The Ledger
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Skaalerud: Excessive revenue growth can be a red flag in SaaS acquisitions
“Growth is another one where too much growth is kind of punitive for us because it's like, you know, what are we supposed to do? If the business is already ripping, like that's what we do. So, and then it's also that raises some flags from a seller motive too. …”
Skaalerud: Skaling Ventures uses debt and fractional teams for transformations
“We used that in our acquisitions and to finance some of the transformation pulling in my team, which is all kind of fractional folks.”
Skaalerud: $500k-$1M SaaS acquisitions require a 90-day phased founder transition
“And if we're talking kind of, you know, the 500 to a million ARR, which is like, you know, 15 to 25 or whatever, 25 The 45 MRR where there's that level of complexity. You're probably talking about 90 day ideal or three months seller transition, which is 60 hou…”
Skaalerud: Micro-SaaS due diligence replaces manual data rooms with direct software access
“So if you think about traditional OG private equity and it's like, hey, we have a data room and this data room is stuffed full of like spreadsheets that have P and L's and, you know, customer concentration and personnel and salespeople and quotas and headcount…”
Skaalerud: Skaling Ventures targets an average 3x ARR multiple for acquisitions
“For instance, an AR multiple, we want to see like on average a three X. So if we see a two X that's rewarded, if we see a five X that's punitive, but it's not a deal breaker.”
Skaalerud: Acquirers should expect to rewrite 20% to 40% of SaaS code
“Like I think our assumption is that, you know, call it on average, 20 to 40% of the product needs to be enhanced or rewritten in some way. But beyond that, you start to play a game around technical debt and it kind of changes your ability to move fast.”
Skaalerud: Micro-SaaS buyers should retain sellers on the cap table post-sale
“Optimally my view is like, you're selling the business. Let's keep you on the capital stack, like on the cap table. For two, three, four, five, you know, whatever, for like five hours a month, and you're there to advise us on the thing, but ultimately, it's ki…”
Skaling Ventures targets SaaS acquisitions with $10K to $40K MRR
“And then right now we're playing in like the, you know, call it 10 to 40 K MRR. And we have a pretty structured quantitative scorecard that, that addresses some other things. So we fixate a lot of course on net revenue retention logo retention, some stuff like…”