Investing in small businesses means trusting the owner-operator who will run the day-to-day operations. On Mainshares, these are our issuers— industry pros, self-funded searchers and independent sponsors raising capital to close on their acquisitions.

Mainshares takes steps to vet issuers before they raise capital on our platform so investors can have confidence they’re dealing with well-intentioned, skilled operators.

For starters, we ensure issuers are truthful about their background history and have sufficient credit to access SBA debt. Mainshares conducts a:

Personal background check
Credit check
Identity verification check

Once we verify the legitimacy of an issuer, we want to ensure that the issuer is a good fit for their target acquisition. We call this “operator-deal fit.”

Many factors can signal whether an issuer will be a good fit for their target acquisition. We look for the following characteristics:

Industry experience: We want the issuer to have identical or transferable industry experience in past roles. They may also have related experience in other capacities outside of professional work, like education, volunteering, or side hobbies.
Leadership qualities: We prioritize working with issuers who have past experience directly managing or leading teams, whether in their professional lives or extracurriculars. These skills are critical for succeeding as an owner and hard to learn without lived experience.
Clear acquisition thesis: The issuer should have a clear acquisition thesis for acquiring the target business. Their thesis should include the exact parameters that lead them to the target business and why the target business creates operator-deal fit.
Skin-in-the-game: Issuers on the Mainshares platform must provide a portion of the equity capital. We will not accept any issuer that doesn’t have their own capital at work. For many of our deals, the issuer will have an SBA loan involved and must sign a personal guarantee for that loan.

After supporting over 100 sell-side acquisitions, we've found that the most successful operators are the ones who are determined to overcome any obstacle. We work closely with issuers for months to test this drive and identify those who truly have what it takes.

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