The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 200 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 3 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Imran: InTemp Post reached $120,000 ARR in six weeks before acquisition.
“We took it to 120,000 in recurring revenue in six weeks, signed up people like HubSpot, Hostog, and after a couple months of operating it, we sold it on acquire.com.”
Yardini: Acquiring an Existing Business Defeats Building From Scratch
“I think I would definitely Recommend people to acquire an existing business, then start something from scratch, because it takes forever to build something from scratch.”
Gazdecki: Lifetime deals dent acquisition valuations by burdening buyers with free users
“Lifetime deals can actually work heavily against you in acquisition, because as a buyer, you're essentially taking on these users that are free users. They're not paying any revenue. And so sometimes that can actually dent your valuation, depending on how many…”
Shepard: SaaS is valued on profitability and founder independence, not revenue
“I feel like we're always told when you start a SaaS business, like, oh, you're going to be valued off of profit, off of revenue, right? You're going to get three to five times whatever your revenue is and, like, just, I mean, yeah, that's true in some cases, a…”
Gazdecki: Price startup listings below target valuation to ignite bidding wars
“When you go to sell your business, you actually do want to, or I always recommend pricing it lower than your final number that you want to hit and write your final number down, but Go a little bit lower than that. And the reason you do that is because just lik…”
Schroter: Bloated Assets Can Be Highly Profitable for Leaner M&A Buyers
“They think that their cost structure, their OPEX, everything else is baked into what it's always been. They forget that that asset in the hands of people that don't have that expense base could be a money machine.”
Gazdecki: Founders should treat every acquisition offer as their only one
“Any offer that you get, you should also view it as the only offer you'll ever get, because it may be”
No startup should ever go to zero because buyers want built products
“No starter should ever go to zero, because you build a product, you build, you know, happy customers are using it. It may not be that, yeah, it may not be that multi hundred million dollar business, but to someone it's a good, you know, starting point That the…”
Gazdecki: The adage that businesses are bought, not sold, is a lie
“There's a saying where businesses are bought, not sold, and that couldn't be further from the truth. You have to sell your business. You have to talk to buyers. You have to message them. You have to answer their questions because what you're really doing is nu…”
Tran: Many Acquire.com buyers lack clear purchase intent and waste founder time
“I think like mail acquire has a lot of buyers, but a lot of them also do not really know if they want to buy something or do not really know what they want to buy. So they just like try to ask every product and get as much information as they think they can.”
Zhang: Flawed Metrics Won't Prevent a Sale to Turnaround Buyers
“You don't have to have all your ducks in a row. So even if it's like, you know, maybe even if like some numbers are like a bit down or like maybe you don't have like a, Yeah. Like you can still sell the business. Like it just, it's just a business that needs a…”
Gazdecki: 99% of Acquire.com buyers want to retain existing teams
“The majority of buyers that we work with, I'd say 99% of them are gonna wanna, you know, take care of your team just as you have, and if that's a concern as a seller, that's always something to bring up with the buyer and just let them know, and it's a great o…”
Gazdecki: Acquire.com buyers typically look to pay around 1x multiples
“We know specifically what the buyers on acquire are looking to pay and around one multiples. And if you go outside of that interest is very low compared to if you're within the range or even a little bit below that, because you're right. That's how you create …”
Gazdecki: Maintaining a shared buyer Q&A document builds startup deal competition
“Living Q and A at Acquire, or if you're selling your startup, you put every buyer's questions on one Google document and you just answer the question, keep it there. And then when a new buyer reaches out, you share the document and they go in there and they se…”
Naroda: Price startups slightly below expectations to boost buyer bids
“When you list, list with as much information as you can have a price that is good to attract buyers. So it might be lower than the price that you were imagining, but just a tiny fraction below it so that you can attract more bids.”
Gazdecki: A buyer's closing speed is often worth a lower price
“Speed from a buyer is huge. If they're willing to move quickly and close fast that's usually almost always worth a reduced price.”
Gazdecki: All bad acquisitions stem from buyers and sellers not getting along
“Based on all the acquisitions I've seen, the bad ones are usually when the buyer and seller, they don't get along. Almost all of them. Actually, all of them. And then the best ones are, you know, buyer and seller get along, meaning They're on the same page. Th…”
Danilov: Founders selling a startup must keep driving growth during sale process
“When you listed Your business, and so on, and you made the decision to sell it, right? You can't relax in the sense that, okay, I'm selling. Think like you're not selling it, and you're, it's still your business, and you're still responsible to yourself, and t…”
Khan: Startup Founders Must Close Acquisition Deals As Quickly As Possible
“The best thing I think What you should do is get the deal close as soon as possible. Because since it's a space, it's very unpredictable and it can happen with any industry as well. So as soon as you list the product, try to get a couple of interested buyers. …”
Yardini: Buying Software From Purely Technical Founders Is an Ideal Fit
“If you find engineers, like technical people selling the project because they can't, marketing or sales is not their expertise. And if you are, if you have that expertise, absolutely. That's a fantastic fit.”
Gazdecki: Selling a startup requires proactive outreach, not passive listing
“I work with so many founders where they think, you know, you list on acquire, you kind of step back. And if a buyer wants to acquire you bad enough, they'll figure out a way to get ahold of you. But it's going to be further from the case. You have to Reach out…”
Schwab: Sellers should share post-acquisition transition assets before closing
“The other thing was really helpful that impressed the buyer, and this might be a small tip for others, is to also start preparing post-acquisition stuff before you close, and then share it with the buyer.”
Lee: Domain-expert buyers are better acquisition fits than generalist SaaS firms
“Pretty quickly we realized that there was a large enough concentrations finance buyers as people with a real subject matter expertise that that was probably gonna be a much better fit. To both take over the business and not have the hassle of us wondering, A, …”
Gazdecki: Founders Cannot Hard-Close M&A Buyers Like Ordinary Software Sales
“Selling a business you can't necessarily like. You know, hard close the person. Like you gotta have this. There has to be, you know, reasons of their own to want to acquire the business, but you can just make the decision really obvious.”
Gazdecki: SaaS Sellers Very Rarely Have Comprehensive SOPs Documented Pre-Market
“Very rarely do we see that, but a lot of times before we go to market with different businesses, we'll say, can you document certain things or can you outline key procedures to at least allow people to wrap their heads around how does marketing work, product w…”
Gazdecki: Underpricing acquisition listings attracts more buyers and enables upward negotiation
“When you price it as a low opportunity or a low price opportunity, it attracts a lot more buyers and that leads to usually more offers. Then we get more offers. You can usually negotiate them upwards.”
Gazdecki: Setting buyer deadlines creates leverage for better acquisition terms
“What you want to do is you want to tell buyers that you're accepting offers, but don't accept one. You say, Hey, I'm hoping to get all formal offers in by this date. And then the first buyer submits it and he knows the timeline. Like Camille is going to review…”
Osterman: Acquisition buyers wait for competing offers or firm deadlines
“There's also a point when you're in an acquisition process where you have a bunch of people interested, but no one's going to jump until someone else jumps and like gives you an offer or like there's some deadline.”
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…”
Nico Ginan: Startup buyers evaluate numbers alone, not tech or founder attachment
“There is emotional attachment to the product, but it's not worth anything for the buyer. So even if you think your product is like your baby, it's not the case for the buyer. And I think most of them will buy based on the number alone, not the, oh yeah, it's a…”
Nico Ginan: Underpricing a startup creates bidding wars and higher sale prices
“Like, don't overvalue your products, and it's, as we mentioned earlier, I think it's really worth maybe pricing slightly under what you had in mind to get more offer, and then raise the bids, because, like, it's like a restaurant. If you go to a restaurant and…”
Gazdecki: Overpricing is the top reason startups fail to sell on Acquire.com
“That's actually the number one reason a startup won't get acquired on acquire.com is pricing too high.”
Gazdecki: Early transition documentation significantly impacts a startup's valuation
“Having these materials available in advance is huge, and You know, I think a lot of startup founders really don't understand how much it impacts your valuation, the amount of buyers interested.”
Gazdecki: Acquisition buyers typically review 20 to 40 businesses daily
“Buyers are typically looking at sometimes 2030, 40 businesses a day.”
Traditional M&A brokers charge 10-20% fees compared to Acquire.com's 4%
“And so I realized that with Acquire, I was only paying four percent, and also you had a big reach, and you were helping me, coaching me, like, step by step and, you know, helping me make sense of all the different elements that are needed, all the different do…”
Gazdecki: Cold calling can make acquisition targets 100x more successful
“There's a lot of good product, especially on acquired. I see them all the time where it's like, if you can just pick up the phone and you know how to cold call and close the customer, you can make the business a hundred times more successful”
Shepard: Zero-revenue software built for $60k sells on Acquire for $10k
“Acquire has a bunch of these listings from people that like make zero in revenue. So they just don't make anything. And they're like trying to sell these products that are like super high end of probably cost about 50, 60 grand to build for like 10,000 dollars…”
Gazdecki: 1,000th-place companies in commodity markets can reach millions in revenue
“Even if you come in 1000th place in a market, you can still build like a multimillion dollar business.”
Gazdecki: Startups have roughly a 5% chance with strategic buyers
“I would say, you know, maybe you have like a five percent chance with a strategic buyer and they'll value your business entirely different from the majority of buyers. Which are definitely going to be looking at your profitability.”
Gazdecki: SBA loan process is identical for $500K and $5M deals
“The process is the same for 500 K or up to, you know, five million.”
Gazdecki: Overpricing Is Top Reason Startups Fail to Sell on Acquire.com
“That's probably the number one reason why startups don't sell on acquire.com is you price too high.”
Gazdecki: If you have one buyer you have no buyers
“If you have one buyer, you have no buyers and it gets very fascinating. And this is how you increase valuation or get better terms is you have multiple buyers cause you have leverage.”
Gazdecki: Unrealistic 10x revenue expectations are why startups fail to sell
“This is probably the number one reason why I see a lot of startups not selling is they read about some company that sold for 10 times revenue and that biggest thing that happens, but that's an outlier. That's not the averages and that's normal.”
Quayam bought ESG Analytics back for $1 and resold it
“The people that brought us on sort of left the company, and they gave us the company back for like a dollar. And then we sort of scaled up the business again, and then we resold it on acquire.com to another company who, you know, we're sort of still working.”
Gazdecki: Distressed VC-Backed Startups Face Active Secondary M&A Demand
“There's a lot of venture backed startups out there with founders that, you know, may have lost motivation, their optionality in terms of upside liquidity is not looking great. And people are looking to buy these companies and there's founders looking to exit t…”
Gazdecki: Treat Every M&A Prospect as an Active Buyer Until Rejected
“Assume everyone is the buyer until they're not, until they say they're not interested, continue to follow up, continue to push for calls. And that's really like the biggest part with acquisitions that a lot of people I think miss is number one, you gotta be ob…”
Gazdecki: Startups should stop and ship at 90% completion
“I always feel like when you get to 90%, it's gonna, that's where you need to just stop and ship it, because 90% to a hundred percent takes just as much time typically within the team from what I've experienced.”
Gazdecki: Pricing startups lower creates competitive buyer leverage for higher valuations
“So, the more buyers you can bring to the table, the more conversations you have, the more interested buyers you get to You know, solicit an offer to you a letter of intent. That gives you the opportunity to negotiate upwards on valuation, terms, all that fun s…”