Acquire.com

“We took it to 120,000 in recurring revenue in six weeks, signed up people like HubSpot, Hostog, and after a couple months of operating it, we sold it on acquire.com.”

“A lot of times you want to assume good faith, but you have to protect yourself. Especially when you're running a business and you're trying to sell it a couple months extra when you're already tired or when you're trying to get out, just running in circles whi…”

“The newsletters was actually very, very helpful because I think we did like two newsletter blasts, which actually led to most of the, like, you know, NDAs like that came in. And then, so, you know, after each newsletter blast, we would have like a, like an inf…”

“The majority of buyers that we work with, I'd say 99% of them are gonna wanna, you know, take care of your team just as you have, and if that's a concern as a seller, that's always something to bring up with the buyer and just let them know, and it's a great o…”

“You don't have to have all your ducks in a row. So even if it's like, you know, maybe even if like some numbers are like a bit down or like maybe you don't have like a, Yeah. Like you can still sell the business. Like it just, it's just a business that needs a…”

“A lot of people don't know, but we do help a lot of agencies sell and acquire. That's our number two category before SAS.”

“And yeah, I think after posting it, I had roughly seven or eight people that were, you know, had at least signed an NDA to, you know, to get more information or to do some due diligence.”

“Speed from a buyer is huge. If they're willing to move quickly and close fast that's usually almost always worth a reduced price.”

“Living Q and A at Acquire, or if you're selling your startup, you put every buyer's questions on one Google document and you just answer the question, keep it there. And then when a new buyer reaches out, you share the document and they go in there and they se…”

“A lot of times what we see is founders keeping Multiple products within one Stripe account, and that's a whole new mess on its own.”

“When you list, list with as much information as you can have a price that is good to attract buyers. So it might be lower than the price that you were imagining, but just a tiny fraction below it so that you can attract more bids.”

“We know specifically what the buyers on acquire are looking to pay and around one multiples. And if you go outside of that interest is very low compared to if you're within the range or even a little bit below that, because you're right. That's how you create …”

“If I was doing 10 K a month and someone wanted to join, Man, they would need to, I mean, that's a valuable business. Just think of what you could sell for that for through like Quiet Light Brokerage or Acquire.com. It's worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.”

“Based on all the acquisitions I've seen, the bad ones are usually when the buyer and seller, they don't get along. Almost all of them. Actually, all of them. And then the best ones are, you know, buyer and seller get along, meaning They're on the same page. Th…”

“When we went live, you know, I think within the first few days, we had upwards of 30, 40 NDAs, and then I think got up to closer to 50 over the next, you know, week or so”

“You guys brought, ultimately, the guy who, you know, initially reached out, came through acquire, and kind of connected us with napkin”

“I do believe you own the record for most acquisitions on Acquire. I haven't met anybody with as many as you.”

“And so I went out kind of using my same playbook went and acquired about a hundred K and ARR and then listed it on acquire. And I think within like maybe 30 to 45 days sold that business for 500 K and, you know, it was a nice transaction and then kind of just …”

“Usually it'll take me between 30 and 45 days from listing to closing, and then usually for each acquisition, I'll probably jump on, you know, 20 to 30 calls.”

“Setting it up, because actually, funny enough, we had set it up a couple years earlier, and then after a while I remember selling my car, so that you can invest that money into the business, so then, you know, kick off again, so I just said, you know what, lik…”

“Setting up the data room, too, in advance is massive, because you want to be ahead of that stuff, so you keep momentum going, so it doesn't drag on during due diligence, and it delays closing, and people lose excitement, and then that's how deals fall apart, a…”

“The last point's really good, because a lot of founders don't realize when you're Selling your business. You're in sales. You need to follow up. You need to share information. I cannot tell you how many acquisitions I've seen close from like the fourth follow-…”

“I had multiple buyers within the first couple of days, first week. I'd say the story is the same with both products I sold. It was yeah, immediately having people reaching out, asking questions, and I think yeah, both times within the space of a week or a coup…”

“From the day of the first message to close, it was 30 days.”

“When you listed Your business, and so on, and you made the decision to sell it, right? You can't relax in the sense that, okay, I'm selling. Think like you're not selling it, and you're, it's still your business, and you're still responsible to yourself, and t…”

“When you're in even, let's say, due diligence, Like if you're able to show the business is trending upwards, that makes everything so much easier. And then when it starts trending down, that's where every discussion with the buyer is going to be about the decl…”

“I've seen many acquisitions that are like tangled messes where They gotta reach out, see if they can transfer projects. It's much easier if you have separate containers for each business that you're building.”

“So I think I listed it beginning of August something like that, maybe a bit less than the beginning of August. And then like a week later, I've got like, Five LOIs.”

“I know the answer, but like a week and a half or something, something very, very fast. Like it was really fast.”

“Later on, ah, we built another product, and ChatFi is our third product, and that recently got acquired on acquired.com.”

“The best thing I think What you should do is get the deal close as soon as possible. Because since it's a space, it's very unpredictable and it can happen with any industry as well. So as soon as you list the product, try to get a couple of interested buyers. …”

“We had around, I think three three to five interested buyer. We got around three offers, I think, and four to five buyers for, we had a lot of detailed discussions, but we decided one of the buyer that was very suitable.”

“Try to build a product that is very easy to transfer and get ready things done before even the due diligence process started, because you, at the end of the day, you have to transfer the assets, right? So be prepared yourself so that there is very less time be…”

“So they had all cash at closing instead of any seller financing after that.”

“Just the inbound that I got with Just so many different people, like PE firms, and then, like, solo founders, as well as, like established, like, actual agencies, like, marketing agencies that wanted to, you know, expand to, like, design services and stuff”

“It's a great way to get more offers too, because you're de-risking the acquisition opportunity for buyers. The last thing, you know, the biggest fear for every buyer is, you know, I'm going to acquire this business. Now I know how to run it. The founder is goi…”

“There was like a quote, something like, you know, any deal is better than a strikeout or something like that. And that, that was like, Hey, like, I think that was, that's true. And a lot of, I think I see listings on there where vendors want to get, obviously …”

“I saw SAGrader listed on acquire.com. SAGrader is the name of our company, SAGrader AI. And based on my background as a teacher entrepreneur I was like, this works. I understand exactly the pain point as a greater is solving for teachers. And we went and purch…”

“I think I would definitely Recommend people to acquire an existing business, then start something from scratch, because it takes forever to build something from scratch.”

“If you find engineers, like technical people selling the project because they can't, marketing or sales is not their expertise. And if you are, if you have that expertise, absolutely. That's a fantastic fit.”

“I think that's some of the best win-wins that I see at Acquire is you build a business to a certain point, you hand it off to someone to take it farther.”

“When you start meeting with buyers, it becomes very obvious which buyers are prepared and they've done their homework. And that should really separate, you know, serious buyers from non-serious buyers.”

“Time kills all deals. Like if you see somebody who's in, who's interested in your business, keep them engaged, keep working them, keep massaging it. You gotta keep with it. You know, they're going to be looking at other deals. They might be busy. They might be…”

“I work with so many founders where they think, you know, you list on acquire, you kind of step back. And if a buyer wants to acquire you bad enough, they'll figure out a way to get ahold of you. But it's going to be further from the case. You have to Reach out…”

“The entire transfer of assets and everything. I think took less than Three, three days or two days, something like that.”

“Originally what I'm getting at is the original idea was a deal flow platform for myself. So I could potentially acquire small SaaS companies. And then if you couldn't find, if I didn't buy it, you could still find a buyer.”

“The other thing was really helpful that impressed the buyer, and this might be a small tip for others, is to also start preparing post-acquisition stuff before you close, and then share it with the buyer.”

“Anything that you can do to essentially de-risk the acquisition for a buyer, I highly recommend doing this. So putting together You know, standard SOPs or looms, like you had mentioned, or just outlining things to a bit more than what's asked, just gets a buye…”

“We listed a little bit below the recommended amount and we wound up just getting inundated with buyers. And so we got a number of term sheets within the first week sight unseen people without even talking to us and put ourselves in a good competitive process w…”

“Pretty quickly we realized that there was a large enough concentrations finance buyers as people with a real subject matter expertise that that was probably gonna be a much better fit. To both take over the business and not have the hassle of us wondering, A, …”

“That's actually the most common reason for founders that I personally work with that are looking to sell. They are literally already working on something else, and so it makes sense.”

“How many calls did we have? Probably 15 to 20 unique interested buyers. How many serious people? Six, seven maybe. And then it narrowed down we got one offer in, in January. One, we were in a due diligence phase, and that, Didn't go through. And then the final…”

“Selling a business you can't necessarily like. You know, hard close the person. Like you gotta have this. There has to be, you know, reasons of their own to want to acquire the business, but you can just make the decision really obvious.”

“Surprises kill deals. So if there's, like, a bruise on your business, or a bump, or something, you're not necessarily excited to share, just share it anyways, because it's going to get uncovered, and every business has issues.”

“Very rarely do we see that, but a lot of times before we go to market with different businesses, we'll say, can you document certain things or can you outline key procedures to at least allow people to wrap their heads around how does marketing work, product w…”

“I probably talked to a dozen people, a dozen interested individuals like three, four were very serious. And yeah, we closed the deal in like 10 days, I guess.”

“I see these wrappers as like a quick hit. Like if you want to go make a hundred grand, that's about the easiest way I can imagine is you go wrap Claude and you do a thing and you go make it big and you sell it on Acquire.com at 15 grand a month, you know, doub…”

“And then I think it went out in a newsletter one of the days and I woke up the next morning and it was something like 50 or a hundred different requests to view the listing.”

“That lasted for maybe, I'd say, two to three weeks, which I think was quite a short period, because I know it can go on quite longer”

“So we, I listed had a letter of intent in two weeks. So I only had about 10, no, It was probably around eight, eight to 10 calls from listings, so got the LOI around two weeks after listing, so it happened, that was what was actually more of a surprise to me. …”