Minnow founder Jes Bickhart shares strategic M&A advice on evaluating startup components separately when seeking acquisition buyers.
Insight
Bickhart: Buyers searching for reasons to say no are already sold
“If the person that you're talking to is looking for a reason to say yes, then we're probably out. Like, if they're looking for a reason, they're like, tell me why I should buy this again, like, what is it, if they're looking for a reason to say yes, they're do…”
Insight
Bickhart: TV discovery is harder than music due to longer sampling times
“Film and TV, the sampling time with music is like three to four seconds. You're like, I kind of like this or not. Tilbury TV, like, you have to watch it in 20 minutes to something to figure out if you like it. You do that two times and you're done for the nigh…”
Insight
Bickhart: Social algorithms prioritize peer shares over likes and comments
“As far as like Facebook's algorithm goes, like if you get, the more shares you get, the more likely you're going to be featured on that discover page. So create a content that it's inherently shareable, not necessarily the most outliers or comments, but like c…”
Insight
Bickhart: Selling alpha data feeds inherently destroys their market value
“The more people that pay to subscribe to this alpha, the less alpha it's actually providing in the marketplace. Your data becomes priced into the model.”
Assertion Not publicly verifiable
Bickhart: Minnow broke into Apple's top 200 apps on launch day
“On lunch day, we broke into Apple's top 200 apps on the lunch day, and we never know a lot of that until we sold.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Bickhart: Instagram meme account drove 400 daily app downloads for Minnow
“We built one of the fastest growing Film and TV meme accounts on Instagram, and at its peak, we had over 600,000 followers including big celebrities, and we're promoting new movies on platforms, old movies on platforms, things that are coming, things that are …”