Launch HN: Moonshot Brands (YC W21) – We buy and grow e-commerce companies • Hacker News Board

Re: Launch HN: Moonshot Brands (YC W21) – We buy and grow e-commerce companies

#31

Post by indominus123 » Fri, May 14, 2021, 3:36 PM UTC

cjisakow wrote: post #25

admn2 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not saying you're wrong, but where do you see that they are backed by YC? This reminds me of Thrasio and all the similar companies that have had success with buying Amazon businesses. I assume they have quantities of scale with in-house devs, operators, etc., which gives them a built in advantage. Edit: nevermind, I see now that they are in fact YC-backed. Don't think I've ever seen YC back another "fund"

Participating in YC was hugely valuable for our team, we had great mentorship, access to an amazing network of founders who have provided advice as we launched Moonshot, and of course investors. I don't know what their criteria is for accepting us, but I think the fact we were multiple time founders that had built operational and technology company and that there is a big opportunity to apply technology to every step…

Did you raise $160m prior to joining YC? If so, that 7% must have been worth quite a bit.

Re: Launch HN: Moonshot Brands (YC W21) – We buy and grow e-commerce companies

#32

Post by cjisakow » Fri, May 14, 2021, 3:36 PM UTC

boplicity wrote: post #27

Simple but important question: What is e-commerce?

if a tree falls in the woods..

but seriously how we are defining it for our business is private label sellers of physical goods. So you own a brand that sells on Amazon or DTC, and your products have your brand on it. The supply chain varies from folks who own their own manufacturing to others who source from suppliers and never touch their product it just straight to amazon FBA. But not drop shippers, not software, not online marketplaces.

Re: Launch HN: Moonshot Brands (YC W21) – We buy and grow e-commerce companies

#33

Post by cjisakow » Fri, May 14, 2021, 3:37 PM UTC

austinpena wrote: post #29

You should partner with adleaks. They love this stuff.

cool, will have to check it out, do you know them? feel free to intro or i can find them.

Re: Launch HN: Moonshot Brands (YC W21) – We buy and grow e-commerce companies

#34

Post by cjisakow » Fri, May 14, 2021, 3:40 PM UTC

ultimatewhip wrote: post #30

What does your valuation process look like? Are the prospective buyers uploading csv dumps from their ecommerce store e.g. shopify, woocommerce, etc.. Or are you integrating into these stores to pull the info you need?

Yes and yes. We are building out integrations to automate, right now we are doing a mix of manual and automated processing. There are a bunch of different companies that have built pipes into the platforms and then there is clean up and analysis. One of the nice things about these busiensses is that they are not super complex and by doing a data dump from amazon and their DTC site you can get almost all you need on revenue side, then if they are spending on facebook/insta or google you need to pull that data in as well.

Re: Launch HN: Moonshot Brands (YC W21) – We buy and grow e-commerce companies

#35

Post by cjisakow » Fri, May 14, 2021, 3:41 PM UTC

cjisakow wrote: post #34

ultimatewhip wrote: post #30

What does your valuation process look like? Are the prospective buyers uploading csv dumps from their ecommerce store e.g. shopify, woocommerce, etc.. Or are you integrating into these stores to pull the info you need?

Yes and yes. We are building out integrations to automate, right now we are doing a mix of manual and automated processing. There are a bunch of different companies that have built pipes into the platforms and then there is clean up and analysis. One of the nice things about these busiensses is that they are not super complex and by doing a data dump from amazon and their DTC site you can get almost all you need on r…

I'd add after we agree on terms we do a light weight due diligence process with accounting/law firms to confirm what we saw

Re: Launch HN: Moonshot Brands (YC W21) – We buy and grow e-commerce companies

#36

Post by cjisakow » Fri, May 14, 2021, 3:43 PM UTC

mtnGoat wrote: post #26

One of the problems with acquiring e-commerce business is that most of them are not very well ran. Most do not even know their COGS or margins, thus making them horrible acquiring targets because you don’t know what you are buying. Might work at scale though. Good luck with the venture though, good idea.

We are looking at companies that are doing at least a few million dollars in sales. The sellers are super impressive in my opinion, its hard to get there! So yes sometimes they don't have the best records, but we are looking at companies with a relatively few number of skus so if we need to go back to the bank records and invoices to recreate cost structure we can. So far most sellers we work with are great entrepreneurs that either don't have the resources, capital or experience to take the brand to another level.

Re: Launch HN: Moonshot Brands (YC W21) – We buy and grow e-commerce companies

#37

Post by ohashi » Fri, May 14, 2021, 3:47 PM UTC

Hey CJ :) Nice to see you guys publicly launching here and great to see more success coming from Affinity Lab alumni. Good luck!

Re: Launch HN: Moonshot Brands (YC W21) – We buy and grow e-commerce companies

#38

Post by WORMS_EAT_WORMS » Fri, May 14, 2021, 3:51 PM UTC

cjisakow wrote: post #15

WORMS_EAT_WORMS wrote: post #7

Congrats all! Mind elaborating a bit more on how this is different than selling to some PE bros though? Also, for anyone reading this, if you’re a high income individual or have come into a windfall from RSUs/Stonk/inheritance/coin there’s marketplaces and plenty of access to brokers if you want to buy your own shop. Lot of sellers under $1MM ARR will sell their company at like 2-3x (!) which if you can just maintain…

We are both entrepreneurs ourselves, and have lived through working with PE shops that might gordon gecko style fire everyone and flip. Its not our model, our ideal seller stays and grows within Moonshot, where we can both create more value. That being said there are sellers ready to cash out, and for them we have a platform so we can operate and grow the business. On your point on brokers, we get our leads a variety…

Thanks for response. Super interesting and cool. Wish you all the best!

Re: Launch HN: Moonshot Brands (YC W21) – We buy and grow e-commerce companies

#39

Post by tptacek » Fri, May 14, 2021, 3:57 PM UTC

jwtnb wrote: post #6

$160M in funding. Is that a typo?

It sounds high, but their business model involves them buying established revenue streams, right? Their use of funds is less speculative than a typical software company?

Re: Launch HN: Moonshot Brands (YC W21) – We buy and grow e-commerce companies

#40

Post by cjisakow » Fri, May 14, 2021, 3:58 PM UTC

cjisakow wrote: post #15

WORMS_EAT_WORMS wrote: post #7

Congrats all! Mind elaborating a bit more on how this is different than selling to some PE bros though? Also, for anyone reading this, if you’re a high income individual or have come into a windfall from RSUs/Stonk/inheritance/coin there’s marketplaces and plenty of access to brokers if you want to buy your own shop. Lot of sellers under $1MM ARR will sell their company at like 2-3x (!) which if you can just maintain…

We are both entrepreneurs ourselves, and have lived through working with PE shops that might gordon gecko style fire everyone and flip. Its not our model, our ideal seller stays and grows within Moonshot, where we can both create more value. That being said there are sellers ready to cash out, and for them we have a platform so we can operate and grow the business. On your point on brokers, we get our leads a variety…

oh i also see you know a lot of folks who buy companies, if they grow them to $3M+ and are looking to take money off the table send them our way! We pay referral fees for successful deals https://www.moonshotbrands.com/leads