Mehtab Bhogal

Invest for liquidity, not equity appreciation

Mehtab's PE thesis flips the usual playbook: instead of maximizing what a company is eventually worth, he buys for how fast he can pull his cash back out. If you can recover most of your investment within 2-3 months, the deal is far less risky than bootstrapping something that constantly eats working capital.

“part of our thesis is essentially investing on how much liquidity or cash the company can generate in a short-term basis. So if you can invest today and pull most of your cash out within 2 or 3 months, there's a lot less risk, right?”

Steal thisUnderwrite deals on speed-to-cash-back, not on a distant exit multiple.

Bought a $6M sex-toy brand for ~$1M via a royalty payback

Mehtab's firm bought into a distressed dropshipper doing $6M/year that the market would value around $10-15M. They got in at ~$1M, structured so the company paid them a royalty until their cash was repaid, then helped move it from dropshipping to holding inventory.

“They were, so just originally a dropshipper, they're doing like $6 million a year. This is one of our first deals, so they're very small. They're only doing $6 million a year. Um, and I'd say market for that, for valuation, like the growth equity side would've been like $10, $15 million as far as valuation back then. Um, we got in at like $1 and then the company paid us a royalty until we were paid back in full on that initial cash investment.”

Josh's Frogs: catching frogs with his kids on a Sunday

Josh built a bootstrapped, in-house operation that breeds exotic frogs, grows the bugs they eat, and ships them nationwide from Michigan. Mehtab has tried to invest since 2018 and keeps getting turned down; he once called Josh on a Sunday to find him out catching frogs with his kids after 15-20 years in the business.

“Josh is awesome. I called him on a Sunday and the guy was catching frogs with his kids. I couldn't believe it. You know, I think he's been doing this for 15, 20 years. And, uh, he's still loves frogs and frogs.”

The ops moat: build something no e-com bro will copy

Mehtab's favorite moat is operational difficulty. A company like Josh's Frogs that breeds live animals in-house can't be undercut by overseas sellers (you can't ship a live frog from China) and won't attract typical e-commerce operators who avoid physical, messy operations, so customer acquisition costs stay stable.

“So no one else, your typical e-commerce guy is not going to go out and boot up a frog operation, right? It's just too intense for them. They don't really like physical things. We have to show up. A lot of guys just use 3PLs and it requires a lot of specialized knowledge. At the same time, you know that someone overseas is not going to undercut you. And it doesn't become a race to the bottom with monetized products because you can't really ship a live frog from China or directly overseas to the US.”

Steal thisPick categories where physical, specialized operations scare off competitors and block overseas undercutting.

An ops moat adds a few turns to your sale multiple

Mehtab estimates an average DTC business the size of Josh's Frogs sells for roughly 8-10x EBITDA, but a genuine operations moat that competitors can't knock off earns a premium of a few extra turns on top.

“let's say your average D2C business his size might sell, and I'll just use a range for 8 to 10x. He would get a premium of a few turns on top of that because of that operations moat, and it's not something anyone can just knock off, right?”

FastGrowingTrees.com sold for $100-120M years ago

Mehtab first saw the online tree retailer's sale memo 6-7 years ago, when it changed hands for somewhere between $100M and $120M. He believes it has roughly doubled in value since.

“I first stumbled across the sim when the company was being sold 6 or 7 years ago, and I think it went for between $100 million to $120 million. And it looks like they've grown quite a bit since then. I wouldn't be surprised if They're worth closer to double that now, just with their website rehaul, et cetera.”

Manufacturing playbooks transfer between companies; marketing doesn't

Mehtab argues lean manufacturing practices port cleanly from one company to the next, while marketing rarely does: paid-ad strategy for a low-AOV, fast-consideration product (like clothing) shares almost nothing with marketing a long-consideration-period product.

“It ports over very cleanly from company to company, but marketing does not, right? What worked with your paid ads for a company with, let's say, low AOV, but really fast consideration period. So You know, something like clothing. I see clothing, I buy it. It's very simple compared to the marketing side for something with a long consideration period. That's very different, different teams, totally different strategy. Nothing will really carry over cleanly, but on the manufacturing end, it carries over cleanly company to company to company.”

Hire elite remote talent in Mexico over the Philippines

Mehtab prefers hiring in Mexico over the Philippines: you can fly out in a few hours from Texas, bring people on-site to understand the product, and the pay premium for top talent is only ~30-40% higher. He hired a former Uline customer-service director for ~$5,000/month, talent worth ~$200K in the US.

“we got one of their former directors And his salary ask was really reasonable. It was like, I think, $5,000 a month, but his talent was the equivalent of someone who's $200,000 in the US.”

Steal thisRecruit senior remote operators in Mexico so you can meet in person and tap higher-quality applicant pools.

Quick site-speed wins: delay pixels, compress review images

Mehtab says most site-speed gains need little dev skill. Delaying when tracking pixels fire (Google Analytics, Facebook Ads) dramatically increases speed with minimal business impact, and apps like Judge.me often fail to compress images, so re-compressing them speeds up product pages.

“changing the order in which your pixels fire for Google Analytics, Facebook Ads, et cetera, you can delay some of those very slightly and dramatically increase site speed, and it won't really hurt the business that much. That's just an example of one quick fix you could do, or certain apps do not compress images properly. So Judge.me, the review app on Shopify for a lot of sites, it does not properly compress images.”

Steal thisDelay non-critical tracking pixels and re-compress app-injected images to lift Shopify page speed fast.

Find agency leads with BuiltWith plus a traffic check

To source clients for a site-speed (or any tech-stack) agency, Mehtab uses BuiltWith to pull a full list of sites on a given platform, filters to meaningful revenue, cross-checks against a traffic estimator, then cold-emails the ones whose sites are slow.

“just go to BuiltWith, full list of websites, make sure they're doing a certain amount of revenue or at least have meaningful revenue coming in. Just cross-check that against something that shows traffic, right? Like Alexa or something. And from there, I think you just handle it if their site's slow, right?”

Steal thisPull a platform's site list from BuiltWith, filter by revenue and traffic, then cold-email the slow ones.

Buy a distressed $100M brand for $10-15M of equity

Mehtab says distressed turnarounds are appealing partly because they don't require much equity to keep scaling: you can buy a relatively distressed brand doing $100M in revenue for maybe $10-15M of equity.

“you can probably buy a relatively distressed brand doing $100 million for maybe $10 to $15 million in equity.”