The origin story of Harvest Value Advisors

Before founding Harvest Value Advisors, I built my career in corporate strategy at a large tech company and I had a diverse background in consulting. While I valued those experiences, I knew I wanted to step away from the traditional W-2 path and build something of my own.

That’s when I discovered the world of small business acquisitions — and I was hooked.

I dove headfirst into the process. Over the course of a year, I reviewed over 200 businesses, signed countless NDAs, analyzed CIMs, and worked closely with banks to understand what types of deals were actually financeable. Of those 200, I spoke directly with about 75 owners. Only five seemed like serious contenders. Of those five, three deals fell through immediately due to financing hurdles, one made it to due diligence but didn’t hold up under scrutiny, and one ultimately led to a successful acquisition after I partnered with a group of associates.

That year gave me a crash course in the realities of small business M&A — and it was eye-opening.

I built relationships with brokers all over the country and started to notice some patterns. The most shocking? Roughly 75% of businesses that go to market never sell. Even more surprising, many brokers are incentivized to list businesses regardless of their readiness to sell — often charging upfront fees and offering little guidance on how to actually increase value or reduce risk.

That didn’t sit right with me.

When I started searching for my second business to buy, I took a different approach. I began having honest, unfiltered conversations with sellers. I shared what would raise red flags for banks, what made their businesses riskier than they realized, and why some deals would never make it past the finish line. Even in deals I walked away from, some of those sellers asked me for help — and I found myself offering consulting support to make their companies more valuable and more sellable.

That’s when it clicked.

There is a real need for honest, experienced guidance in the small business sale process — not just from the buyer's side, but from the seller’s side too. Harvest Value Advisors was born to fill that gap. We exist to help business owners understand what their company is truly worth, how to maximize that value, and how to actually get a deal done.

-Matthew Fitzgerald, President of Harvest Value Advisors