Colin Keeley

Co-Founder, Verne · 1 appearance on the record.

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Colin Keeley co-founded Verne, an Austin-based software holding company that acquires, operates, and scales bootstrapped B2B SaaS businesses, including products like Scout, Ottomatik, and Prolifiq. He also publishes post-acquisition SaaS growth guides, runs educational courses, and documents holding company acquisitions on the Indie Acquisitions podcast.

11statements → 2claims → 0claims resolved → 3.64/5average certainty → 1.91/5average debate potential →

2 not checkable as stated how the 2 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

1 prediction · 1 assertion · 1 opinion · 5 insights · 3 disclosures · every statement was checked. The prediction and assertion are the 2 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 0 are resolved, and 2 name no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.

The record, in short

What the tape says about how Colin argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.

How they sound: not measured why? →

We measure speaking style by listening to the audio itself, and a fair number needs at least 2,000 words from one person on tape we have measured. There is too little of Colin Keeley on measured tape to publish a rate. This says nothing about how they speak.

What they said11 Episodes1

Everything Colin Keeley said on Startup Acquisition Stories that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →

Opinion

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.”

Colin Keeley Sep 13, 2022 ▶ 9:12 Startup Acquisition Stories with Colin Keeley, Founder at Verne (Acquire'd 2x)

Insight

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.”

Colin Keeley Sep 13, 2022 ▶ 14:07 Startup Acquisition Stories with Colin Keeley, Founder at Verne (Acquire'd 2x)

Insight

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.”

Colin Keeley Sep 13, 2022 ▶ 5:37 Startup Acquisition Stories with Colin Keeley, Founder at Verne (Acquire'd 2x)

Disclosure

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…”

Colin Keeley Sep 13, 2022 ▶ 10:56 Startup Acquisition Stories with Colin Keeley, Founder at Verne (Acquire'd 2x)

Insight

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.”

Colin Keeley Sep 13, 2022 ▶ 16:56 Startup Acquisition Stories with Colin Keeley, Founder at Verne (Acquire'd 2x)

Prediction Not checkable as stated

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.”

Colin Keeley Sep 13, 2022 ▶ 17:09 Startup Acquisition Stories with Colin Keeley, Founder at Verne (Acquire'd 2x)

Insight

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.”

Colin Keeley Sep 13, 2022 ▶ 19:36 Startup Acquisition Stories with Colin Keeley, Founder at Verne (Acquire'd 2x)

Insight

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.”

Colin Keeley Sep 13, 2022 ▶ 2:06 Startup Acquisition Stories with Colin Keeley, Founder at Verne (Acquire'd 2x)

Disclosure

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…”

Colin Keeley Sep 13, 2022 ▶ 3:23 Startup Acquisition Stories with Colin Keeley, Founder at Verne (Acquire'd 2x)

Disclosure

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”

Colin Keeley Sep 13, 2022 ▶ 6:19 Startup Acquisition Stories with Colin Keeley, Founder at Verne (Acquire'd 2x)

Assertion Not checkable as stated

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.”

Colin Keeley Sep 13, 2022 ▶ 8:53 Startup Acquisition Stories with Colin Keeley, Founder at Verne (Acquire'd 2x)

Appearances (1)

Episode	Date	Speaking time
Startup Acquisition Stories with Colin Keeley, Founder at Verne (Acquire'd 2x)	Sep 13, 2022	8m

Colin Keeley

The record, in short

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Appearances (1)

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