How accessible is acquisition-led growth funding for small and medium-sized businesses?
Acquisition-led growth funding is genuinely accessible to SMBs — and more so than many business owners realise. According to Dan Cholewinski, co-founder of Vast Commercial Finance, there is real market appetite for M&A funding right now, and it is one of the active areas his firm regularly works on with clients of all sizes.
Cholewinski points to a specific market dynamic driving this opportunity: many business owners who navigated the Covid period are now approaching retirement age and actively looking to exit their companies. That wave of potential sellers is creating concrete acquisition opportunities for growth-minded SMBs — and, with it, a matching demand for financing structures to support those deals.
The broader implication is clear: the barriers many owners imagine around M&A funding — complexity, size requirements, exclusivity to large corporates — do not reflect current market reality. Firms like Vast Commercial Finance, which has been trading for 4.5 years, exist precisely to bridge that gap for businesses that need to borrow money to unlock growth, whether through acquisition or other routes. You can explore the full conversation on Listenly's Purpose People Podcast page.
"If I feel I'm not making enough sales, it's because I'm not talking to enough strangers — as simple as that. Being sat behind the desk being really good at something isn't gonna bring you a whole load of sales."
Dan Cholewinski, Co-founder, Vast Commercial FinanceAbout Dan Cholewinski
Dan Cholewinski built his entire career inside financial services, starting at age 18 in data administration — a grounding in detail and process that would inform his approach to commercial lending for decades. Within two years he had moved through underwriting and into telesales, developing an early instinct for client-facing work that would define his trajectory.
At 21, Cholewinski joined a motor finance lending business that was still relatively small, and he grew with it. By 23 he had become the first salesperson in a newly created national accounts division targeting the top 100 UK motor dealer groups — a role that required building a function from scratch. At 26 he took on his first leadership position managing a field sales team, and he spent a total of 15 years at that same organisation, watching it expand from roughly 65–70 employees to around 600.
That long-arc experience — from individual contributor to senior leader inside a scaling business — gives Cholewinski a distinctive vantage point on both the commercial finance market and the operational realities facing growing companies. When he speaks about M&A funding being accessible to SMBs, it comes from years of structuring and placing that type of finance, not from theory.
He co-founded Vast Commercial Finance to put that expertise directly in the hands of business owners who need to borrow money to grow — whether through acquisition, real estate, or other routes — without needing to navigate the corporate finance world alone.