Justin Vanderheide, founder of Swimgen, shares strategic advice with Acquire.com CEO Andrew Gazdecki after selling two bootstrapped software businesses.
Insight
Vanderheide: Selling Founders Should Accept Almost Every Buyer Call Request
“I'd say pretty well every request for a face-to-face call, and I wouldn't be too choosy unless you're overwhelmingly busy. You never know what's going to come out of that discussion face-to-face. I maybe only had one that was like really not productive and sho…”
Insight
Vanderheide: Never Hide Flaws; Share Raw Data Upfront in Due Diligence
“Don't try to, like, hide things, it'll, it'll come out in due diligence, so I'm just in that initial data dump, like I said, over-explain, just post all the raw data, even if you've got it, and they can look at it as is.”
Disclosure
Vanderheide Recreated Sunsetted Zendesk Apps for One Dollar Per Agent Monthly
“So I recreated a bunch of the apps that had been available for free nominal price of, you know, one dollar per support agent per month and managed to get those out really quick.”
Assertion Supported
Vanderheide: US-Canada Acquisitions Cannot Directly Transfer Stripe Accounts
“Because I was Canadian, getting acquired by American companies, we couldn't just transfer the Stripe account because it's, like, set as a Canadian entity type thing, so we had to actually, like, switch over Stripe keys and stuff, which wasn't as seamless, but …”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Vanderheide Bootstrapped Swimgen to Serve Every YMCA in Canada
“Sort of just bootstrapped it with that, that first customer and through word of mouth, like every YMCA in Canada was publishing on this along with, you know, municipalities, military bases, what have you. And so we grew from like one customer to hundreds of po…”
Insight
Vanderheide: Answering Early Buyer Questions Progressively Improves M&A Data Packages
“People had a lot of questions, but anytime you go digging and you answer their questions, you know, you just put that with all the other data and then for any future folks that come along, it's there. And so the data you have available for people, you know, ju…”