Aaron Kroll, second from left, and Trey Cherry, second from right, started Sterling Point Advisors in 2018. (Stephanie Jenkins photos)
The phones weren’t ringing much when Aaron Krohl and Trey Cherry first launched Sterling Point Advisors in 2018.
The pair had started the fledgling M&A advisory firm after leaving respective careers in investment banking and commercial banking. They relied on their wives’ income while trying to make something of their entrepreneurial leap.
“We basically made no money for the first 18 months into the firm and what we did make we put back into the company,” Kroll said. “It wasn’t like we were sitting on huge amounts of money. We told ourselves we probably have a year or year and a half.”
As the calendar turned to 2019, they finally picked up a couple clients — a saw mill in Ruther Glen and a veterinary clinic in Richmond that both needed help finding a buyer. But the lag time on closing the sale of a business can go on for six to nine months. That meant the waiting for revenue continued.
Then came 2020 and the pandemic, leaving them wondering what would become of their first two pending deals. But disaster didn’t strike.
“Somehow we held it together, had a lot of nervous clients and were able to close both of those deals and it kind of set us up,” Kroll said. “From there it snowballed and people saw, ‘Oh wow, these guys are closing deals.’”
That’s when the referrals started rolling in.
Sterling Point has since closed around 25 deals, ranging in price from $5 million to $50 million, Kroll said, with the firm taking a percentage of the sales price.
Among them was the sale of local accounting firm Kimble CPAs to Alexandria-based KWC.
The business partners on their way to accept their RVA 25 trophy.
That momentum resulted in the firm landing atop this year’s RVA 25 list of the region’s fastest-growing companies, far outpacing the rest of the pack with 15,326 percent revenue growth from 2019-2021. While the average percentage growth during that period is made public on the list, the firm declined to disclose its total annual revenue in dollars.
Kroll said the upward trajectory has continued through 2022, as it expects to close another 5-10 deals by the end of the year.
“We see this year is much better than last year,” he said.
Word of mouth has helped lead to referrals, but Kroll said much of the firm’s growth is attributed in part to the focus on what they call the lower-middle market of companies looking to buy and be sold.
He said their deals to-date are from industries of all sorts, including health care, industrial, manufacturing, business services, engineering and more.
Also fueling the growth is what Kroll said is the sheer amount of investors with plenty of cash looking to buy private businesses.
“The amount of what they call ‘dry powder’ is at an all-time high,” Kroll said. “There’s just so much money waiting to invest that if you have a solid company you’re going to get a ton of looks.”
He said Sterling Point’s process for readying a company for a sale is what’s led to satisfied clients and the all-important referrals.
“I really do think the process we run is somewhat unique,” he said. “Everything we do is custom to that client. We’re going to build a really nice marketing package and run an auction-style process to get as many eyes on it as possible and weed down from there.”
Sterling Point was presented its award by representatives of Keiter.
Now up to 12 employees, the firm is subleasing an office in Innsbrook and keeping an eye out for a more permanent space. Its headcount now includes a trio of employees in Northern Virginia who are hunting for deals in the business services and mortgage sectors. Kroll said they plan to continue adding such industry-specific positions.
Cherry, 34, grew up mainly in Macon, Georgia, attending Georgia College. He made his way to Richmond while working for around eight years for BB&T. He was introduced to Kroll by a mutual acquaintance.
Kroll, 34, grew up in Christiansburg, graduated from Virginia Tech and got his MBA at the University of Akron. He moved to Richmond in 2014, bouncing around in various finance-related jobs, including stints at what’s now Lingerfelt Commonwealth Partners and Canal Capital.
“I call myself a job hopper,” Kroll said. “I never could really find what I wanted to do. I’ve had 7-10 jobs and I’m not that old of a guy.”
Before starting Sterling Point, Kroll said he and Cherry simply struck up a friendship and would meet for coffee while pondering business ideas of how to meld their respective strengths and experiences.
“I really had that entrepreneurial bug for a long time and wanted to strike out on my own,” he said.
When they finally hit on the idea for an M&A advisory firm, there was one last hump to get over: a name for the business.
They found it in Portsmouth, where Cherry was on a trip to see his family, who live in an area called Sterling Point on Elizabeth River.
“(Cherry) sent me a picture when we were starting this that said ‘hanging out at sunset with grandma at Sterling Point,’” Kroll said. “We both said ‘that’s it.’”
Editor’s note: The RVA 25 list is based on a company’s average annual revenue growth over the last three calendar years — in this case, 2019-2021. Eligible companies must be privately held, headquartered in the Richmond region, have been in business for at least the last three full calendar years and had a minimum of $500,000 in annual revenue in 2021.
Aaron Kroll, second from left, and Trey Cherry, second from right, started Sterling Point Advisors in 2018. (Stephanie Jenkins photos)
The phones weren’t ringing much when Aaron Krohl and Trey Cherry first launched Sterling Point Advisors in 2018.
The pair had started the fledgling M&A advisory firm after leaving respective careers in investment banking and commercial banking. They relied on their wives’ income while trying to make something of their entrepreneurial leap.
“We basically made no money for the first 18 months into the firm and what we did make we put back into the company,” Kroll said. “It wasn’t like we were sitting on huge amounts of money. We told ourselves we probably have a year or year and a half.”
As the calendar turned to 2019, they finally picked up a couple clients — a saw mill in Ruther Glen and a veterinary clinic in Richmond that both needed help finding a buyer. But the lag time on closing the sale of a business can go on for six to nine months. That meant the waiting for revenue continued.
Then came 2020 and the pandemic, leaving them wondering what would become of their first two pending deals. But disaster didn’t strike.
“Somehow we held it together, had a lot of nervous clients and were able to close both of those deals and it kind of set us up,” Kroll said. “From there it snowballed and people saw, ‘Oh wow, these guys are closing deals.’”
That’s when the referrals started rolling in.
Sterling Point has since closed around 25 deals, ranging in price from $5 million to $50 million, Kroll said, with the firm taking a percentage of the sales price.
Among them was the sale of local accounting firm Kimble CPAs to Alexandria-based KWC.
The business partners on their way to accept their RVA 25 trophy.
That momentum resulted in the firm landing atop this year’s RVA 25 list of the region’s fastest-growing companies, far outpacing the rest of the pack with 15,326 percent revenue growth from 2019-2021. While the average percentage growth during that period is made public on the list, the firm declined to disclose its total annual revenue in dollars.
Kroll said the upward trajectory has continued through 2022, as it expects to close another 5-10 deals by the end of the year.
“We see this year is much better than last year,” he said.
Word of mouth has helped lead to referrals, but Kroll said much of the firm’s growth is attributed in part to the focus on what they call the lower-middle market of companies looking to buy and be sold.
He said their deals to-date are from industries of all sorts, including health care, industrial, manufacturing, business services, engineering and more.
Also fueling the growth is what Kroll said is the sheer amount of investors with plenty of cash looking to buy private businesses.
“The amount of what they call ‘dry powder’ is at an all-time high,” Kroll said. “There’s just so much money waiting to invest that if you have a solid company you’re going to get a ton of looks.”
He said Sterling Point’s process for readying a company for a sale is what’s led to satisfied clients and the all-important referrals.
“I really do think the process we run is somewhat unique,” he said. “Everything we do is custom to that client. We’re going to build a really nice marketing package and run an auction-style process to get as many eyes on it as possible and weed down from there.”
Sterling Point was presented its award by representatives of Keiter.
Now up to 12 employees, the firm is subleasing an office in Innsbrook and keeping an eye out for a more permanent space. Its headcount now includes a trio of employees in Northern Virginia who are hunting for deals in the business services and mortgage sectors. Kroll said they plan to continue adding such industry-specific positions.
Cherry, 34, grew up mainly in Macon, Georgia, attending Georgia College. He made his way to Richmond while working for around eight years for BB&T. He was introduced to Kroll by a mutual acquaintance.
Kroll, 34, grew up in Christiansburg, graduated from Virginia Tech and got his MBA at the University of Akron. He moved to Richmond in 2014, bouncing around in various finance-related jobs, including stints at what’s now Lingerfelt Commonwealth Partners and Canal Capital.
“I call myself a job hopper,” Kroll said. “I never could really find what I wanted to do. I’ve had 7-10 jobs and I’m not that old of a guy.”
Before starting Sterling Point, Kroll said he and Cherry simply struck up a friendship and would meet for coffee while pondering business ideas of how to meld their respective strengths and experiences.
“I really had that entrepreneurial bug for a long time and wanted to strike out on my own,” he said.
When they finally hit on the idea for an M&A advisory firm, there was one last hump to get over: a name for the business.
They found it in Portsmouth, where Cherry was on a trip to see his family, who live in an area called Sterling Point on Elizabeth River.
“(Cherry) sent me a picture when we were starting this that said ‘hanging out at sunset with grandma at Sterling Point,’” Kroll said. “We both said ‘that’s it.’”
Editor’s note: The RVA 25 list is based on a company’s average annual revenue growth over the last three calendar years — in this case, 2019-2021. Eligible companies must be privately held, headquartered in the Richmond region, have been in business for at least the last three full calendar years and had a minimum of $500,000 in annual revenue in 2021.