Casel: Preparing due diligence materials pre-listing drastically reduces in-deal workload
Brian Casel · Startup Acquisition Stories with Brian Casel - Founder of ZipMessage · Mar 28, 2022 · at 18:02
Brian Casel, founder of ZipMessage, explains to Andrew Gazdecki on MicroAcquire how pre-assembling due diligence materials speeds up startup acquisition deals.
0:00 / 0:19exact quote · 19.6s
720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“A lot of the due diligence work, like getting my books in order, getting, you know, just getting the things that I know that they're probably going to ask for doing a lot of that prep work even before I listed helped, helped a lot so that by the time it got into a deal there was very minimal, you know, time and prep work that I had to do.”
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 Brian Casel
Casel: Acquirers prefer under-optimized businesses because perfection limits growth upside
“Just show your business work like warts and all, like all, like it's okay if there are gaps, it's okay if things are not on, you know, under optimized because that's the opportunity that a buyer is looking for. You know, they're looking, if you're a buyer, you…”
Casel: Experienced buyers sometimes drag out timelines to grind sellers down
“On the one hand, somebody who's more experienced, who's done more, more acquisitions in the past, they know the mechanics, they know the process. There's, you know they're going to ask for certain things and then they're going to do due diligence. Then we get …”
Casel: Marketplace listing pages need high-level teaser prospectuses to close deals
“You can't expect just the listing page or just the asking price or just the name or something to be enough for a buyer to submit an offer. They're going to need to First of all, they're probably looking at many other businesses. Second of all but like you don'…”
Casel divested five businesses in six months to focus on ZipMessage
“I did sell or let go of five you can call them businesses. Some of them are just really tiny projects, but some of them are, were actual businesses of mine. I let go of five of those over the last six months. And so right now I'm focusing on a business that I …”
Casel: Deal timelines on MicroAcquire ranged from five days to three months
“Like one of them took three months to, from offer to close. Another one took five days from offer to close, you know, like literally, like, yeah”
Casel: Selling without a broker brings more noise despite serious marketplace buyers
“Without, again, like without a broker, you're sort of on your own and, but that's by design, right? Like that's like, I chose to go without a broker intentionally because basically because micro acquire exists that, that made this path a lot more viable. But i…”