Shows how out of touch I am with the corporate world. I can't believe people pay monthly for this.
Selling My Bootstrapped SaaS Business
31–40 of 125 posts
Re: Selling My Bootstrapped SaaS Business
#32...the cash, from selling the business has built momentum for other projects like [...] angel investing, I just knew that would be in there. Why do so many tech people seem to think that VC investment is what they want to be doing once they have spare cash? This isn't a personal critique of the OP, but it just seems so very common in general. I don't understand it.
I use the term "angel investing" pretty loosely here. Not implying picking startups on angelist, but more like small investments in other Micro-SaaS businesses. Still formulating a strategy for investing tbh as it's the first time in my life I've have real captial to deploy, but I feel like I have a better competitive advantage investing in what I know rather than securities
Re: Selling My Bootstrapped SaaS Business
#33> Purposefully under-optimize > For example, I really do not understand paid search advertising (Google Adwords, Facebook, etc) so I purposefully put almost no effort into it as a customer acquisition channel for Storemapper. This article is awesome and super helpful, but that particular point seems like terrible advice. Surely it would be much better to hire a marketing/adwords contractor, and increase the value of…
Totally agree on the "room for improvement" comment. Potential buyers, any time you see things like "marketer/seo/salesman could totally increase business" take it with a grain of salt. Don't assume the seller is lazy, naive, wants to leave money on the table. Assume they are smart and they have done everything they can to make the business succeed and there is no reason why you will do better. If you know the market inside and out and you understand monetarily where they are missing the mark, then, by all means, go for it.
Re: Selling My Bootstrapped SaaS Business
#34> Purposefully under-optimize > For example, I really do not understand paid search advertising (Google Adwords, Facebook, etc) so I purposefully put almost no effort into it as a customer acquisition channel for Storemapper. This article is awesome and super helpful, but that particular point seems like terrible advice. Surely it would be much better to hire a marketing/adwords contractor, and increase the value of…
Don't underestimate the "Irrational" elements of a big transaction. The buyer needs to be able to tell themselves (or board or LPs) a narrative about how they are going to buy this business and then massively accelerate growth. Leaving some low hanging fruit can really help close the deal.
Re: Selling My Bootstrapped SaaS Business
#35Hi folks. I'm the OP here. Hit me up if you have any questions.
Thank you for sharing this. Can you answer how much you sold it for, and what your SDI actually was at the time of sale?
Re: Selling My Bootstrapped SaaS Business
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
But there's plenty of ways to 'give back to the community' without being the one waving the chequebook. In particular, if you've got the spare time to work on other projects, you can do plenty to help out.
When you're busy with your new, own projects, time is in short supply. Are you seriously going to complain that people angel invest? It's of great benefit to founders.
"This isn't a personal critique of the OP, but it just seems so very common in general. I don't understand it."
Re: Selling My Bootstrapped SaaS Business
#37Hi folks. I'm the OP here. Hit me up if you have any questions.
Can you give an idea of the multiples of X (i.e. revenue, Ebitda, etc) that you did consider? You mentioned 6x(monthly-revenue) was bad. But can you discuss the spectrum of what looked good/interesting?
(not asking $$$ .. just multiples that were presented)
Re: Selling My Bootstrapped SaaS Business
#38Hi folks. I'm the OP here. Hit me up if you have any questions.
Thank you for sharing this. Can you answer how much you sold it for, and what your SDI actually was at the time of sale?
Sorry I can't, per the terms of the deal. The buyer actually made a very good argument for why. Essentially there is so little data out there that if I posted some rough deal terms it would dominate all future discussions they had "but you paid X for Storemapper and we're at least as Y" but they still wouldn't have the full context of the transaction. So that single data point would be both misleading and unhelpful for future acquisition discussions, which I think is pretty reasonable.
Re: Selling My Bootstrapped SaaS Business
#39[deleted]
Re: Selling My Bootstrapped SaaS Business
#40Hi folks. I'm the OP here. Hit me up if you have any questions.
Can you give an idea of the multiples of X (i.e. revenue, Ebitda, etc) that you did consider? You mentioned 6x(monthly-revenue) was bad. But can you discuss the spectrum of what looked good/interesting? (not asking $$$ .. just multiples that were presented)
Can't talk about my deal (see below). At the time I started discussions (early 2017) I had SaaS brokers tell me the "market rate" for SaaS was about 3-3.5x annual SDE (see post for discussion of what SDE is).