About the Business Acquisitions Institute | Who We Are & How We're Funded

mission

Most owners buy a company once. The people across the table do it every month.

Buying a company is the largest decision most private company owners will ever make, and almost all of them make it for the first time against people who do it professionally. That asymmetry is the whole problem.

The Business Acquisitions Institute exists to close it. Everything the Institute publishes is written for the owner rather than the deal professional: what the stages actually are, what each one is for, what the numbers mean, what is normal and what should worry you, and what a term costs you eighteen months after you sign it. The Acquisition Concierge will walk through any of it with you at no charge, in private, with no process to enter and nothing placed anywhere.

When a matter needs more than orientation, the Institute helps you assemble the right people: transaction counsel, a quality of earnings accountant, a lender who understands your structure. Choosing those people well is most of the outcome, and it is the part owners are least equipped to judge.

plainly stated

What the Institute is and is not.

The Institute is

A knowledge institution. Plain-language references covering the full arc of an acquisition, from whether to buy at all through to the first hundred days after closing.
A guide to a journey you take once. The Concierge orients you to where you are, what comes next, and what it is reasonable to expect, without needing you to already speak the language.
Free at the point of use. The Concierge, the references and the guidance cost nothing, and nothing here asks for your company details before it will help you.
Independent of the outcome. The Institute is paid the same whether you buy, wait, or decide against it entirely. That is deliberate, and it is what makes the advice worth reading.

The Institute is not

Not a broker. The Institute does not find buyers, does not find sellers, does not market companies, and does not effect, solicit or negotiate transactions. It is not a registered broker-dealer and does not act as one.
Not your advisor. Nothing here, including Concierge conversations, is legal, tax, accounting, valuation or investment advice. The Institute will not value your company and will not tell you what to pay.
Not a marketplace. There is no public listing and no database of companies for sale, and nothing here markets your company. The Confidential Registry records privately what members are looking for; a person reads every profile, and your identity is never shared with anyone without your express permission.
Not a party to your transaction. Using this site creates no advisory, agency or attorney-client relationship, and Concierge conversations are not privileged or confidential.

How the Institute sustains itself

The orientation is free and stays free. Where an owner wants sustained help, the Institute offers private advisory engagements: working through a thesis, pressure-testing a specific opportunity, assembling and managing a deal team, or preparing a company for an eventual sale. Those engagements are billed as fixed fees, agreed in writing before any work starts.

The Institute takes no percentage of any transaction, no success fee, and no commission. It accepts no referral fee, revenue share or other compensation from any attorney, accountant, lender, insurer or advisor it names to you. Its fee does not change if you buy, and does not change if you walk away.

We publish this because an owner about to spend years of their life and most of their balance sheet on one decision should be able to see exactly who is paid what, and by whom, before they take a word of it seriously.

leadership

Leadership.

Announcement · August 2026

Russ Rosenzweig named Executive Director of the Institute

Russ Rosenzweig was named Executive Director of the Business Acquisitions Institute in August 2026.

He founded a professional services firm in 1993 and led it for three decades, which makes him a member of the audience this Institute is built for rather than an observer of it: the owner of a private company, working through the same questions about growth, valuation and succession that the site covers.

His career has been spent on a version of the problem at the center of an acquisition, which is finding the one specialist who actually fits a situation and knowing how to tell. Over three decades he connected thousands of attorneys, insurers and companies with the experts their matters turned on, for clients including most of the largest law firms in the United States. Advisor selection is the same discipline pointed at a different problem.

B.A., Northwestern University · M.B.A., University of Chicago Booth School of Business

Announcement · September 2026

Anthony Donofrio named Director of the Institute

Anthony Donofrio was named Director of the Business Acquisitions Institute in September 2026, working alongside Executive Director Russ Rosenzweig.

He spent sixteen years as a Managing Director at Hamilton Lane, the NASDAQ-listed global private markets firm with more than a trillion dollars in assets under advisement, management and supervision. He served as Chief Operating Officer of the firm’s five billion dollar co-investment program and sat on its Co-Investment Valuation Committee, and as Head of Transactions for the legal group he led and negotiated hundreds of primary, secondary and co-investment transactions across private equity and private credit. Before Hamilton Lane he spent seven years as a transactional attorney in the Corporate and Securities Group at Drinker Biddle & Reath, now Faegre Drinker, structuring and executing mergers, acquisitions and private equity investments.

That is the other side of the table this Institute writes about: the professionals an owner meets once and they meet every month. He brings that experience to the Institute’s educational work and to helping owners evaluate and choose the advisors a transaction requires. He continues to lead his own advisory practice, AJD PE Consulting, which is separate from the Institute, serves on the Board of Advisors of Delta Capital Management Partners, and teaches as an Adjunct Professor at Villanova University’s Charles Widger School of Law and as a Professional-in-Residence at Fairfield University’s Dolan School of Business.

J.D., Northwestern University School of Law · B.A., cum laude, Business Administration-Finance, Villanova University

the network

The specialists an acquisition actually requires.

No single advisor covers an acquisition. A typical transaction needs transaction counsel, an accountant who can run a quality of earnings analysis, a valuation professional, a lender or two who understand the structure being proposed, and specialists in tax, insurance, benefits and employment. After closing it needs operators who have integrated a company before. Most owners meet each of these for the first time under time pressure, chosen on a recommendation they have no way to evaluate.

The Institute maintains working relationships across those disciplines and helps owners select among them: what each one is for, when to bring them in, what good looks like, what the work should cost, and which questions to ask before engaging anyone. Advisors are engaged directly by you, on your own terms, and remain independent of the Institute. The Institute is paid no part of their fee and receives nothing for naming them.

An advisory council of operators and transaction specialists is being convened and will be named here.

standards

The rules this site holds itself to.

Method, not numbers

The Institute explains how a question gets answered: how a multiple is derived, what a quality of earnings analysis tests, how an earnout is structured. It does not tell you what your company is worth or what to pay for another one. Those are your valuation professional and your counsel, examining your actual books.

Independent of the outcome

No success fee, no percentage of any transaction, and no referral fee from any advisor named to you. Nothing the Institute earns moves if you buy, and nothing moves if you do not. Guidance whose author is paid more when you sign is worth exactly what you paid for it.

AI, used openly

The Institute uses AI to research, draft and power the Concierge, under human editorial direction. We think institutions should say so plainly rather than let visitors work it out.

One side of the table

The Institute does not advise both sides of the same transaction, and will not. Whatever brings two parties toward a table, each engages its own counsel and advisers, and any advisory engagement the Institute accepts is for one party alone.

Corrections

Errors, once known, get fixed. If something here is wrong, incomplete or has gone out of date, tell the Institute and it will be reviewed and corrected.

Why this institute exists.