Exclusive: The great boomer business handover just got its own Zestimate

Baton, a marketplace for buying and selling small businesses, has launched Business Profiles, a feature that provides free valuations for two million small businesses across the country. The initiative aims to do for Main Street what Zillow did for the housing market a decade ago. Founded by former Zillow executive Chat Joglekar, Baton's CEO sees the new feature as a way to address the lack of awareness among small business owners about selling their companies.

Joglekar argues that the main competition for Baton is not other marketplaces or traditional brokers, but the owners themselves who are unaware of the option to sell. The stakes are high, as roughly 41% of small businesses in the U.S. are owned by baby boomers, who collectively own more than 2.3 million companies, employ over 25 million people, and hold an estimated $10 trillion in assets.

McKinsey projects that by 2035, up to six million small-business transitions could occur, representing up to $5 trillion in enterprise value. Currently, fewer than one in three owners have an exit plan, and fewer than one in 10 can name their company's value within 10% of its actual worth. Baton's data includes estimated revenue, team size, customer satisfaction, and tens of thousands of comparable sales to generate public valuations and local competitive rankings.

The free valuations serve as a first step to encourage business owners to consider their company as a valuable asset and potentially engage with Baton's services when they decide to sell. While Baton's valuations are based on public inputs and may not be as accurate as appraisals, they provide a rough estimate to help owners understand their company's worth.