Alan Li: Acquisition Due Diligence Can Be Reflective and Therapeutic for Founders
Alan Li · Startup Acquisition Stories with Alan Li Co-founder of Moxa · Sep 12, 2023 · at 17:04
Moxa co-founder Alan Li discusses his favorite aspects of selling his company with Andrew Gazdecki, CEO of Acquire.com.
0:00 / 0:49exact quote · 49.9s
720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“I actually enjoyed sort of the diligence process, which might seem a little masochistic to other people, but it just goes to show how much work we had done over the last few years and sort of the knowledge and the know how and sort of explaining and sharing that to a buyer gave us a little bit of time to reflect on like, wow, we did a lot of things over, you know, the last couple of years where When you're in startup mode as you know, a lot of times it's just what fires are burning right now, how can I put them out, what's next, and There's not that much time to reflect. So that whole diligence process actually provided a bit of reflection time for me and for the team into seeing what we had built and sort of accomplished which was you know, interestingly, a little bit therapeutic.”
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 Alan Li
Alan Li: Asian Markets Were Better Suited For Moxa Than the US
“We realized the Asia market was actually a little bit more primed and better suited for a product like ours.”
Alan Li: Moxa struggled to achieve positive LTV-to-CAC with paid ads
“What we realized was it was really tough to have a positive LTV to CAC on peer paid advertising.”
Li: Moxa chose an all-cash Acquire.com offer over stock and earnouts
“We decided to go with the buyer on acquired because they were able to make an all cash offer. The other buyer wanted to do sort of a mix of stock and earn outs which just made it a little bit more messy.”
Alan Li: Moxa Acquired Initial Users Through Organic Educational TikTok Videos
“Yeah the first ones mostly were through organic social so I had never used TikTok. My partners had never used it either until we started Moxa, but, We had heard that, you know, TikTok was a great way to showcase and also educate people on interesting topics. I…”