Apr 25, 2023 · 17m · startup-acquisition-stories
Startup Acquisition Stories with Varun Kundra, Co-Founder of Beam Commerce
0:00 / 0:00
gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
In this episode of Startup Acquisition Stories, host Andrew Gazdecki interviews Beam Commerce co-founder Varun Kundra, who shares key insights on acquiring, scaling, and selling Shopify applications on Acquire.com, including proven due diligence frameworks, buyer vetting techniques, and post-sale handover strategies.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. Andrew holds 46.3% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Andrew as informed peer 5.2 Guest teaching 1.5 Guest disagreement 0.2 Andrew pushing back 0.8
speaking balance: gold is Andrew, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 7:28 Skipping escrow protocol
Varun goes against conventional marketplace safety practices by revealing that he bypassed escrow entirely and wired funds directly to speed up the transaction.
Hardest push from Andrew ▶ 7:43 Firm escrow recommendationAndrew directly rejects the idea of bypassing escrow, warning listeners never to close transactions without escrow due to dispute risks.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 8:37 Shopify ecosystem diligence masterclassVarun educates the host on how to evaluate Shopify apps across 8,000+ competitors by auditing keyword rankings, category density, and UX friction.
Andrew holds their own ▶ 14:38 The 'one buyer is no buyers' principleAndrew takes charge of the conversation with a comprehensive explanation of deal negotiation, proactive founder salesmanship, and managing multiple bids.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Andrew as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Andrew pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Introducing Varun Kundra and Beam Commerce | 3 | 2 | 0 | 0 | Andrew inquires about Varun's experience on Acquire.com and humorously admits he had previously assumed entrepreneurs only worked on one startup at a time. Varun politely clarifies the sequence and volume of his transactions, noting he bought one app and sold three across four total deals. | |
| Listing Apps on Acquire.com and Buyer Vetting | 4 | 1 | 0 | 0 | Andrew draws a real estate analogy to illustrate how buyer pools contract as asset prices increase. Varun agrees and outlines his simple vetting framework based on buyer budget filters and background research. | |
| Closing Deals Rapidly and the Importance of Escrow | 6 | 0 | 1 | 5 | When Varun reveals he bypassed escrow completely to expedite closing, Andrew immediately steps in to advise against it, emphasizing that escrow is essential to prevent disputes. Varun concedes that standard buyers and sellers should always use escrow. | |
| Conducting Due Diligence on Shopify Applications | 5 | 3 | 0 | 0 | Varun explains how to conduct Shopify app due diligence by adopting the merchant perspective and evaluating app store keyword competition. Andrew reinforces this advice, summarizing the value of product testing and review analysis. | |
| Managing Smooth Post-Sale Handover via Slack | 6 | 2 | 0 | 0 | Varun shares his tactic of opening a shared Slack channel between buyer and seller teams for smooth post-sale onboarding. Andrew elaborates on how shared real-time channels sustain deal momentum and accelerate query resolution compared to email. | |
| Key Advice for Startup Buyers and Sellers | 7 | 1 | 0 | 0 | Varun advises founders to talk to multiple buyers to build negotiating leverage and list while still experiencing growth. Andrew delivers an emphatic breakdown of seller psychology, citing the maxim that having only one buyer effectively means having no buyers. |
Statements from this episode (13)
Kundra: Beam Commerce Acquired Product Quiz Builder from Dutch Agency
“So actually we bought it from another company. It was an agency in the Netherlands and they were trying to sell off the app. To sort of focus on a bigger project. And we really liked the category. We really liked the build quality. We thought we saw a lot of p…”
Kundra: Beam Commerce Has Completed Four Transactions on Acquire.com
“So we've done four transactions all on acquire. So we bought this company or this product. We also bought, we also sold to others. And then just recently we sold this quiz builder as well. So. There's four right there.”
Kundra: $10K–$20K App Sales Take Weeks; Larger Sales Take Months
“And then for the selling I felt it was easier to sell the smaller products. They were like in the 10 to 20 K range. Those were faster. And I would also say like maybe two, three weeks. And this most recent acquisition, this most recent sale took longer. It too…”
Kundra: Smaller app listings on Acquire.com get buyer inquiries within hours
“So when you go live, I mean, like for us and for all my experiences, it's been relatively quick. Like I would say within a couple of hours, you get people reaching out for, you know, more information and you accept the request or you decline the request. Yeah,…”
Beam Commerce Sold Product Quiz Builder to Repeat Buyer
“So actually what happened was the acquirer that acquired this app, we had sold him a previous app before.
so he reached out, he saw the listing and he was like, hey, I'm also interested in this.”
Beam Commerce Closes App Sale in Ten Days via Existing Relationship
“Like we had an existing relationship with that, with the buyer from the previous transaction.
I trusted him and I knew he does business pretty quickly.
So I would say, honestly, maybe within like maybe 10 days.”
Kundra Bypasses Escrow for Direct Wire on App Sale Due to Trust
“And I think one thing that helped here was like because of our relationship with the buyer, we, you know, we liked it not to go do escrow at all.
Like we just wired the, he just wired the funds.
so that saves a lot of time.”
Gazdecki Strongly Recommends Using Escrow for All Startup Acquisitions
“I highly recommend escrow to everyone.”
Beam Commerce provided customer support to buyer for three months post-sale
“One was that we agreed to provide our customer support person to the buyer for, I think it was a period of three months. So I think that was helpful for them to also just like Get familiar with the app and the sort of customer support requests and things like …”
Kundra: Shared Slack Channels Accelerate Post-Acquisition Transitions Better Than Email
“One thing that I did this time and I would recommend is create like a Slack channel between You and your team and the buyer and their team. So then like your customer support person can talk to their customer support people. You can, you know, the product pers…”