TSP ETA-Searcher Year 1 Playbook
A complete, sequenced operating system for the first 12 months after closing an acquisition, built for the self-funded or traditional searcher taking the reins of a sub-$30M B2B SaaS or services business. Across eight modules and 48 concrete tasks, it moves you in the order things actually need to happen. Most Year-One guides stop at stabilization; this one assumes you bought the company to grow it, and gives you the discipline to do so without raising additional equity.
Module 1: Take the Reins Without Breaking the Business — Closing Day to Day 30
Establish leadership credibility and operational continuity during your first month as the new owner
Section 1.1: Day-One Communication and the First Two Weeks
Signal stability to employees and customers while setting investor expectations in your first two weeks
Run the joint Day-One employee announcement and town hall with the outgoing seller
The day the deal closes, the workforce you just bought is more afraid than excited. In an ETA acquisition the seller is often a beloved founder, and the team's first question is…
Send the first investor letter and confirm the monthly cadence within 14 days
Your search-fund investors just wired the equity for this acquisition and now know nothing about what they own day to day. The first investor letter does two jobs: it proves you…
Personally call or visit the top 10 customers in the first week
In a B2B SaaS acquisition, revenue concentration is usually the single biggest risk you inherited — often the top 10 accounts carry the majority of recurring revenue. Those…
Section 1.2: First-30-Days Listening Tour and Financial Baseline
Map talent, cash runway, and undocumented customer commitments to avoid surprises in month two
Meet every employee one-on-one inside the first 30 days
The people you just acquired hold the undocumented knowledge that makes the business run — who the difficult customers are, which processes are held together with workarounds,…
Build the 13-week rolling cash flow model and confirm bank lines
ETA acquisitions are leveraged — you bought the company with acquisition debt, and the covenants on that debt make cash, not profit, the thing that can kill you in Year One. A…
Document the seller's handshake deals before they walk
Owner-operated B2B SaaS and services companies run on undocumented arrangements — the pricing exception the founder granted a friend, the vendor side deal sealed over a handshake,…
Module 2: Diagnose Customers, Pricing, and the Inherited Team — Days 31 to 90
Uncover customer dependencies, pricing leaks, and team capability gaps to build a stable foundation for growth
Section 2.1: Customer Diagnostic and Concentration Mitigation
Interview your largest customers and fix overreliance on a few accounts or underpriced deals
Run a structured listening tour of the top 20 customers
The Week-1 calls to the top 10 customers were about reassurance; this Days-31-to-90 tour is about diagnosis at depth. By interviewing the top 20 in person with a consistent…
Map customer concentration and build a renewal-risk schedule
For an ETA searcher, customer concentration is the single biggest threat to the debt-laden capital structure you just inherited. One churned whale can blow a covenant and turn a…
Audit pricing discipline and identify under-priced segments
Acquired SMBs almost always leak realized price through a decade of accumulated handshake discounts, grandfathered rates, and off-policy concessions the seller never cleaned up.…
Section 2.2: Inherited Team Assessment and Operating Cadence
Evaluate inherited leaders, lock in rhythm and governance, and plug your first financial or operational gap
Apply a Keep-Coach-Exit grid to the inherited leadership team
The inherited team is your single biggest people risk and your single biggest source of institutional knowledge — usually both in the same person. By Day 90, form an explicit,…
Establish a weekly leadership meeting and quarterly skip-levels
Most acquired SMBs run on the seller's instincts, not on rhythm — decisions happened in hallways and the seller's head. Installing a predictable weekly leadership meeting is how…
Identify the first critical hire — usually a controller or fractional CFO
Almost every acquired SMB has a long-tenured bookkeeper who kept the lights on for the seller but is not credentialed for the reporting cadence your investors, lender, and board…
Module 3: Stabilize the Engine — Operating Backbone in Months 4 to 6
Build financial controls, banking infrastructure, and management systems to sustain scaled growth through months 4–6
Section 3.1: Finance, Banking, Insurance, and IT Backbone
Lock down clean financials, update banking and insurance docs, and free up cash trapped in AR and inventory
Close the books cleanly and order the first reviewed financials
By Month 4, the diagnostic phase is over and you need numbers you can govern by. Most acquired SMBs run on cash-basis QuickBooks with a part-time bookkeeper, so the financials you…
Re-paper banking, insurance, and IT/security under new ownership
The change of control voids assumptions the seller lived with for years. Insurance policies were priced for the old owner's risk appetite, the IT stack was patched only when…
Optimize working capital across AR, AP, and inventory
Working capital is the cheapest growth capital a searcher has. Most acquired SMBs let receivables drift because the seller knew every customer personally and never wanted to chase…
Section 3.2: Operating System and Board Cadence
Install an operating rhythm and board cadence that run on one-page clarity, not sprawling decks
Adopt an operating system to install rhythm and accountability
An acquired SMB usually ran on the seller's head — decisions, priorities, and accountability all lived with one person. To scale it into a real company you have to externalize…
Run the first formal board meeting on three pages, not thirty
The first board meeting sets the tone for how your investors and you will work for the next five years. The default trap is a 30-page deck and a four-hour recap — a…
Standardize the monthly investor letter and the KPI dashboard
You started the monthly investor letter in Module 1; by Months 4–6 it must become a fixed format you never improvise. The power of an investor letter is not any single update — it…
Module 4: Lock the ICP and Personas — The Strategic Foundation of T2D3
Define your ICP with filters and signals, then build three buying-center personas mapped to their change, vendor, and timing motivations
Section 4.1: Define the Ideal Customer Profile with Filters and Signals
Write filters for who you can serve and signals for who to prioritize, then validate against your wins and losses
Write the ICP using filters for who you can serve and signals for who to prioritize
Diligence gave you a customer base; it did not give you an Ideal Customer Profile. The single highest-leverage strategic act in your first year is to write the ICP down…
Choose your strategic posture — dominate, disrupt, or differentiate
A common Year-One mistake is to write the ICP before deciding what game you are playing. The three T2D3 strategic postures — dominate, disrupt, differentiate — each imply a…
Validate the ICP against your top customers and your last 10 wins and losses
An ICP written from diligence decks and seller folklore is a hypothesis. Before you let it steer pricing, hiring, and demand-gen spend, you must validate it against real outcome…
Section 4.2: Build the Buying-Center Personas for the Three Decision Roles
Document your P1 user, P2 buyer, and P3 sponsor, then test with five customer interviews before committing
Document the P1 user, P2 economic buyer, and P3 sponsor for your ICP
In B2B SaaS a purchase is almost never one person's decision — Gartner pegs the typical buying group at 6 to 10 stakeholders. The T2D3 model compresses that committee into three…
Map each persona to their why-change, why-you, and why-now answers
A documented persona is inert until you answer the three questions that actually move a deal. Every buyer, before they sign, silently asks: Why change from the status quo? Why you…
Test the personas with five live customer interviews before committing
Personas built in a conference room are theory; personas tested against real customers are operational. Your inherited team and your own diligence-era assumptions will produce a…
Module 5: Sharpen Value Prop, Brand Voice, and Positioning
Craft messaging that speaks to buyer pain points, articulate your competitive edge, and align brand voice across all customer touchpoints
Section 5.1: Value Proposition and Pain-Claim-Gain Messaging
Build persona-specific Pain-Claim-Gain stories and convert web copy to customer-centric language backed by real outcomes
Write the Pain-Claim-Gain narrative for each persona
Now that the ICP and the P1/P2/P3 personas are locked from Module 4, you turn raw understanding into messaging. Pain-Claim-Gain is the T2D3 messaging spine: it forces you to lead…
Replace company-centric web copy with customer-centric language (the you test)
Acquired-SMB websites almost always talk about the seller's company — "we," "our," the company name, the founding year. Buyers do not care; they want to see their own problem…
Capture testimonials and outcome metrics from the customer listening tour
The 20 customer interviews from Module 2 are a goldmine most owners squander — the insights sit in a notes doc and never become marketing assets. This task systematically harvests…
Section 5.2: Brand Voice and Positioning Against the Competitive Set
Define brand voice, map competitive positioning, and refresh key web pages around your differentiated wedge
Document brand voice attributes and the founder/CEO point of view
A brand voice is what the company sounds like in writing — and most acquired SMBs do not have one, because every page was authored by a different person across different years.…
Map the competitive landscape and name your wedge against the top three
Buyers never evaluate you in a vacuum — they compare you against the two or three alternatives they already know, including "do nothing." A newly acquired company often has no…
Refresh the homepage and top-five landing pages around the new positioning
This is where all of Module 5 lands on the page. Most acquired-company websites have not been meaningfully touched in three to five years, so they reflect the seller's old…
Module 6: Repackage, Reprice, and Monetize What You Already Sell
Unlock revenue from existing customers by tightening pricing discipline, eliminating discounts, and building tiered packages that align cost-to-serve
Section 6.1: Pricing Discipline and the First Price Move
Establish pricing rigor by raising rates on underpriced segments, eliminating off-policy discounts, and moving to fixed-price packaging
Raise prices on the under-priced segment and document the conversation
By Month 6 the asymmetry that blocks most searchers — no data, no relationships, no story — is gone. You have the pricing audit from Module 2, the renewal calendar, the new ICP…
Eliminate off-policy discounts and document a discount approval matrix
The pricing audit in Module 2 almost certainly surfaced the quiet tax most acquired SMBs pay: reps default to discounting whenever they feel pressure, and nobody approves it.…
Move from variable to fixed-price packaging where the math allows
Many acquired B2B-services and SaaS companies sell on a variable basis — hourly, usage-metered, or scope-and-bill. It feels safe to the seller but quietly damages the business:…
Section 6.2: Tiered Packaging and Monetizing Cost-to-Serve
Design tiered packages bundling services into pricing, trigger upsells via usage signals, and measure packaging economics continuously
Design tiered packages that bundle services into product price
Acquired B2B-services and SaaS companies almost always under-monetize the human work they deliver — onboarding, implementation, training, premium support, professional services.…
Build the upsell and cross-sell motion using behavioral usage signals
Existing customers are the cheapest growth a searcher has — no CAC, an established relationship, and a renewal calendar you already control. Yet most acquired SMBs expand by…
Instrument pricing and packaging analytics for ongoing learning
Pricing is not an annual project; it is a decision made every week — a rep granting a discount, a CS manager waiving an onboarding fee, the CEO approving an exception. Without…
Module 7: Diversify Demand Generation and Build the Outbound Engine
Scale demand generation across inbound, content, and outbound channels while hiring sales leadership to close the loop
Section 7.1: Inbound, SEO, and the Three Demand-Gen Channels
Audit and activate three demand-gen channels, publish cornerstone content for each buyer stage, and build multi-touch nurture sequences
Audit current demand-gen channels and identify the third and fourth to add
The company you acquired almost certainly grew on one or two channels — usually founder relationships plus inbound referrals. That concentration is fine for a lifestyle SMB but…
Publish six cornerstone content assets aligned to ICP buying stages
Most acquired SMBs treat content as a blog-post checkbox — random topics, no strategy, zero pipeline impact. Content for content's sake is wasted budget. The fix is to anchor a…
Build the digital relationship — retargeting, nurture, and seven-touch sequences
Inbound interest is fragile: a prospect downloads your benchmark report, gets pulled into their day job, and you never hear from them again. Most leads do not convert on first…
Section 7.2: ABM, Outbound, and the First Sales Hire
Build a 250-account ABM list, hire your first sales producer with a structured scorecard, and right-size leadership
Build a 250-account ABM target list using filters and signals
Account-based marketing works only when two things are true: the target list is right and the content is good. A bought list of 10,000 lookalikes is not ABM — it is spray-and-pray…
Hire the first BDR or AE with a structured Topgrading-style scorecard
The first sales hire is a leverage decision in disguise: the first rep shapes the next five. They become the template you hire against, the culture the team inherits, and — if you…
Decide on full-time vs fractional CMO based on stage and budget
Hiring a full-time CMO too early is one of the most expensive Year-One mistakes a searcher can make — a $250K+ leader with no demand engine to run will rebuild strategy that the…
Module 8: Close Year One, Set Up Year Two — Months 10 to 12
Audit your Year One performance, lock in governance and financials, and establish CEO systems before scaling Year Two
Section 8.1: Year-One Close, Audit, and Strategic Plan
Close Year One with audited financials, draft your first real strategic plan with the board, and lock in Year-Two OKRs and budget
Deliver Year-One audited or reviewed financials and tax filings
The Year-One financials are where your underwriting thesis meets reality. For an ETA searcher, this is the first time the board, your lenders, and your equity investors see…
Draft the first real strategic plan with the board
Year One was about not breaking the business; the strategic plan is where you transition the company from the seller's company to a small corporation with systems and a future.…
Set Year-Two OKRs and budget at the annual board meeting
OKRs turn the strategic plan into measurable accountability the whole company can rally behind. The discipline an ETA searcher needs here is restraint: four to six company-level…
Section 8.2: The CEO's Personal Operating System
Secure a CEO peer group and coach, align your time to benchmarks, and reset your energy and decision-making rhythm for Year Two
Lock in a CEO peer group, board chair mentor, and outside coach
The single most-cited Year-One risk in qualitative searcher interviews is not a financial or operational failure — it is the loneliness of the seat. A first-time CEO who two years…
Audit your time allocation against searcher-CEO benchmarks
How a searcher-CEO spends their week is the highest-leverage system in the company, because everything else flows from where the CEO's attention goes. The Year-One trap is…
Reset personal energy, family rhythm, and decision tempo for Year Two
ETA is a five-to-seven-year game, and a CEO who burns out in Year One forfeits the equity upside that only compounds in Years Three through Seven. The acquisition adrenaline that…