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 388 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 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
Crennan: Xenon buys blemished software companies that other acquirers avoid
“Will, we often deal with these companies that, that have this, these marks on their name that I think a lot of others would look at and just say, you know, this, these are smells that we don't want to be involved with. We're very much not like that, and I gues…”
McArdle: SureSwift does not load debt, flip assets, or plan fund liquidation
“Technically, we're a private equity firm, but most of what people know about PE, which is,
Buy load with debt, strip out expenses, and then flip to the next size buyer.
We don't do any of that.
we don't plan to liquidate our funds.
So yeah,
I just prefer…”
Ramp Ventures operates portfolio companies directly without individual CEOs
“A little bit how we're different than some other firms out there is that we don't have a CEO for each company. We actually, my partner and I are kind of a co-CEO or like CEO COO.”
Patel: Ramp Ventures targets $1M–$5M ARR B2B SaaS, excluding e-commerce
“Ideally, in a perfect world, we're looking at one to two, one to five million dollar AR companies that are in B to B SaaS. Everything else, we'll kind of look at the details unless they sell to e-commerce. So no Shopify and no WordPress for the most part.”
Homann: Optimized Median sale for transition speed over highest purchase price
“We optimize actually not for top price. We optimize for you know, getting the business transition out quickly. We had already started workshop, our new company and we had some commitments there and that sort of thing.”
Bennett: Bootstrapping derisks startup exits without requiring a massive winner
“We bootstrapped our businesses and, you know, kind of plan to do the same in the future. It just makes it for us, it really de-risked That whole process. Cause we know even if we don't have like a, you know, a huge winner, like we can still get something out o…”
Toledano countered Reconcile's $350K asking price on $73K ARR with $180K cash
“They were reporting, you know, like, 73 K in our ARR and asking for 350 K which was, I found outrageous for, like, that kind of product but I didn't mind, like, I still got in touch, you know, I still basically did my thing, and Basically made an offer, which …”
Toledano bases his software acquisition offers on EBITDA rather than ARR
“Like, I don't really make offers on ARR. I make offers on EBITDA. You know, like, that's the whole point, is how much can I get out on my investment?”
Tara Reed: Growth Spree companies share centralized marketing and agency resources
“And so the, all of the growth spree companies are sharing marketing agency operations, a couple of different resources, if that makes sense, but then they have a point of contact who's usually the CTO.”
Growth Spree packages acquired software as agency or educational services
“So when we acquire a software business, we're not going to sell it just as a software business. We sell it and position it as a education experience and or an agency.”
Reed: Marketing and distribution potential is primary criterion when evaluating acquisitions
“Like that's not going to be my superpower. I'm probably not going to come up with a bunch of product ideas is what they can do differently. I'm going to come up with a marketing and distribution idea. Or how we're going to like wrap this in something that can …”
Gazdecki: MicroAcquire does not plan to charge commissions
“Yeah, no, that's not our plan, so don't worry about that.”
Calderon hosted a 300-person Bali victory party months before deal actually closed
“In September when I thought we were, you know, days away from closing, I actually ended up renting this massive villa in Bali, because I was in Bali at that time, inviting all my friends, I'm not even kidding you, there's probably like, 300 people at this part…”
Why Calderon rejected higher offers to sell StratDev to HSR Capital
“The buyer actually did not have the most ideal terms if you're looking at it from a price point perspective. I chose the buyer HSR Capital for three reasons.”
Streamoid Counts Aditya Birla, Reliance Retail, Levi's, and Puma as Customers
“So with Streamoid, we do, we sell to enterprises. So we, you know, in India, we work with Aditya Birla, we work with Reliance Retail, we work with Aravind. So, you know, all the top guys we're working with. You know, even brands like Levi's and Puma, these are…”
Miller targeted an acquisition valuation of 1.5x ARR for Seen
“For me, that was like, you know, one and a half years of revenue. Something that I felt like was pretty modest”
Naroda: Notion Apps founders chose to sell due to six-year burnout
“Mostly for Samir and I, we have been on this journey for six years. So Notion Apps wasn't our first product. It was utilized at App, then it's Notion Apps. And then we thought the business, one, we were both exhausted, we were continuously building and we were…”
Graber Plans to Build an Agency Portfolio via Strategic Acquisitions
“So my vision is to continue running Modern Outbound as like a specialist agency and continue to acquire specialist agencies like GTM Design.”
Graber details acquisition buy box: specialized agency, recurring revenue, $300k+ EBITDA
“I knew I wanted it to be a marketing agency that specialized in something That had some form of a subscription recurring base of clients that's been around for at least a couple of years that has a really talented team, good processes. I didn't need it to be t…”
Graber: Modern Outbound plans another agency acquisition within four months
“In the next two, three, four months, I'll be looking to bolt on potentially another subscription design agency, maybe, or branding agency.”
Armin Urimpur: Apreva founders committed to a 12-month post-acquisition transition
“We sort of, you know, offered the buyer, 12 months of commitment from the entire team to stay on and pretty much execute on the plan that we had sort of proposed to him would be how he could increase the value of the company, you know, over the next few years.…”
Yummy Bee founder: All investors approached the startup organically
“Even for example, we have raised investments. All the investors have actually approached us rather than we approach it.”
Fott: Roughly half of his 18 sold startups exceeded $100k revenue
“So above a 100,000 Probably out of the 18 that I've sold, probably about half of them.”
Stuart Fott contacts 20 current or prospective partners every day
“I just plug it into my phone. I have a cadence where every, every day I reach out to 20 either potential partners that I'm working with or Current partners that I'm working with are potential partners that I would like to work with, and depending on what stage…”
Fott flies out to train buyers in person to win deals
“And yeah, I do think that it's helped me win, win some deals, is I'll get off my butt, jump on a plane, and go do a two or three day training with the buyer and kind of get face to face with them, and go over every part of the business, A to Z, and so they mak…”
Fott: Sweet spot for deal structure is down payment plus 90-day payout
“I am, I, at the end of the day, I, of course, I love all cash, but I do want to be flexible. And so usually for me, it's, you know, it's a little bit down and then maybe, you know, the rest over like a 90 day period. Is kind of the sweet spot.”
Oshinaike: Street Tag monetized via multi-year contracts with UK local authorities
“Essentially we work with local authorities across the UK. So they contract us over a year or two years or three years, however long the contract is going to be. And then essentially their goal is to is to get people that are physically inactive within the loca…”
Oshinaike: Street Tag achieved a successful exit with zero outside investment
“We've never had any outside investment to date to get to, this stage”
Richards built a library of 200 video SOPs for operational questions
“Over the years I created like 500 or like I think two, two, I know it's at least 200 videos. It felt like 500 and I created at least 200 videos of like every possible question and answer you can come up with in the business.”
Eliminating Waitlist.email's Free Tier Improved the Micro-SaaS Business
“Initially, the, had two pricing tiers. One was pre- And then there was a paid pricing tier, which was a monthly revenue, which enabled, you know, some AI features as well as adding custom metadata. So additional fields in collecting the data initially, rather …”
Elgazar: SuperDev differentiated by using an LLM SDK for data persistence
“What I did is to build, I fed up the LLM with, I wired the LLM with an SDK that contains all the necessities to build a full stack up. So that's like, that's the differentiator that's super that has you get the surprise essentially. From the first prompt, ever…”
Elgazar: SuperDev acquired its first 35 customers from three Reddit posts
“I posted three posts. On three different subreddits, and all of the three got viral like, 150 to 301 of them got 500 upvotes, and from, only from Reddit, I got, like, 30 to 35 customers”
Elgazar: Cold outreach to influencers yielded an 80 percent response rate
“I think I've sent like maybe 15 to TikTokers on TikTok, and like, 10 requests, 15 requests on YouTube, and the response rate was like 80%, which is pretty awesome.”
Elgazar: SuperDev had roughly 200 paying users when it was acquired
“So, paying users around 202 150 and then non-paying users, we had around, like, 4000, three, two and a half thousand paying users.”
Elgazar: SuperDev was built, launched, and acquired within a six-month window
“I started working with it on February twenty-twenty-five. I released it I released a beta version on, I think it was the first of May, but around three weeks. So towards the end of May, I released it to the general availability. So yeah, and I sold it like las…”
Elgazar: I sold SuperDev because well-funded competitors like Lovable were intimidating
“I felt like I was a bit late to the party of lovable and other competitors that were pretty well known. So that's why I decided to sell. And then I realized that, you know, if I'm, if I will sell and probably I will have a nice amount of money to reinvest in m…”
Khan: ChatFi was sold to fund core marketing software products
“So Chartify was kind of fun project for us and it went viral and we decided to sell it
To fuel the cash for the other products, the main cost that we had.”
Carroll: Alpine Rings had only $30K left in bank before finding PMF
“I think at Alpine Rings, at one point, we continued to pivot and had, like, you know, I think, 30 grand of capital left in the bank to, like, keep going, and then we eventually found the unlock.”
Carroll: Dig World partners with Caterpillar and Dude Perfect for nationwide expansion
“We have a partnership with Dude Perfect. And then we've got Caterpillar Inc. As, like, our main national sponsor, so we're gonna be opening parks in Austin, Orlando, Phoenix, and Tampa.”
Yardini: EssayGrader Reached $500K ARR in the Current Fiscal Year
“For this fiscal year, we are just at about half a million ARR.”
EssayGrader Generated Just $5K MRR When Yardini Acquired It
“When we bought the business, we were Doing like a few thousand dollars a month, probably like five, 5000 or something like that.”
Yardini's Personal Business Acquisition Budget Was Only $200,000
“I didn't have a lot of budget, like I had just like a couple 100,000 that I could spend buying a business”
Ozdemir: Severe Burnout and Health Issues Drove the GenPowerPoint Sale
“My health was a huge reason in why I sold it. I had lots of problems with health during the time that I built it because I focused way too much on actually building it rather than caring about other stuff like my own social life, for example. I was building 14…”
Ozdemir Invested Acquisition Proceeds Into Physical Gold Bars in Swiss Vaults
“No, gold bars. Actual gold bars. Save the way, store the way in a Swiss vault, so, yeah.”
Gazdecki Originally Built Acquire.com as a Personal Proprietary Deal Flow Platform
“Originally what I'm getting at is the original idea was a deal flow platform for myself. So I could potentially acquire small SaaS companies. And then if you couldn't find, if I didn't buy it, you could still find a buyer.”
Lee: Zero-touch PLG architecture significantly boosts margin appeal for acquirers
“Like one of the nice things about what we built is it was entirely PLG. You didn't necessarily need a human involved for it to continue operating. And so the buyers were looking at that and saying, look, like if you've got new people signing up and connecting,…”
Lear: LeadGen App Successfully Sold Despite Experiencing Flatlined Revenue
“The revenue has been stable for too long. So it didn't go down, but it also didn't significantly go up for too long of time.”
Lear: LeadGen App Maintained 300-Item QA Testing Sheet to Systemize Operations
“And the third point is that we really systemize the business from day one as in writing operating procedures like SOP. So not only do we have pretty well functioning company, but also it's documented. And we did that from day one, basically. Maybe because that…”