Serial founder Brian Casel discusses his experience selling five companies without an intermediary broker on MicroAcquire with founder Andrew Gazdecki.
Insight
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…”
Insight
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 …”
Insight
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'…”
Disclosure
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 …”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
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”
Insight
Casel: Preparing due diligence materials pre-listing drastically reduces in-deal workload
“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 in…”