I just bought a business — what do I do on day one?
Day 1 is control, not strategy: bank signatories, card authority, payroll continuity, the insurance binder's effective time, keys and alarm codes, domain and DNS control, the password vault, and the announcement to key employees. The test for whether something belongs on the Day 1 list is whether it is executable at 00:01 — if it needs a decision, a vendor call or somebody's cooperation, it is a week-1 item and putting it on Day 1 guarantees neither gets done. Nothing on this list improves the business. All of it prevents an outage you cannot re-run.
Sources: A2-02 · INT-02
What is a Day 1 readiness checklist for an SMB acquisition?
A Day 1 readiness checklist is the set of transfers that must already be complete when the business opens, not a plan for the day itself. It spans four groups: money (signatory changes, card authority, payroll run continuity, killing stale auto-debits), cover (insurance and benefits effective to the minute — a gap on Day 1 is existential), access (keys, alarm codes, domains, DNS, the password vault, the tenant), and people (who hears it, in what order). Each of those has a named rule behind it in this hub, several of which do not transfer automatically and have to be re-papered before close.
Sources: A2-02 · INT-02
Should I change anything in the first 90 days after an acquisition?
The two authoritative answers to this contradict each other, and you should know that before you pick one. Private-equity and post-merger-integration practice says capture value inside 100 days; the Stanford Search Fund Primer's operating section and IESE's operating materials say year one is for learning and for not breaking anything. Both sides are verified from primary sources. The conflict is real rather than a matter of emphasis, and it resolves on leverage and fragility, not on principle: a business with a debt-service calendar that is already tight cannot afford a year of learning, and a business whose value sits in twenty relationships the seller owned cannot afford a hundred days of change.
Sources: A2-02 · A2-05 · A2-06
When is it right to break the "change nothing for 90 days" rule?
Four situations override it: cash is bleeding, there is a safety issue, a key person is leaving, or a manager is actively toxic. "Change nothing for 90 days" is folklore — widely repeated in operator communities, not sourced to anything — and we label it that way rather than dressing it up. The useful content is not the rule, it is the exceptions, because a first-time owner who treats it as doctrine will sit on a cash leak for a quarter to avoid looking impulsive.
Sources: A2-02
What do I do if the seller undermines me after closing?
Check the financing structure before you read it as a personality problem: if the seller note is on full standby, the seller is receiving nothing and will receive nothing for years. SBA SOP 50 10 Version 8 counts a seller note toward the required equity injection only if it is on full standby for the life of the SBA loan and does not exceed half the required injection — at most 5% of project cost, with no principal and no interest for the entire term. That is a rule about capital, and its operating consequence is that the seller's cash incentive to help you is removed during exactly the window when most post-close failures happen. It is the strongest argument for putting real consideration into the transition agreement itself rather than assuming goodwill.
Sources: A1-06 · A2-02
What systems should I NOT change in the first 100 days?
Freeze anything whose failure stops the business, and migrate only what breaks the monthly close. Dispatch, field service management, ERP, inventory and CRM all stay: they are how work reaches customers, and a failed cutover there is an outage. Bookkeeping and the general ledger are the ones that earn an early migration, because a chart of accounts nobody designed and a close nobody can finish is what makes every number you report to your lender unreliable. Almost every first-time acquirer inverts this — the new system is exciting and the ledger is boring — and the inversion is what produces a Q2 with no usable financials.
Sources: A2-02
Do trade licences transfer when I buy a business?
Frequently they do not, and in the trades that makes the licence a precondition to operating legally rather than a piece of paperwork to catch up on. A change of business entity is generally treated as a new licensee rather than a continuation, which can mean a new application, a new qualifying individual, and a new bond — on a clock that does not care that you already closed. California's contractor licensing board is the pattern case here; your state's rule is its own. Confirm the specific requirement with the issuing board before close, not after: this is one of the few Day-1 items where being wrong stops revenue rather than delaying it.
Sources: A1-21
In what order should I announce an acquisition — employees, customers, or vendors?
Key employees first, then the all-hands, then your largest customers personally, then every other customer, then vendors, and only then anything public. The rule underneath the order is that nobody who matters to the business learns about the sale from someone who is not you — a technician hearing it from a customer, or a customer hearing it from a vendor, turns a routine transition into a question about what else is being withheld. Licensing bodies and public notices come last because they are a filing rather than a relationship. Getting this sequence wrong is a documented own-goal and it is unrecoverable in the week it happens.
Sources: A2-02 · B2-09
How do I handle a customer who only ever dealt with the previous owner?
Go and see them in week one, with the seller in the room, and do not lead with what is changing. The concentration figure that showed up in diligence as a risk becomes a relationship plan the day you close: a named list of accounts, who calls each one, whether the seller makes the introduction in person, and what the message is. The mistake is treating it as a communications task and sending a letter. The relationship you are transferring was built by one specific person over years, and the only thing that moves it is you turning up while that person is still standing next to you.
Sources: A2-02 · B2-01
Why do search fund acquisitions fail after the deal closes?
They fail in the business rather than in the price: the seller turns out to have been the operating system, a key employee or a concentrated customer leaves, the debt-service calendar meets a soft quarter, or the new owner changed things faster than an inherited team would follow. The only institutional treatment of this specific question is Stanford's 2012 study Search Funds — Death and the Afterlife, and we name it without quoting a figure from it, because the paper itself has not been retrieved. Anyone citing you a failure percentage for this population is quoting something they have not read either.
Sources: A2-04 · A2-02 · A2-05
How does my acquisition loan payment change how I run the business?
It becomes the highest-priority recurring date in the operating calendar, and every cash decision is now made relative to it. That is a change in how the company is run rather than a financing detail: a hire, a truck, a price concession and a slow-paying account are all evaluated against a payment that arrives whether or not the quarter went well. Two consequences land immediately. Cash forecasting moves from monthly to weekly, because the question is when the payment clears rather than whether the year works. And the equity injection that funded the purchase leaves your first quarter thinner than the historical financials suggest.
Sources: A1-06 · A1-07 · B2-09
What happens to payroll on the day of closing?
Payroll has to run on its normal date under the new entity, and continuity is the only payroll requirement on Day 1. The funding account, the authorised signer and the tax registrations have to be in place before the first cycle, because a missed or late payroll in month one does damage to an inherited team that no later explanation repairs. Do not change providers in the same quarter. Separately, the unemployment experience rate does not simply follow the payroll file — an ownership change triggers a state determination of whether the seller's rate transfers, and that is a filing rather than a setting.
Sources: A1-19 · B2-09
How do I take over passwords, domains, and DNS after an acquisition?
Take registrar and DNS control before close rather than after, because the domain carries a lock the calendar will not negotiate: ICANN's transfer policy imposes a 60-day lock after a change of registrant, so a domain moved on closing day cannot be moved again for two months. Work the layer in order — registrar account, DNS zone, email tenant, password vault, then every account whose recovery address still points at a mailbox the seller owns. Phone numbers are a separate transfer on a separate clock, run through the carrier porting process rather than through anything you control.
Sources: A1-24 · B2-09
What insurance has to be in place on day one?
Every policy the business operates under has to be effective at the closing time, in your entity's name — general liability, property, auto, workers' compensation, professional or errors-and-omissions where you carry it, and any bond a licence requires. The seller's policies are bound to the seller's entity and do not follow the assets, so this is re-papered rather than transferred, and the binder has to name an effective time rather than a date. Group health is the one that catches buyers: continuation coverage for the seller's qualified beneficiaries can land on the buyer as successor employer under the COBRA regulations, which is a liability rather than a policy you shop for.
Sources: A1-16 · B2-09
