Everything Colin Keeley said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Keeley: ESW Capital Focuses on Extreme Automation and Headcount Cuts
“So I think Joe Lamont's like an interesting case study of kind of a more different approach where it's a, More hardcore, more like automate everything, rip out the people and do assembly line style.”
Keeley: Acquirers without developer management experience will waste money on software companies
“If you've never managed developers before, you're going to blow a lot of money. I'm trying to wrangle them in and build stuff. So like, you know, content sites or something like that, I think is a little easier, like a small content site to start.”
Keeley: Acquiring a $400K business takes the same work as $4M
“I guess we probably quickly realized, like, if you're doing something that's 200,000, or like two million, or four hundred thousand and four million, like, it's roughly the same amount of work, so leaning more towards these, like, single digit ARR companies.”
Keeley: Verne gave up convincing founders expecting 10x to 20x ARR multiples
“I just have mostly given up on trying to convince people like you could throw them the micro require reports and be like, well, this is what things are transacting at. But if people think their business is worth 10, 20 times ARR, it's just, you know, maybe the…”
Keeley: Private market downturns lag public markets due to dry powder
“There's a pretty significant delay between the public markets and the private markets. It's like before things really start to turn, just because there's a lot of dry powder out there.”
Keeley: More venture orphans unable to raise will seek acquisitions
“What's exciting to us is, like, more of these companies that are, like, struggling to raise their next round, like these venture orphans. I've seen a few come up on Microquire. I think we're going to see more of those pop up.”
Keeley: Pricing power with low churn measures true customer value creation
“I would say pricing power. Like, not that we do it, but I think if you could double prices and see very low churn, I think that's, like, a meaningful measure of, like, how much value you're actually creating for your customer.”
Keeley: Building venture studio startups is extremely difficult despite capital and experience
“Once to twice a year, we'd spin up new companies and that's just a really hard process, even if you have money and like you've done it before.”
Keeley: Verne acquired BlinkSale for a six-figure price
“Yeah, it was six figures. I don't know if I could, I don't think I could say exact numbers, but in the six figures is owned by this guy, Brandon who was a serial founder and had done acquisitions before. So like we couldn't have possibly bet bought from like a…”
Keeley: Verne typically values acquisitions using SDE and pays 1-4x ARR
“Seller discretionary earnings is typically how we value it. And then we say we often pay, like, one to four times ARR”
Keeley: Verne Recently Lost Deals to Constellation Software
“We just got beat out on a couple of deals by them recently, which is kind of cool. It's like, you know, losing basketball to Michael Jordan or something.”
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