James Crennan, General Partner at Xenon Partners, describes the micro private equity thesis for acquiring viable SaaS businesses whose growth rates fall short of standard venture capital benchmarks.
0:00 / 0:32exact quote · 32.0s
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“We talk to these founders who have built this business that is in all senses, a great business. But when you overlay the venture capital trajectory that needs to happen for businesses to be doing actually great by the label of great in the modern world, then these companies aren't typically hitting the growth rates that are required. To really provide enough of an opportunity to the founders to have upsized returns.”
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More from James Crennan
Disclosure
Xenon's first transaction acquired a side project from Intercom's founder
“So the first transaction that we actually did was working with the founder of intercom to remove his main distraction.”
James CrennanApr 4, 2022▶ 5:11Startup Acquisition Stories with James Crennan - General Partner at Xenon Partners
Disclosure
Crennan: Xenon buys blemished software companies that other acquirers avoid
“Will, we often deal with these companies that, that have this, these marks on their name that I think a lot of others would look at and just say, you know, this, these are smells that we don't want to be involved with. We're very much not like that, and I gues…”
James CrennanApr 4, 2022▶ 8:57Startup Acquisition Stories with James Crennan - General Partner at Xenon Partners
PredictionHeld up
Crennan predicted in April 2022 that tech valuations would contract
“And so I think over the next 12 months or 20, 22, I think we're going to see some really bubbly valuations that we've had start to contract down again.”
James CrennanApr 4, 2022▶ 23:05Startup Acquisition Stories with James Crennan - General Partner at Xenon Partners
Disclosure
Crennan: Xenon Partners has completed 49 founder transactions since 2010
“So we've done 49. Transactions with founders since 2010.”
James CrennanApr 4, 2022▶ 4:13Startup Acquisition Stories with James Crennan - General Partner at Xenon Partners
Disclosure
Crennan: Xenon acquired Scripted without recurring revenue to convert it to SaaS
“There are instances where we've actually done transactions a little bit outside these criteria. So one example would be scripted where it didn't actually have a recurring revenue subscription business, but we immediately saw that the one could be implemented. …”
James CrennanApr 4, 2022▶ 14:08Startup Acquisition Stories with James Crennan - General Partner at Xenon Partners
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