People, every show

Marty Balkema

Co-founder & Managing Partner, Calm Capital. On 1 show, 1 appearance. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.

investorfounderoperatorexecutiveengineer@MartyBalkema ↗LinkedIn ↗calmcapital.com ↗

Marty Balkema spent over 25 years writing code and operating software companies, notably co-founding software consultancy Augusto Digital. Together with David Horne, he co-founded Calm Capital, a private holding company that acquires, finances, and grows bootstrapped software and digital businesses such as Wavve and Pttrns.

What they said4 Shows1

Everything Marty Balkema said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.

ACQUISITION STORIES Insight

Acquiring small companies requires the same effort as much larger deals

“The same amount of work that it takes to find and acquire and finance you know like wave, the last business, you know, we probably could have done that same amount of work and bought something that was, you know, two or three times As big.”

Marty Balkema May 31, 2022 ▶ 5:34 Startup Acquisition Stories with David Horne & Marty Balkema - Co-founders at Calm Capital

ACQUISITION STORIES Disclosure

Calm Capital targets essential operating software rather than optional add-on tools

“I think our ideal business we're learning is, is it needs to be like a, an essential business, like a, like the operating system, not an add-on, if you will. So not a business that people can choose to use or not as a, like as a SaaS tool, but a business that …”

Marty Balkema May 31, 2022 ▶ 6:27 Startup Acquisition Stories with David Horne & Marty Balkema - Co-founders at Calm Capital

ACQUISITION STORIES Disclosure

Calm Capital acquired four digital micro-businesses in two years

“And then since then, in the last two years, we've We funded a Shopify app business. We bought a WordPress theme business. We bought a content UI design business subscription business. And then last year we bought a SAS company that helps audio creators market …”

Marty Balkema May 31, 2022 ▶ 2:29 Startup Acquisition Stories with David Horne & Marty Balkema - Co-founders at Calm Capital

ACQUISITION STORIES Disclosure

Calm Capital negotiated the entire Wave acquisition over a shared Slack channel

“We negotiated the entire deal directly with them over Slack. So after the first call, we started a Slack channel shared Slack channel, and we started I mean, I don't know, probably, David, from, what, Thanksgiving to the end of March is when we closed, so, you…”

Marty Balkema May 31, 2022 ▶ 18:18 Startup Acquisition Stories with David Horne & Marty Balkema - Co-founders at Calm Capital

One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Marty's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.

Show	Role there	Eps	Statements	Record
ACQUISITION STORIESLEDGER	Co-founder & Managing Partner, Calm Capital	1	4	—	full record on Startup Acquisition Stories →