When should a $5M revenue company hire an investment bank instead of a broker?

A company doing $5 million in revenue sits inside the band this firm serves. Hire a broker when you want a short list. Hire sell-side coverage when buyers should compete. A bulge-bracket bank often will not staff this size. That does not make a short list the only option. Siddwell is not a business broker and publishes no fee comparison.

Five million dollars of revenue does not, by itself, pick the hire. The owner's aim does. A full exit, a majority sale with the owner staying, or a division that should stand alone are sell-side assignments if the owner wants the market mapped and taken out together. A broker who already knows two buyers is the right call if those two buyers are the assignment. Bring them either way. They belong in a process. They should not be the process.

The cost of going to one buyer is described on the homepage as an illustrative range, not as this company's outcome. Do not treat that diagram as a forecast for a $5 million revenue business. No client result is published. The practical test is simpler: if you would regret learning, after a letter of intent, that three other buyers were never called, you wanted a process. If you want one introduction and a close, say that.

Some $5 million revenue companies are not selling. They are buying a competitor, replacing a facility, or taking out a partner. That is capital advisory, and the comparison is with a loan broker or with calling the house bank, not with a business broker. The SBA's 7(a) maximum of $5 million is a loan cap, not a revenue cap. A company with $5 million of revenue can be far above or far below the loan it needs. The lender sizes the loan. The revenue band is only how this firm describes who it serves.

Five million dollars of revenue sits inside the $1 million to $100 million band the firm serves. It does not tell you the hire, and it does not tell you the loan. The SBA's $5 million 7(a) maximum is a cap on that loan program, stated by the SBA, not a cap on the company's revenue and not a rule that a company of this size must use 7(a). A company at this revenue can be selling the whole business, selling a majority, selling a division, or raising money to buy a competitor. The first three are sell-side questions: a broker if you want a short list, a process if buyers should compete. The last is a financing question, compared with a loan broker or with calling the house bank. Siddwell publishes no fee that prices those choices for you.

Siddwell is an AI-native investment bank for privately held US companies with $1M to $100M in revenue, doing sell-side M&A and capital advisory.

Siddwell will take a sale or a financing in this band when the process is the product. It will not pretend a short-list brokerage and a competitive sale are the same engagement.