What we say.Is what we do.
What we have learned from buying, building and running recruitment businesses. No growth charts, and nobody thrilled to announce anything.
Three essential readsfor any owner.
Selling a recruitment business? Read the full guide for owners ›
Growth by acquisition and consolidation
Nick Gordon, Founder and Chairman of Meraki Capital, spoke at TALiNT Partners' Future of Staffing & Talent Solutions Summit earlier this month. Twenty minutes on what buyers actually look for, what AI is really doing to valuations, and what you have to protect
Most Buyers Destroy the Thing They Just Paid For
Earn It There is a ritual in our industry. A business gets acquired. And within a year, the thing that made it worth buying is gone. The founder is sidelined. The name changes. The systems get ripped out and replaced with the buyer's own. The team that built s
Why Liquidity Is Crucial for Recruitment Companies
At Meraki Capital, we invest exclusively in recruitment businesses. One factor we always look for, often before growth metrics or brand equity, is liquidity. Because in recruitment, cash isn’t just king, it’s survival. Recruitment is a working capital-heavy bu
What buyersactually look for.
From Nick Gordon’s talk at TALiNT Partners’ Future of Staffing and Talent Solutions Summit.
Three questions before any price
- Market. Specialist rather than a bit of everything, and actually growing.
- Model. The real value and the real return, not the headline revenue.
- People. Right people, right seat.
What moves the number
- Net fee income (also known as gross profit). What the business actually makes.
- Net fee income percentage. How much of the gross profit you keep.
- Contract versus permanent. One recurs and one does not.
- Market trends. Nobody pays a premium to buy into a shrinking market.
Where buyers walk away
- One client matters more than all the others.
- The revenue lives in two people’s phones.
- It is a hundred per cent permanent.
- Employment law turns a clean deal into a long commitment.
Buying and selling.
What buyers really look for, what a good deal leaves behind, and how to be ready before you need to be.
All buying and selling ›One year on: same name, same people, more behind them
A year ago somebody bought this business. I will be honest with you. I had seen how that usually goes. You lose the name. You lose the people who built it. And a decision that used to take an hour starts taking a month, because it gets made somewhere else. Non
The first 90 days decide the deal
Most deals are judged on the day they complete. They should be judged 90 days later. By then the announcement has been forgotten. The congratulations have stopped. And the people inside the business have made up their minds about what has happened to them. Whe
What a growth facility is for, and what it is not
When we announce a deal, the line that gets noticed is the funding facility. Four million pounds for City Centre Recruitment and Magnus Search. One point four million for SERT. A facility that grew to nine million as more businesses joined Magnus. It is worth
Running the business.
Leadership, people, sales and brand, from people who have built and run recruitment businesses.
All running the business ›Keeping your best people through a sale
Every buyer of a recruitment business is really buying a group of people and the relationships they hold. Lose them and you have bought an office lease and a database. Founders know this better than anyone, which is why the question of when to tell the team is
Every business keeps its own brand for a reason
People sometimes ask why Meraki does not put its own name on everything it owns. One brand, one website, one logo. Simpler. Cheaper. It would be simpler. It would also be wrong. Clients buy specialists A pharmaceutical client in Boston wants an expert in their
The Industry That Cannot Stop Apologising for Itself
Love It Listen to how recruitment talks about recruitment. It is "just a numbers game." It is a stepping stone to something better. It is a trade people fall into rather than choose. Even the people who are brilliant at it will tell you, with a shrug, that the
Data, technology and AI.
What technology really changes in recruitment, and what it never will.
All data, technology and ai ›AI won't value your business. Your numbers will.
Every recruitment owner I meet is being asked the same question. What are you doing about AI? Fair question. Wrong reason for asking it, if you are thinking about your valuation. Nobody pays more for your business because you have bought the software. Everyone
Your CRM Is a Graveyard
"We've got forty thousand contacts in the system." I hear it in every business I walk into. Said with pride. Like it's a line on the balance sheet. Like the size of the database is the same thing as the strength of it. It isn't. Most of the time, it's the oppo
Why AI Won't Transform Recruitment.
Because People Still Hire People There’s a lot of noise right now about how AI is going to "revolutionise" recruitment. Automated screening, chatbots doing first-round interviews, algorithms matching candidates to roles before a human even lifts a finger. Soun
The market.
Where UK and European hiring is heading, and what it means for the businesses inside it.
All the market ›Why the big groups are selling territories, and what it means
In June we bought six businesses from Hays in a single transaction. Sweden, Denmark, Hungary, Romania, Luxembourg and Czechia. Hays said publicly why it was selling: a more streamlined approach, more focus on its core markets, and partners to keep a multi-coun
Britain’s Hiring Engine Is Losing Steam, and November’s Budget Could Decide Its Fate
Another agency gone. Another payroll missed. It’s a pattern I’m seeing far too often, and it’s not about mismanagement or laziness, it’s about conditions tightening faster than many can adapt. The recruitment industry is feeling the chill long before the frost
The Reality Behind Blue Collar Workers: Tomorrow's Candidates In A Changing World
Economy For years, white-collar work has been held up as the pinnacle of professional success. It came with predictable hours, financial stability, and the promise of a comfortable retirement. Yet in today’s economy, that promise is breaking down. Artificial i
Every deal,as it happened.
Thinking about what comes next?
Every conversation starts with Nick Gordon, our founder. It is confidential, it commits you to nothing, and the best ones happen while the business is still performing.
