About
Foundry is a Gainesville practice for owners of main-street and lower-middle-market companies. We sit where accounting, real estate, and the sale of a going concern actually meet.
A foundry does not invent the metal. It heats it, cleans it, and pours it into a form that will hold. That is the work of transferring a closely held company: take what an owner has already made, recast the books so a buyer can see cash, and pour the going concern into a structure that can change hands without cracking.
We chose the name because it is the opposite of a listing mill. We are not here to stamp a brand on someone else’s shop. The metal is yours. Our job is the heat, the recast, and a form that will survive the close — including the tax that decides what each side actually keeps.
Foundry Business Advisors is a clean brand, on purpose. The sale of a life’s work deserves its own name, not an add-on to the long work of keeping the books.
Your CPA relationship and your sale do not belong on the same letterhead. Foundry is its own firm so the work of buying and selling a business can be done without confusing the two.
National franchise shops sell exposure. We sell judgment: what the company is worth, who should be allowed to see it, and whether the story in the CIM will survive a serious buyer’s accountant. That is slower. It is also how deals actually fund.
The principals are CPAs and licensed Florida realtors. That is not branding. In this state, transferring a business often means transferring real property, leases, licenses, and a going concern in the same closing. Someone has to be able to read all of it. Someone also has to know what the federal return will do to the price you just shook hands on.
A sale is a tax event with a closing attached. Asset or equity, how the price is allocated, installment versus cash, recapture on equipment, the basis the buyer will live with for years — those are not footnotes for the accountant after the fact. They are the deal. Get them wrong and a “good” price becomes a thin one.
Buyers keep more when the basis they buy can actually be recovered. Sellers keep more when the character of the gain is not an accident of whoever drafted the asset list at eleven at night. Florida has no personal income tax. The federal return still does this work, and it will not wait.
We do not issue tax opinion letters out of Foundry. That work stays with the CPA of record. What Foundry brings is principals who already do that work, sitting in the brokerage seat, so the structure is decided while there is still something to structure.
How we work
We do not take a listing to “test the market.” We recast the books, look at what comparable Florida companies have actually sold for, and only then decide whether there is a deal worth doing.
You hire the people who will carry your file. Foundry is not a network of independently owned offices. If we take the work, we do the work.
Gainesville is home, at 4045 NW 43rd Street. Alachua, Marion, Levy, Bradford, and the rest of North Florida are the natural market. When a buyer or a company lives further out, we still go.
What we will not do
A high listing price that never closes is not a service. We will tell you the range a funded buyer can live with.
We do not blast your P&L to a buyer list to “create activity.” Activity without discretion is a leak.
We are not a network. You hire the people who will carry the file, not a brand on a highway sign.
Owners often think they need a broker for marketing. The useful work is elsewhere. It is recasting owner benefits so a buyer sees cash. It is keeping employees from finding out on a Friday. It is knowing which add-backs a lender will laugh at. It is sitting between two people who both think they are being reasonable.
A good CPA can tell you what the company made. A good realtor can transfer the building. A sale of a going concern needs both, plus a process that does not torch the thing being sold. That is the practice.
Foundry is an independent brokerage. Tax, attest, and the long work of keeping books stay with the CPA of record. Buying and selling the company belong here.