Who buys a company your size? And what each one does after closing

What if a fund already owns a company like yours?

Then your company is the add-on, and it joins theirs. The buyer already has a leadership team, a finance team and its own systems. So the first questions are about overlap: which jobs repeat, which customers you share, and whose name stays on the door.

PitchBook put U.S. add-ons in the second quarter of 2026 at about 885^[1], against 289 platforms. Its own words: "Platform buyout count fell 34% to 289, as sponsors bolted assets onto existing portfolio companies."^[1]

A buyer that has done this before moves fast on the parts it knows. Have your own plan for your people before that buyer brings theirs.

Who are independent sponsors and family offices?

Two buyers with their own way of paying. An independent sponsor is a dealmaker who finds a company first, then raises the money to buy it. So ask early who is putting up the money, and whether it's committed.

A family office invests one wealthy family's money. Some hold a company for a long time, with no set date to sell it again. That can suit an owner who cares who owns the company in ten years.

Neither publishes counts we'd stand behind, so we print no figures for them here.

Can you sell to your employees?

Yes, through an ESOP. An employee stock ownership plan is a trust that buys shares for your employees. NCEO, the National Center for Employee Ownership, counted 6,609^[4] ESOPs at 6,411 companies in its 2023 data.

Most private ones sit in S corporations: 67% of private ESOPs in the same data.

There are two limits to know. The price is capped at the fair market value^[5] an appraiser sets. And NCEO says companies with fewer than 20 to 30 employees and $1,000,000 of EBITDA aren't good candidates. EBITDA is yearly profit before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization.

When the plan buys the whole company, a seller note is always part of it, by NCEO's account.^[5] A seller note means you're paid part of the price over time. The tax rules for ESOPs are their own subject, so talk to your tax advisor before you weigh it. Selling all of it, or part of it.

What happens to your people?

Most keep working. A Harvard Business School study followed 2,500,000 workers at 3,600 companies over two decades of private equity buyouts. Three years after a buyout, workers were 2%^[7] less likely to be employed than workers at similar companies that weren't bought.

For those who left, wages fell 18%. For those who found new jobs, wages fell 0.5%.

That's private equity across the board, not your buyer. So ask yours directly: who keeps their job, what changes in pay and benefits, and who tells the team, and when. The hard meeting is often the one after closing, when your managers ask what changes for them. Have the answer before you sign.

What we'd look at first

What you want after closing. On a first call, a dedicated advisor would ask whether you'd stay, step back or leave, and whether you'd keep shares. That answer rules some buyers in and others out.

1. Who runs the company day to day if you step back, because every buyer meets them.
2. Which buyers you'd keep away, such as a competitor or your largest customer.
3. Whether a manager, a partner or your employees could be a buyer too.

25,000+ buyers in our network. For a company your size, the list that matters is shorter, and you can block anyone on it. No buyer sees your company's name, books or files until they sign an NDA for your listing. How we'd run your sale.