Shepard: 95% of competitor CEOs agreed to meet with college founder
Luke Shepard · Startup Acquisition Stories With Luke Sheppard, Founder of Revive Ratings · Mar 26, 2024 · at 5:08
Revive Ratings founder Luke Shepard discusses how being a college student disarmed competitors when networking on LinkedIn.
0:00 / 0:27exact quote · 27.3s
720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“The other cool thing about college is, like, kind of like the secret is you just no one sees you as a threat, right? So I would actually, like, spend, like, probably, like, 30 minutes a week just messaging competitors on LinkedIn, their CEOs and stuff, and like, hey, you know, I'm in college, I started a business, we kind of compete with you, I've only got a hundred customers, though. Would you mind if I took you out to lunch or something? And, I mean, no joke, When I tell you, 95% of them said yes.”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from Luke Shepard
Shepard: SaaS is valued on profitability and founder independence, not revenue
“I feel like we're always told when you start a SaaS business, like, oh, you're going to be valued off of profit, off of revenue, right? You're going to get three to five times whatever your revenue is and, like, just, I mean, yeah, that's true in some cases, a…”
Shepard: Insurance agencies are easy cold targets because owner names are public
“Insurance agencies, We're the easiest clientele to start with because I started without, like, knowledge of, like, Apollo or Seamless or ZoomInfo, so I don't know how to find people's names online. So if you look it up, just look up insurance agencies near me,…”
Shepard: Zero-revenue software built for $60k sells on Acquire for $10k
“Acquire has a bunch of these listings from people that like make zero in revenue. So they just don't make anything. And they're like trying to sell these products that are like super high end of probably cost about 50, 60 grand to build for like 10,000 dollars…”
Shepard: Revive Ratings acquired its first 200 customers via cold calling
“Yeah, that was all, that was our first 200 customers. Yeah, so all cold called.”
Shepard: First acquisition deal collapsed due to buyer lacking funds
“He didn't have the money that he said that he did. And so it kind of the later acquisition about two months, which, you know, looking back, it's like, you know, kind of a drop in the bucket, right?”
Shepard: Revive Ratings sold for $500K with a 90-day SBA loan process
“So I think in total it ended up taking, like, Almost 90 days to get it all the way processed. And, like, we weren't, like, a huge acquisition, you know? Like, 500 grand is, it's good, but, like, Acquire.com is selling much bigger deals, but the SBA loan just t…”