Ian Blair has been an entrepreneur his whole life. As a kid, he sold lemonade, and then graduated to golf balls in adolescence.  While in university, Ian found his calling for the next decade: white-labeling Andrew Gazdecki’s Bizness Apps app-building software to churches. Later, he built his own template app builder, except with more customizable features (Bizness Apps meets Wordpress is how he describes it) called BuildFire. He completed his new app-builder in 2014, and through ten...

Have you ever heard of the career readiness industry? It’s a rarely reported on but active auxiliary industry spanning career coaching and development, edtech, vocational training, higher education, and more. Just career coaching and development alone is valued at $45 billion. Harris Osserman founded Talk Hiring originally to turn voice notes into job applications as a B2C career-readiness product. He and his team changed trajectories into the B2B industry when a school district...

Software businesses can be immensely profitable in very little time. But they can also die just as quickly. Software engineer Mark Jivko built Go index me!, a tool that speeds up Google page indexing, in six months for a bit of extra cash. He grew it to over 150 regular customers and thousands of dollars in sales in under a year. But Mark knew building an app that only relied on the Google APIs was playing with fire. It could all be demolished with a keystroke during a system update....

Nico Jeannen just made a quarter-million dollar sale a couple weeks ago with the acquisition of his transcription product, Talknotes. It’s his second sale after a string of roughly 17 startups that have seen increasing success. Here’s how he made TalkNotes. One day, Nico was trying to get Google to transcribe a voice note for him when he noticed the quality was poor. He crafted a prototype transcriber using an AI API and posted it on X.com (formerly Twitter) making $700 in just a few...

How important is your peace of mind to you? Brazilian founder Guilhermo (Guy) Oenning built a SaaS business called Fider, monetized it, and let it quietly earn him $1,000 a month for three years. He sold when he realized it was taking up too much mental space that he could use to focus on other, more profitable projects. After a quick onboarding to Acquire.com, Guy started receiving NDAs within hours of listing. He moved to due diligence with a buyer in two weeks and by four weeks had...

When you lack the experience and money to scale your agency, what should you do? Jovan Meljevic created his agency for B2B SaaS businesses, Bountyhunter, when he noticed a shortage of people and agencies experienced in startup growth. His business grew quickly aiding clients with everything from SEO to customer support to product analysis. Although Jovan was on a good trajectory, after five years he realized his agency needed outside input and money to grow. In late 2023 he decided to...

Would you sell your business right as it was going viral on social media? Victor created his AI landing page builder, Sitekick.ai as a way to salvage a previous project – a slide deck builder called Slidekick. He thought this too would be a flop, but he added AI capability right as ChatGPT kicked off and went viral on YouTube when a vlogger found his website. In one day he jumped from one email a day to hundreds of emails and 25 sales per day. But even with virality, making websites...

Curious what a professional small startup acquirer cares about when scouting a business to purchase? There are a growing group of people who make a living out of acquiring growing startups and taking them to new heights. Pascal Levy-Garboua, founder of Noosa Labs is one of these experts. Pascal started Noosa after 20 years in tech – mostly startups. He sold his first chatbot more than a decade ago and later went on to become an early investor in Notion and other startups in...

What are the three biggest mistakes SME buyers make when choosing an M&A lawyer? M&A professional Eric Pacifici says new buyers often pick lawyers who: Aren’t entrepreneurial Bill hourly rather than flat rate Don’t have M&A experience After years of cementing billion-dollar deals at Kirkland & Ellis (the largest firm in the world by revenue), Eric decided he liked smaller deals better. He decided to jump into the world of small business acquisitions. Eric is...

Here’s a fun stat for you, the homeowner association (HOA) industry in the US alone was worth $38.8 billion in 2023. Hussein Reda tapped into some of that value during the Covid lockdowns when he created his startup, Propty, to help HOA meetings run meetings and vote remotely. Pre-Covid, Hussein had just purchased his first property in an apartment building. He learned a lot of maintenance was done through HOAS, aka, groups that manage properties in specific...

What’s the trick to buying offshore businesses as a US buyer? Bryan Digiorgio of 1840 & Company says buyers need to understanding two things: It requires a lot of documents and processes You need to get started with them as soon as possible because they’re sequential Bryan’s had a bit of experience on this topic, his main business today is setting up remote teams for other businesses in other countries. In the past, he worked as the global head of customer service for Sprint and...

Selling your business to a buyer in the same country is tough. Imagine doing it across international borders. Miguel Diaz spent three years building Swearit, a blockchain-based authenticity verification platform. However, he realized that it could scale better in the hands of another founder so he looked for a place to sell. In Miguel’s opinion, most other startup marketplaces were too broad. You could sell anything from tech businesses to hotels. It was hard to say what buyers or...

Jeel Patel and his father built InvoiceOwl, an online invoicing tool for tradesmen like plumbers after Jeel noticed his family’s landscaper using an inefficient paper invoicing system. Three years later, they sold the company for six figures on Acquire.com. Listen to Jeel share his insights and learnings from running his startup to the acquisition process: How Jeel discovered there was still room in a niche with behemoth-sized competitors How Heel played the SEO game to build hype...

Acquisition lawyer at Scale LLP, Doug Mitchell, recalls one of the closest calls he’s ever encountered while advising a sale. For this episode of SASP, Doug sat down with Andrew Gazdecki to discuss: What kinds of deals he does What lawyers normally manage in SME deals How much he charges for his retainer And what Doug does in his free time. ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬ Be sure to subscribe to see the newest acquisition stories every Tuesday and gain the knowledge to buy or sell your own...

Lebanese founder, Nour Shaaban just sold his SaaS business on Acquire.com for a life-changing sum. While he can’t reveal too many details due to his non-disclosure agreement (NDA), he agreed to hop on the SASP podcast to talk about his experience building and selling his business. Listen to Nour’s chat with Andrew as they discuss: The benefits of the Guided by Acquire process that can’t be found anywhere else How the Acquire.com experience compares to the old MicroAcquire...

Luke Sheppard recently finished his bachelor’s degree at BYU with a little more spending money and work experience than most grads. He just sold his startup for $500,000 at age 23. While attending university to study business, Luke launched a company called Revive Ratings. It was a marketing SaaS targeted at insurance agencies. He sold it in just over two years for six figures on Acquire.com. To successfully launch his business, Luke took some big risks, like buying a one year $50,000...

In a moment of frustration, David Idol created his first successful Chrome extension, Computer Mouse for XCloud. In just a few short months, he was making $4,000 per month in revenue and he eventually sold his project for 5-figures. Here’s how it happened. David was working at Microsoft for Xbox Live when they launched XCloud, their cloud gaming application. It let players stream games from other devices like computers or phones.  But David noticed a problem. Gamers weren’t able...

What would you do if you were stuck in a cabin during an Icelandic snowstorm? Adam Senese and his brother came up with their Shopify app for product bundling, Linq Commerce, trapped in an Airbnb for the day during the dead of the Icelandic winter. The cofounders went home and launched Linq Commerce in early 2020 right as covid hit the world and people scrambled for new ways to make money online. It ended up being a record year for new Shopify stores. Within weeks, Adam and his brother...

If someone told you they did what you just read in this title, you’d probably think they’d committed a crime. But Qayyum Rajan’s good fortune was a surprise twist of fate. Early in 2023, Qayyum sold his business, ESG Analytics, to a private equity firm. But, his acquirer ran out of money and offered the business back to him for next to nothing a few months later. Qayyum got back in the driver's seat of his startup, spent $10,000 to redesign its website, and then listed it on...

Most venture-backed startups fail. It’s a well-known fact, yet many venture-backed founders choose to burn out and ride their dying startups into the ground. Few realize they have options like M&A that could salvage their business for both themselves and their investors. Wil Schroter, founder of Startups.com knows all about failing startups. He founded nine different startups over 30 years despite one of his first businesses crashing due to lack of capital. When his business...

Working a nine-to-five can be a great launchpad for a successful SaaS application. Just ask Belgian founders Dani Ibanez and Drilon Sqn. Using their industry experience, they created a review application for Shopify called TrustReviews and sold it for six figures. Dani and Drilon look similar (and even finish each other's sentences) but they've pursued very different careers. Drilon is a software engineer and a cybersecurity consultant for the Belgian government. Dani worked in ecommerce...

Startup Acquisition Stories with Martin Galovic, Founder of FanMetrics ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬ Follow the Guest: Martin Galovic - https://twitter.com/martinglvc https://fansmetrics.com (SOLD) Follow the Host: Andrew Gazdecki - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://twitter.com/agazdecki⁠/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/agazdecki/​⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://acquire.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Follow Acquire.com ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://twitter.com/acquiredotcom/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ...

Startup Acquisition Stories with Ken Savage, Founder of Product Launch Pro ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬ Follow the Guest: Ken Savage - https://twitter.com/kensavage https://www.linkedin.com/in/kensavage/ https://productlaunchpro.com (SOLD) Follow the Host: Andrew Gazdecki - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://twitter.com/agazdecki⁠/⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/agazdecki/​⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://acquire.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Follow Acquire.com ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://twitter.com/acquiredotcom/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ...

Startup Acquisition Stories with Yahia Bakour, Co-founder of Stock Alarm ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬ Follow the Guest: Yahia Bakour - https://twitter.com/mynameisyahia https://www.linkedin.com/in/yahia-bakour/ https://stockalarm.io/ (SOLD) Follow the Host: Andrew Gazdecki - ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://twitter.com/agazdecki⁠/⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/agazdecki/​⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://acquire.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠ Follow Acquire.com ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://twitter.com/acquiredotcom/⁠⁠⁠⁠ ...