brings all kinds of really helpful information about this space. We talk about the layers of monetization, what's helpful in the value chain and what's not. They lead with a ton of SBA pre-qualified headers, and we talk about the nuances of that. It's the most entertaining conversation that we've had, I think, in a long time. It's a really, really interesting deal. We talk about the scenarios where it may and may not work. I hope you enjoy the episode.

Stick around after a couple. quick word from our sponsors. All right. What a crew today. We've got Travis from CapitalPad as well as Mills and Heather. What's up, everyone? How is it going? I, before you guys got on, it was just me and Heather talking. And I was like, we have a deal that is just salacious. It is so interesting. And it like has all the buzzwords. But I didn't know if Bill was going to be able to talk about it, but we can because it's not e-commerce.

We can't. Well, not only can I talk about it. And I, so Mills says, Bill, I got this deal for you. And then I come on and say, I can do it. And then out of nowhere, a wild Travis appears, who is probably the best person on planet Earth to talk about an SEO site. All right. So this is great. I'm just jumping right in because I'm so excited to hear what you guys have to say about this.

Because I looked at it and I was like, this seems cool. But Bill's first take was completely negative. And like that. All right. This is on this is on Quietlight. It's an SBA pre-qualified cat content brand with 3.9 million followers, $920,000 in revenue and a staggering 95% mark. margins, net margins. So the revenue is $872,000, which they say $920,000 in the top. So I'm wondering

if it's like, you know, run rate versus, you know, I don't know, Traylon 12 or something like that. But on $872,000 in revenue, their net income is $821,000. And they're only asking a 2.8 times multiple. So the asking price is $2.3 million. It says established in 2009, so this business is 16 years old. This cat-focused content platform represents a rare opportunity to acquire a dominant player in the recession-proof cat content niche. Of all the things that I might call recession-proof, maybe cat content is, I'm just not, I'm not the target demographic. Essential services, essential services, thank you. Yeah. It generates over $870,000 in 2024 revenue with exceptional 94 to 95% profit margins.

This 15-year-old business has built an extraordinary social media empire with 3.9 million engaged Facebook followers, 2.2 million monthly page views, and a trademark brand that has shaped storytelling standards within the cat content community. That's a mic drop right there. Okay. The business operates as a premium content platform featuring heartwarming cat stories sourced through established relationships with cat organizations worldwide, with a proven revenue model delivering $22 to $30 plus RPM.

And I have no idea what any of this means. So I'm just going to say it, page RPM minus ad earnings per 1,000 page views. You guys will be able to translate this for us in a minute. Through premium ad partnerships, it generates consistent cash flow through organic traffic, 56% direct visits, and premium ad placement. The simple cost structure of approximately $50,000 annually demonstrates organic growth efficiency that has never required marketing spent. What makes this acquisition particularly compelling is the massive untapped potential deliberately left unexplored by the current owner. Operating as a lifestyle business with just 30 hours weekly commitment,

the owner chose not to pursue video content monetization, affiliate marketing, brand partnerships, or expansion of an organically grown 15,000 subscriber newsletter with over 29% open rates. These represent immediate revenue opportunities, competitors successfully execute. The timing creates exceptional opportunity as the owner's health considerations require stepping back from daily operations. However, fundamentals remain robust with clean SEO, strong grand recognition, loyal audience engagement, established cat organizations, organization relationships provide ongoing content pipeline. And that's pretty much all they say. The advisor here is a guy named Pat, who focuses on e-commerce.

Guys, what does this even mean? All right. This is like served up for Travis on a platter here. So I want to hear the Travis take. Travis, what is going on here? Is this impressive? This is a lot of revenue for cats. I think it is pretty freaking impressive what they've done.

I'm so glad. No, it is. Like, this is not an easy thing to do. You know, SEO people talk all the time. Like, I do this to build revenue. But, like, just to build this off cat stuff, like, that's really hard. And to replicate this, like, that's, I'm never, ever going to say this thing has a moat because it does not. But someone else trying to start from scratch to build this would be, it would be very, very difficult.

Because probably a lot of the reason they're doing this is 15 years old, right? 3.9 million followers on Facebook. you can't do that anymore. It's just not a thing. Sorry, so don't move on from that. Why can't you do that anymore? So what, what has changed from 2009 to right now that make both of those things so much harder? We'll start on Facebook. I mean, the whole algorithm before on Facebook was promoting creators to make Facebook pages and build lots of followers. And so it was good for that. And now you can't. You just have to pay, right? Like, that's the thing. You can't build organic followers. And I don't know the reach of these organic pages anymore. I have no idea. idea, but you just can't do it. I mean, you could, but it would just cost insane amounts of money that would be kind of stupid to spend on cat videos, right? It doesn't make sense. The world spends a lot of money on cat videos, Travis. I watch a lot of them. It's crazy. So, like, I get it. That's a good point here. So this business has 3.9 million, it says, engaged Facebook followers. The question is, if you post something on that Facebook page, what's the reach of that organic post? Like, are you actually

getting anything for that? So I'm, I think I found it. I just asked chat, JPT. And one Facebook page about cats has 3.9 million followers is like this one. Like, all right. So it appears to have good reach. You know, each post is like 416 likes, which is quite a lot on Facebook. You know, like maybe a couple hundred comments. Oh, this one has 3,000 likes.

So yeah, it's definitely getting it. So can we take one step back? What is this? What do they actually do? They're not selling a product. They are a content platform getting. a bunch of eyeballs and then people want to pay them for access to their their views and impressions. Is that right?

Yeah. They're selling sponsored ads, it looks like. That's what I see. They mentioned that they're not doing affiliate programs. It's not like they've packaged this into their own kind of brand of products and their contract manufacturing something and selling it on e-commerce. It's literally just, is it like paid placement? Like in the cat videos, there's like a product in the background, or is it, you're looking at it, Travis.

So I'm just trying to figure out exactly what they're doing. I see nothing that looks like an ad anywhere, which is maybe like even more impressive, right? If it's not like the banner ad and like the really gaudy, you know, kind of grab for attention, if it's maybe more subtle. Yeah, I mean, assuming this is the right thing that they found, I don't, I don't know. well, you're just on the Facebook page, right? I mean, there's a website, right? There's content platform. So some of it could be sponsored content.

I mean, it might not be obvious. So this is just a dumb question from me. If they're a content platform, Bill, like we talk about with e-commerce, you've got to get people to your own.com in order to like make the economics as valuable as possible for you as the owner. For a content site like this, it seems like the majority of the flow, would be it's just getting reposted on Facebook or TikTok or Instagram or something like that and you're just hoping that you keep the attribution or at least like, you know, the novelty of it.

Are they actually redirecting that many people? Like, do people like wake up and log into their website, go to their website to be like, I got to see what new content is out today? Well, I assume the content that is being shared on Facebook is content from their site or that links to their site or something, right? surely it's all the same. And the newsletter that they send out is just a weekly roundup of the best cat stuff. Yes.

Yeah. Yeah. And they also did say further down the listing that they have strong SEO in place. So, you know, there are a lot of people that type cute cat videos into Google every day. Yeah. Or like cat versus bird or something like that. Yeah. Like I want my daily dose of this theme of video.

Yeah. So Travis, would you? you say this is like a like an OG like an old school SEO based content site that you can't really build anymore and is that valuable or it like is this type of thing that someone should buy and probably will do well with or is this just a bomb waiting to happen? I would never buy this personally. There's just too much risk associated with it. I love optimizing and we'll say manipulating algorithms to my benefit, but I don't want to buy something based on that, right? Because just like that, it can disappear. And actually, here's an interesting story. So I bought a

Australian Labradoodle from this lady who has the best website name ever. Her website name is already, I'm sorry, already trained Australian Labradoodles.com. And she just crushed it. There's a huge waiting list because she started one of these OG Facebook pages just about Australian Labradoodles and just posted cute picks day after day, had like a million followers, came in one day. I mean, you know, she's an older lady. She's, her security wasn't that good. Her page got hacked. Facebook ended up banning it. She lost everything. Like that, that was her lead stream, right? Is people finding this and just like putting it in demand. And, you know, now she sold like 20% of what she once did. So there's a lot of risk for something

which is like one platform, especially like built so much on just like a Facebook. Facebook page. Well, they don't say anything about TikTok. They don't say anything about Instagram. They don't say anything about AI, right? Like, there's the things that they're not saying, I feel like, are almost as important as what they're saying. I agree with you. And I do think there's probably a ton of low-hanging fruit here. It sounds like there's been a 50k a year on this. There's not a lot of like third-party effort going to. It's probably more like the founder, I would assume, right? Not doing videos. They don't have their own e-commerce site. Why are they not selling cat furniture.

Or t-shirts or hats. T-shirts, great one, right? Yeah. I mean, collars, like, you should just be selling generic cat stuff. Like, you have this much, need of many eyeballs, just be selling stuff. Yeah. Billy, you're going to buy it? So, like, no, I don't want to buy it.

But, but, like, Travis, I agree with you. This, if this goes well, it's great. Right? I mean, it sounds like it is basically under-optimized. Like if in the in the optimistic version of the world, right, you could crush it with this acquisition, right? In a world where this doesn't go to zero overnight, which is totally possible, right? But if that doesn't happen, you're this SBA prequalified, Heather. So you're putting down, you're putting down, I don't know, 500K on this thing.

You're going to make 800K the first year. You can probably double it, you know, by monetizing it, you know, via e-commerce, by going to all the other platforms, trying to diversify off Facebook, et cetera, et cetera, et and now you're probably thrown off north of a million bucks a year on a 500K equity investment. And it's amazing until the Facebook page gets hacked, the algorithm changes. We haven't even gotten to the AI risk kind of thing like this. If you don't roll seven, right, if you can roll for long enough without rolling seven on this thing, you could do great.

And the lender might figure that out, Bill. So, you know, on one hand, they're going to go, oh, yeah, this is easy. Maybe someone comes in with some experience and says they can do this. But eventually, in a loan underwriting process, someone's going to start asking the question of the, you know, platform risk and the dependency and what happens. And I think it is actually tough to finance because of what you just said, because you have to roll sevens and lenders don't like that. Yeah. You know, they don't want to go bust. I wonder how much the reach is down since Facebook.

but kind of changed their algorithm. You know, before it was Facebook page, you post on it, everybody sees it. Now it's more pay to play. There's obviously still getting some organic reach, but Facebook really wants you to sponsor posts to get those eyeballs. And so this is an example of any businesses this way, but you see it really here. You can't just, like any random searcher, you can't just come in and buy this business without realizing that you've got to get really smart

on the history of manipulating the Facebook algorithm, right? Because in order to win, this business, in order to get where it is now, it didn't just post cute cat stuff, you know, kind of randomly. Like they did a lot of things right. They gave the algorithm what it wanted in 2010.

And then again, in 2011, and that was different in 2012, and it was different in 2013. So they were posting the things that the algorithm liked, and they were doing all, of the tactics that led to Facebook growth in each of the years and those changed it. And that's what you are signing up for, is to stay on top of what works for growing a site and a Facebook

page for the next 10 years. So you can get a return on your investment. And you are also, in order to do that, you need to understand what happened over the last 10 and whether those things were positive or negative for this page and this site's reach. And to your point, Travis, you know, is reach declining? Why is it declining? Is it because the algorithm change is because they start posting differently. Is it because someone else is posting better and there's a new competitor that's a lot that's formidable with cuter cat videos or a more viral caveat? Like, who knows? But you got to understand these things before you can't just like look at the P&L and come in and buy this business. Bill, I have a recurring message I send out. I think you might

agree with. So basically once a month on search funder, somebody posts about wanting to buy an FBA business, you know, eCom FBA. And about once a month, I have to come in and say this is probably not a good idea for you because you need such deep niche expertise in this. It's not, if you find a porta potty business that you're going to buy, right, you don't know how that works, but you can figure it out. But for things like e-commerce and things like this business we're looking at here, you need a long history of understanding how to really optimize these algorithms and how to play these different games to get your products and the eyeballs and in front of stuff. And it's just not as simple as buying and owning the business, right? You have to have this historical context. You have to have this deep industry knowledge.

And I tell these guys all the time, just go work for somebody for a year in this space. Like, you need to really understand it before you buy it. You can't just hire out that talent. You have to really know it as the owner, I think. I think so too. And I've seen people buy digital businesses like this is an SEO business. There's e-commerce businesses. There's all kinds of digital businesses or Amazon businesses.

And they buy it. And nine months later, you know, it starts declining. And they have no idea why. You know, like if you buy a porta potty business and it starts declining, you can, we're not answering the phone. Like, we're not going around to empty the porta potty's as frequently. Like, there's only so many things it can be. Online, it can be a total black box.

You know, it could be all the things I listed before, new competitors, algorithm changes, you know, all sorts of things. And you have to go in there. And by the way, this happens, I should say, to every digital business. And the difference, because it's such a competitive marketplace, it happens to every digital business all the time. And the only way you survive and grow is being able to successfully diagnose, troubleshoot, and recover from all of the meteors that you get hit by.

And the only way you get good at doing that is like 10 years of practice, or in this case, 15 years of practice of figuring out where the puck is going and constantly being used to it changing, you know? Figuring out what happened to you. I mean, it's like, I know it sounds crazy. Like, it can be sometimes hard to figure out why your business is down 30%. Because there's so many levers and also you're competing against billions of other people, right? Again, the porta-potty business, you're competing against the people in your town.

So it's a little bit different. And there's not as many levers that can change to pull stuff. So this, I mean, this is obviously a great business. It's making $800 plus $1,000 a year at 95% margin and it's relatively under optimized. Someone could buy this and do really great. but you could also buy this thing get creamed overnight. So I think you need some sort of risk sharing structure here, you know, over a number of years in order to avoid losing your shirt. But the seller is, it's an illness, is what they believe it said.

So I think to your point, yes, that's the way to cover the risk, but you need to know more about the illness and how available the seller is going to be long term to teach you what you know. need to know. That's a good point. Okay. Well, so, but maybe that just changes the buyer profile. You know, Travis said he doesn't want to buy this, but someone like Travis at the right price is a great buyer for this, right? Because the chances that this goes well for Travis are much higher than the chances this goes well for Mills, right? Because Travis knows what's going on. 100% of the time, I promise you, Travis, yeah, he's going to out, out pedal me on this thing. Heather, you bring up an interesting point, though, too. And I've done this, I haven't closed the deal with this, but years ago, I had an instance where there was kind of a, you know, there was a quirky situation with a seller.

And they couldn't really, they couldn't really benefit from all of the compensation from selling the business. And they didn't really have any errors. So it wasn't like there was going to be a trust that could receive the compensation and then it be passed on. but we used kind of a philanthropic kind of angle to say, you know, you're going to receive the vast majority of the purchase price, you know, directly, but then there's also going to be like a perpetual, it was through a donor advised fund, a perpetual kind of giving vehicle with part of these proceeds that, you know, is towards this cause that was really important to this person, which also related to the business. And the deal fell apart for other reasons, but it was really, really appealing. Like it was going to be like a $250,000. like nest egg that would never dip into the principle and would just live on perpetually like in honor of this person. So it was kind of a, that's not normal, but it has been an interesting tool that I've seen before. And somebody else told me about at that time, just as an idea of follow away. Yeah, that's a great idea. You listen to cat videos, Bill? I, no, who's meowing?

I hear some meowing. It's my cat. It's Heather's actual cat. He's hearing us talk about she's like, Hey. I love that your first thought was Bill's definitely got to be watching Cat video. Well, he was looking to the side. Like, he looked and gay. I'm trying to find the, maybe Travis, you could just text me the link.

I'm trying to figure out which one it is. I'm less certain that I'm right based on the website, but I'll text it to you afterwards. I was going to say whatever prompt you put in chat GPD was better than mine. I thought I did the exact same thing and I couldn't find anything. So, uh, it was really tough.

It was like cat content brand of 3.9 million followers on Facebook. That's basically what I did. and it gave me stuff with 9 million Facebook. All right, well, let's talk about the, in all honesty, Heather hit on it, but the SBA side of this. Is there a scenario where a lender gets comfortable? I mean, does the person have to be a cat expert? Probably not. Do they have to be an SEO expert?

Maybe if they have like a portfolio of SEO businesses, could a lender get comfortable and say, oh, this is just going to be one of many things that, you know, are part of your portfolio? I think that's what it would be for a lender. You know, best case is it's part of a portfolio. It's a strategic buyer, if you will,

that already does something like this and has the expertise and knows just what to do. It still would be a really weird underwriting, though. I can't imagine what the credit memo looks like when it's 95% net margin and how you explain,

you know, how that is even possible. But yeah, I think that, that kind of buyer could could actually get the loan. I think someone coming along as this is the only business they're going to own and they don't have enough experience to convince the lender that they know what they're doing here, I think that's a tough one. So SBA pre-qualified. And actually it kind of made me laugh.

The headline here, it doesn't say cat content. It starts with SBA pre-qualified. So a little too much emphasis on that. But yeah, I don't think that it's going to be so easy for just a standalone SBA loan just predicated on this revenue. Are you ready to take a leap into business ownership but you don't know where to start? Well, look no further than Acquisition Lab, the premier resource for entrepreneurs seeking to buy their dream business. Founded by Harvard MBA and acquisition expert Walker Dibble, the lab is your fast-tracked success in the search diligence and acquisition process. With hands-on support, well-class resources and a community of like-minded,

entrepreneurs, Acquisition Lab gives you the tools and confidence to navigate every step of the journey. And we're proud to call Walker and Chelsea, the lab's director, longtime friends of the podcast. They're passionate about helping entrepreneurs like you take the next big step. So don't wait to make your business ownership dream or reality. Visit AcquisitionLab.com today to learn more and schedule your free consultation. And when you do, be sure to tell them the Acquisitions Anonymous podcast sent you. One thing we haven't talked about is, like, I wonder about these relationships with cat organizations worldwide. So, you know, if this person was just generating content from their own cat, even if it was a famous cat, like, it's a very limited pool. You're going to get bored.

People are going to get bored. Your cat could die. But they've got this kind of network, so to speak, of people who send them stuff. And they say heartwarming. So I don't think it's all just the funny cat videos. It's like it might be, you know, this cat saved my life when I was, you know, on the verge of, you know, despair. I mean, like all that to say, you've got all these people who are sending stuff. It's all inbound is what it seems like.

That is actually maybe a little bit valuable. Yeah. I mean, it's certainly easier than having to create all of your own content from scratch. I think I found it. I put it in our host chat. But like examples, like one eye kitten meets cat and they hit it off in the sweetest way. It's like that just like on repeat. So it's just cute cat videos.

And there are banner ads. I think Travis, you must have an ad blocker on. But I think it's just banner ads. You know, I don't really see any sponsor content. I just see banner ads all over it. So, but like, that is a lot of banner ads. 900 grand a year of banner ads. Mm-hmm.

Which kind of stinks. Like, to me, that is, it's obviously the highest optimization strategy, but it kind of dilutes the quality to me. cheapens it as a user kind of experience. But there's just, I mean, yes, Mel, there's just so much you can do with it. I mean, 2.2 million monthly page views,

like if the Facebook followers are really that engaged, like actually pointing that traffic at something that is much more monetized. Like, Banner ads are the worst way to monetize. Yeah. Like, it's the lowest quality way to monetize. So, like, even just like affiliate is probably better. If you're a $20 million cat brand,

you should buy this. there you go. Yes. So are they, every fourth post is plugging your stuff on Amazon. Absolutely. Well, it doesn't even seem like they're plugging anybody else's stuff on Amazon, right? Like so many folks who have even like a tenth of this much content are direct linking to Amazon and they're monetizing that. I don't see any of that happening here.

No, and that's what I mean by affiliate. So like, you know, like the tiering of online business models, like banner ads is like the lowest. the lowest quality monetization. And then you can go up from there and be affiliate, which means you're going to get paid X percent of revenue if you send traffic. And that is so easy to do as an Amazon affiliate. I mean,

you don't even need any prior permission. And then you can go from Amazon affiliate up to, you know, more kind of custom affiliate networks or one-to-one affiliate arrangements, which generally pay better, you know, more custom deals, you know, and then you can move up to selling your own stuff.

You know, I think I, there's so many ways. if you've got real targeted 2.2 million monthly page views. So, like, again, if you are good at this and you buy this, you could crush it here. Because they're not doing any of the like, you know, top five cat carriers from 2025. Like, bingo. You could just crush it, I would think. Yeah.

Yeah. Free advice to this seller, sorry for your health condition, but we're really excited about your growth opportunities. Well, so someone's going to buy this and do all these things and crush it or lose all their money in nine months, right? Or, right, I think the other thing is this business could just wither on the vine. You know, it could just not get sold and the opportunity kind of passes by and then this business really just goes away. I bought a business many years ago that was heavily, it was like an SEO like Mommy Blogger recipe site type thing. Not a great business to buy, but I bought it. And then I just didn't do anything with it for like three years, which is really dumb because I own an SEO agency and I just just kind of ignored it.

And three years later, it had like declined by about half, but still like managed to basically pay for the acquisition costs and just ignoring it kind of made it just still live and like have value. You could see that too. I mean, it's not like it's going to just suddenly disappear as long as somebody's posting the stuff. Yeah, yeah. And I'm going to assume that $50,000 a year is probably, you know, two or three VAs who are handling all of this. You know, managing the inbox with the stories from the acute stories from the shelters and repackaging them into posts and clicking post. Is there a price that you would, that you would pay for this? Oh, yeah.

I mean, well, there's a price for everything, right? It's, I just don't know that it's like when you pay 3X for a business, you need to not. blow up for three years to get your money back, right? And three years is forever in e-commerce algorithm, in internet algorithm land, like forever. That is that. That's a thing three years ago. Exactly. So like, what is the chat GPT earthquake that's going to happen in 2028, you know, before you've gotten your money back? So you just can't pay that kind of multiple for this thing. And that is, but that is why some sort of risk sharing is so great. If you kill it,

you're more than happy to pay the 3x multiple, right? But if you lose all your money, you can't, you know, you can't have paid. So you got to just find a way to pay over time here, I think, with this thing. This is totally in the category of amazing businesses to have started and owned and really, really difficult businesses to buy. But I look at this and I think I am so dumb for not having started something like this. I know that oversimplifies it. And this person has done an incredible job building this.

But I just look at it. I'm like, man, this would be awesome to own. It'd be awesome to own. But think of how many thousands of other people made cat sites and cat Facebook pages that nothing happened. Great point. That's a great point. Yeah. This is a graveyard.

I mean, like an incredible graveyard. Yeah, the survivorship bias. Survivor bias is really real here. Travis, what is your take on the AI risk to this business and content? business broadly, SEO-based content businesses? I think it very much depends on the business. So SEO is kind of binary now. It's either doing better than ever or it's dead, depending on the industry.

I would think something like this is probably pretty safe, currently, at least, because no one's going to chat, GPT, to watch heartwarming stuff, right? They're just being fed this by algorithms. I don't know how the SEO plays working here, but at least the Facebook thing, of just like algorithms, you know, you're just streaming. They even said on a, I think it was meta release that probably like only 15% of like Instagram and Facebook time now is used experiencing content from your network. The rest of it is just flows from, you know, funny videos and stuff like that.

So I think that's a lot safer. But with other industries, it's dead. Like if it's an informational query, who goes to Google for that anymore, right? You go to chat, GPT. But what about all the new video models? Like I can, I can or a algorithm can infinitely generate cute cat videos that never really happened and feed them directly to my eyeballs. You know, like, is that a risk here? I think if this is like genuine, though, and from looking at it, I mean, it's like a real story about a real person.

And yes, all that could be manufactured too. But somebody really saved a cat, you know, and that's what they're. posting, does the potency of real stories, like, become more effective in a more AI-driven world? I mean, Mills, I think that is one of the biggest questions in the world right now. Yeah. Is, will reality matter or not? Yeah. One of my favorite accounts online is the Dodo, which just shares, like, really sweet animal videos,

like animals being saved and happy endings and stuff like that. I would never go to chat GPD and just make a bunch of those to manipulate my own brainwaves, but I love seeing it when it pops on my feet somewhere. So I can see it like that. You wouldn't, but could you easily see 10,000 competitors to the dodo

popping up, you know what I mean? And all generating infinity. I mean, you could imagine an AI agent that spun up a new dodo every 10 minutes with 14,000 hours on each one of cute cat videos. Are we just going to be totally drowned in content? And they're all going to be a little different.

This one's going to be tabby cats. This one's going to be black cats. This one's going to be one-eyed cats. And they're all going to appeal to each little individual audience. And it's going to be like crack for those 10,000 people. Right? And the dodo's toast. Isn't Pinterest now something like 95% AI photos?

Yikes, really? And something like that. And you could easily see the same thing happening. into video and the price of the compute just drops to zero. So I can see it. Interesting thought. Yeah. I mean, that's just, it just scares me.

Like the AI stuff on a pure content business, it's easy to imagine the AI effect on tax content now. But like if you have played with the new video models or seen some of this, I mean, it's early and it still use a lot of compute, but they're convincing. And they're getting better monthly. It's the worst right now. It'll ever be again. That's right.

That's right. So all the more reason, like amazing business to own, you need a risk sharing deal here. Because to pay 3x up front and just hope the world doesn't change for three years, even if AI wasn't a thing, hoping that the SEO and the ecom worlds don't change in three years is an eternity. Now layer on all the AI, all the video models, everything. There's just a lot is going to change in this industry in three years. And it feels like a lot of risk to me. Okay, so instead of thumbs up, thumbs down today, would you pay a million dollars for this business?

I would put 500 to 800,000 in equity and have the seller carry the rest on a contingent note. I would do that. Look at Heather. You're a shark, Heather. Yeah. I love that. I think that's a great approach. I would pay a million dollars for this.

Yes. Right now. Cellar, if you're listening, hit me up. If someone wants to operate this but doesn't have a million. bucks, Travis will give you a million bucks. So, I mean, like that, that completely reframes it, right? Because we're like, I don't know, it might not like, but there is a number. There is a structure where you go, okay, I'm risk shared enough.

I'm hedged enough where even if a million outside factors come in and just nuke this business, there's probably some tail of benefit stream that you could get from it. And you just want to get like made whole as fast as possible. and that's that's kind of your you know your opportunity cost on it yeah i would i my deal would be one x so eight hundred and twenty one thousand dollars and a 50 50 rev share until you have made your asking price after that nice yeah because it's i mean you can do it off revenue because the margins are so high that's right yeah and so and so and if you crush it and you do one point five million next year then they're just getting they're getting it back to

that much faster and everybody's happy. And it's like, hey, you're guaranteed as long as this is operating, you're guaranteed to get to your ceiling, even if it takes a long time. Even if it takes 10 years, right? Or it goes to zero and we're both screwed. But we shared the risk. But I'm not getting rich and you're, you know, you're holding the bag. That's right. From the seller's perspective, if we remove the health risk, obviously they're being forced to sell. But if that wasn't the case, I don't know I would sell this business. I would be more inclined to try and outsource it a little bit more. I assume the seller is doing a lot here. Even with the expectation that maybe it declines, you know, even 50%, it's still going to end up a better deal for

you over the long term to just hold this because you can't sell it for that much because of the risk. Great business to own though. Yeah, health risk aside, you're right. I mean, you just own this. Just run it out. I mean, it's a wonderful business to own. And it sounds like it's already super delegated. I mean, maybe add another $50,000 of cost, you know, bring some more people in and try to climb the listen to this podcast, try to climb the modernization ladder up, you know, affiliate, things like that. I mean, that model is not hard. You know, five best cat carriers of 2025. You can hammer that stuff out, easy, peasy. Probably double the business again. And then if you shut it down in two years, you still probably did better. Yeah, hire an affiliate

marketer, easy. Just bring it in. Don't try to learn it yourself. Just knows someone who's already doing it. Plug them in, done. Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot to like about this. It's just really hard to buy with personally guaranteed debt. I'm going to sign the India now when we log off. All right. Love it. And then we'll put it on Capital Pad and everybody can be like, Travis, why are you bringing us this crazy?

I don't know. It just seemed like a good deal. I don't own it or anything. Like I promised I would pay a million bugs for it. So here we are. All right, everybody, thanks for tuning in and putting up with our shenanigans.

This was highly entertaining and it was even better. I came in with high expectations. It was even better than my expectations. So thanks, everybody. And if you're interested in more businesses that we've discussed, you can go to ACQUAnon.com, and there's a whole treasure trove of different e-commerce, brick-and-mortar businesses, you name it.

You can search for it on there. Thanks so much.