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
Lear: LeadGen App Took 15-20 Buyer Calls Before Finding Its Acquirer
“How many calls did we have? Probably 15 to 20 unique interested buyers. How many serious people? Six, seven maybe. And then it narrowed down we got one offer in, in January. One, we were in a due diligence phase, and that, Didn't go through. And then the final…”
Gazdecki: Founder's Divided Attention Is the Most Common Reason to Sell
“That's actually the most common reason for founders that I personally work with that are looking to sell. They are literally already working on something else, and so it makes sense.”
Pekibar: Before and After closed sale on Acquire.com in about 10 days
“I probably talked to a dozen people, a dozen interested individuals like three, four were very serious. And yeah, we closed the deal in like 10 days, I guess.”
Pluto LMS secured an LOI just two weeks after listing on Acquire.com
“So we, I listed had a letter of intent in two weeks. So I only had about 10, no, It was probably around eight, eight to 10 calls from listings, so got the LOI around two weeks after listing, so it happened, that was what was actually more of a surprise to me. …”
Rosen: Nomad Cloud received two offers above asking within three days
“And then within three days, we had two offers that were both above asking. So one that was one and a half times, and then the other that was double the asking price.”
Rosen: Nomad Cloud was acquired for half its listing price
“We got it for like half the listing price and ended up acquiring it.”
Domofsky: ForMJ Social's Pre-Sale Revenue Surge Was Project-Based, Not Recurring
“When I first signed up with Acquire and started having meetings, I had a three-month period where revenue had a pretty big bump and the way the business was structured, it looked like it was going to continue to bump like that, but it was all project-based wor…”
Founders should fully isolate technical infrastructure before listing a startup for sale
“If you're preparing to sell your company, make sure everything is completely isolated. So ideally you just hand out the username and the password and it's all transferred. It's done.”
Mark Givko built, grew, and sold GoIndex.me within seven months
“I built it in 30 days, launched it grew it with ads for another four or six months. And then sold it through acquire.com.”
Mark Givko closed the GoIndex.me acquisition five days after the initial conversation
“Monday we had our first conversation and by Friday it was completely sold. The cash hit my bank account, the username and password, everything was transferred.”
Nico Ginan: Founders should treat startup acquisition listings like landing pages
“And then I would say, like, your listing, like, you should treat your listing like a landing page. So put the really catchy stuff at the top, like, make sure this is, okay, this is, like, you know, why you should keep reading this listing, and then you tell th…”
Providing upfront Stripe screenshots filters repetitive buyer questions during acquisition
“I took screenshots of most of the tools, like the revenue, MRR, churn, everything that they could find on, on our Stripe, just posted on, on the account, on Acquire. And I think that, that made the process a lot more because whenever someone reached out, they …”
Fider reached an agreed sale on Acquire.com in just two weeks
“And I think I have noticed here that it took like two weeks to go from publishing on Acquire to Sale Agreed.”
Gazdecki: Founder Transition Commitments De-Risk Deals And Support Better Pricing
“So good job negotiating that too, because it can help you find the right type of buyer or align what you're looking to accomplish during the acquisition with the buyer. So it also de-risk acquisition as well. So buyer is more confident, maybe agreeing to your …”
Metelsky: Sitekick Received Over 100 Buyer Inquiries on Acquire.com
“I think we get like more than a hundred potential buyers reaching out on acquire.com”
Metelsky: Sitekick Received 50 To 60 Buyer Inquiries After Acquire Newsletter Feature
“What really helped is we got featured. I think you've got something like a daily featured startup section in your mailing list. And then one day also, I don't know, I got 50, 60 potential buyers reaching out”
Shaaban received 60 to 70 signed NDAs during SaaS acquisition process
“I think we got close to, like, 60 or 70 NDAs, if I'm not mistaken. It was definitely in that range.”
Gazdecki: Luke Shepard sold his startup for $500,000 at age 23
“He recently got acquired for half a million bucks at age 23.”
Shepard: Revive Ratings sold for $500K with a 90-day SBA loan process
“So I think in total it ended up taking, like, Almost 90 days to get it all the way processed. And, like, we weren't, like, a huge acquisition, you know? Like, 500 grand is, it's good, but, like, Acquire.com is selling much bigger deals, but the SBA loan just t…”
Gazdecki: Startup sellers should expect a 90-day paid transition plan
“If you're selling a business at minimum, I would expect. 90 day transition plan or consulting agreement. And you can get paid for that too.”
Hidden Surprises Kill Startup Acquisitions Faster Than Anything Else
“Nothing kills an acquisition faster than surprises. Even if you have, like, bad stuff, just say, like, hey, listen, we tried this marketing campaign, didn't work”
Martin Galovic Founded FansMetrics at 20 and Sold It at 22
“So when I was probably 20, I started fencematrix.com, which is to this day, it's biggest only fun search engine, and then when I was 22, I sold it To a German company which noticed it through acquire.com.”
Andrew Gazdecki: Closing Buyer Information Gaps Creates Competing Acquisition Offers
“Cause when a lot of startups go to market, like it's so important to understand like your job when
When selling a business is to close that information gap. Like, a buyer knows nothing about your business, and you want to give them as much information as possi…”
Savage: Serious buyers need daily workflow data to evaluate business dependency
“Another one I absolutely will do for the next Company that I sell a day-to-day, a day-in-the-life kind of thing. Every day when I get up, this, these are the things that I do every day. They need to know that. So are they buying a job or are they buying a busi…”
Aiello: DimeADozen listed on Acquire.com at 3x revenue after six months
“So all that being said, so we figured out a price point that we were happy with. It was about three times revenue at that time, which is silly, or which is rough because we were only six months old, but you know, we decided what we decided, put it up at three …”
Gazdecki: Acquire.com bans buyers who strategically reprice deals near closing
“Anyone who does that on acquire.com, we unfortunately ban buyers that do that. So it depends. It, if it's on a what we would deem as, you know, egregious, where there's no, if it's repriced based on information you had at day one, and we feel that that was you…”
Gethers: EarlyAdmit saw 75 NDAs and 15% buyer engagement on Acquire.com
“We had, I think on, on the acquire platform, we had about 75 NDAs over the time span of four to five months or so. And we probably had about a 15% Like, I would say real engagement rate, like potential buyers who were actually interested and have conversations…”
Sorbara: Multiple acquisition offers for Barkley HQ were identical
“Cause a lot of the offers were the exact same.”
Gazdecki: Signing an LOI is just the start of harder acquisition work
“Once you sign in a lie, that's kind of just the start of kind of the harder chapter of the acquisition process.”
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.”
Sanchez: Studia received over 80 NDAs within 30 days on Acquire.com
“Over 80 NDAs I got in a time period of 30 days”
Sanchez: Studia received an acquisition LOI within one month on Acquire.com
“So we read our profile. That was 10 minutes with the basic stuff. And we left it there. We left it there for a month. We were getting NDAs, people interested, some questions here or there, but it was actually one month until we got the letter of intent which w…”
Gazdecki: Rapid buyer comprehension creates competitive M&A marketplaces and buyer FOMO
“When you're selling a business, you know, goal number one obviously is to have a good business, but maybe goal number two is, you know, you want to help buyers understand your business as much as possible. As quickly as possible. So you create that market and …”
Gazdecki: GrowthBar may hold Acquire.com records for deal size and closing speed
“I think you may have set a record with the size of the acquisition and then also the time in which it closed.”
Spera: GrowthBar received two acquisition offers within 72 hours of listing
“And truly got two offers basically before 72 hours were up, something like that. Got another offline offer from a firm who was sitting on the sidelines and had, had approached us, I don't know, six months before, and I had told them, hey guys, we're gonna list…”
Gazdecki: Acquire.com targets acquisitions from a database of 200,000 potential buyers
“Basically a targeted newsletter, where we go through our database of 200,000 buyers, and we kind of Pick buyers that are looking for SaaS businesses doing, you know, in your range of revenue.”
Spera: Fifty buyers signed NDAs for GrowthBar within 48 hours on Acquire.com
“And we had like 50 people sign a NDA to get into the data room. So it was like, it was a swell of people in the first 48 hours.”
Kim: Acquire.com listing generated 10 to 12 buyer inquiries on day one
“The first day we were approved, I had, like, 10, like, 10 to 12 different people reach out, like, immediately”
Gazdecki: Acquire.com evaluates over 3,000 startup listings per month
“But we see like, 3000 plus startups a month, so I kind of lose track at times.”
Gazdecki waited eight months before working full-time on Acquire.com
“Even I didn't jump right into like you know, choir, I kind of took, put my toe in there, thought, figured out if there was anything real and then I jumped in full-time yeah, maybe like Eight months after launch or something like that. Six months.”
Gazdecki: A two-person financial satire newsletter generates over $1M in profit
“This is like a two person shop and they're making like, you know, a million plus in profit.”
Fastdok's buyer had already acquired 11 other startups on Acquire.com
“And mainly it's mentioned in, in acquired that he already acquired through acquire like a 11, 11, 11 startup.”
Scott: Listed A Podcast Company at a 0.8x revenue multiple
“Now, part of that may be because I only did a 0.8 X valuation on revenue.”
Gazdecki: Schedule pre-LOI calls and weekly buyer meetings during diligence
“Like before I sign this, I always recommend a pre LOI signing call, just like, Hey, I'm going to sign this LOI. Just wanted to run through, you know, once I sign this, what happens? And then schedule a meeting every week. And if all you have to talk about is t…”
Gazdecki: Typical acquisition takes 30 days to LOI, 30-60 diligence
“30 days typically I'd say to get to LOI and then another 30, 60 days for due diligence, but it depends on the company size we've seen. The fastest was like 48 hours”
Gazdecki: Centralized buyer FAQs save time and demonstrate deal momentum
“Having a centralized document for everyone's question because with that document, number one, you'll save time. And then you're, you also educate other buyers on questions that other buyers are asking. And that, that really does three things. Number one, it sa…”