Software engineer and founder Mark Givko discusses his philosophy on bootstrapping micro-SaaS businesses versus raising venture capital.
Opinion
Mark Givko argues AI should not ghostwrite social media in your voice
“The AI, the automation tool, will interact with social media on your behalf, but not to the point where it begins to write in your voice. I believe that's bad. You should be the one posting content on social media, but you should limit the amount of content yo…”
Insight
Acquirers valuing tech and moats pay higher multiples than cash-flow buyers
“Multiples are very subjective, so A person who's only interested in your business as a cash cow is going to buy for potentially less or three or two point something to three X your ARR and recurring revenue. But someone who's interested more in your tech stack…”
Insight
Buyers asking excessive pre-LOI questions often just research to replicate startups
“If people ask too many questions, especially before the letter of intent, They're usually not particularly serious about it. There is this trend, not only on acquire.com, on Flippa and other websites, where people pay the monthly queue, whatever, and go on the…”
Insight
GoIndex.me suffered churn because its lowest pricing tier offered too much capacity
“Most people don't have huge websites, so it's quite rare to see a website that has more than, let's say, 5000 pages. That, that's a large number. And the tool itself, even on the lowest tier, so the cheapest option, indexed 6000 pages per month. So that's such…”
Disclosure
Mark Givko built, grew, and sold GoIndex.me within seven months
“I built it in 30 days, launched it grew it with ads for another four or six months. And then sold it through acquire.com.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Mark Givko closed the GoIndex.me acquisition five days after the initial conversation
“Monday we had our first conversation and by Friday it was completely sold. The cash hit my bank account, the username and password, everything was transferred.”