One of the best times to sell your startup is when you have absolutely no reason to sell. Business is growing and customers are happy. You're making $500K a year in profit. And you've got enough cash in the bank that you're not worried about next month's payroll. That's a pretty great position to be in. Now imagine a buyer comes along and offers you $4M. You can take the offer seriously without feeling like you need the money. You can negotiate harder. You can walk away if the terms suck. If the deal falls apart, you still own a profitable business that's doing just fine. I've seen founders wait until they're burned out, growth has slowed, or they're desperate to move on before they start thinking about selling. That's usually when negotiating gets a whole lot harder. There's nothing wrong with testing the market while things are going great. You might be surprised what someone is willing to pay for the business you've built. And if the offers aren't good enough? Keep making money lol. P.S. thinking about selling your startup? Our team will help you understand what your business is worth, prepare it for buyers, and guide you through the entire acquisition process. Meet the team here: acquire.com/guided-by-acquir…

A founder sold his SaaS on @acquiredotcom at $12K MRR and a few years later, he's building another one approaching $1M ARR with over 5 million users. Pretty awesome story. Paresh Deshmukh (@pareshmukh) and his cofounder Chirag built their first SaaS while working full-time. It took them over two months just to get their first 10 customers. Eventually they figured out distribution, grew to 100K+ installs and $12K in monthly recurring revenue. Then they listed the business on @acquiredotcom. They weren't even sure they wanted to sell. But a few months later, the right offer came along and they took it. They eventually went on to build BoloForms, which is now approaching $1M ARR. And here's my favorite part. Paresh is now back on @acquiredotcom looking to BUY SaaS companies to grow even faster. Went from seller to founder again to buyer. I love seeing founders use an acquisition to fund their next chapter. Sometimes selling your startup is just the beginning of a much bigger entrepreneurial career. Congrats Paresh and Chirag. Pretty damn cool. Check out the full interview here: blog.acquire.com/how-a-succe…

I'd rather make $250K a year from a startup I own than $400K working for someone else and I don't think it's particularly close. That $400K salary is awesome. But the second you stop working the money stops coming in. Meanwhile the founder making $250K is also building an asset. Every new customer you close. Every improvement you make to the product. Every dollar of recurring revenue. All of that can make the business more valuable. One day someone could come along and offer $2M or $3M and buy the thing. Now you've collected a great income for years and have a pretty nice pay day at the end. Obviously running a startup comes with a lot more risk than having a job. I've done both the building and selling part a few times now and it's still pretty wild to me that you can create something on your laptop that eventually becomes worth millions. Software is a hell of a business. P.S. thinking about selling your startup? Our team will help you understand what your business is worth, prepare it for buyers, and guide you through the entire acquisition process. Meet the team here: acquire.com/guided-by-acquir…

A startup exit can be the beginning of your career instead of the end goal... Sell one at 30. Build another. Sell that one at 35 and maybe do it again at 40. Every time you start with more experience, more money, a bigger network. Probably a much better idea of what you're doing. You don't need every startup to become the company you'd run for the next 20 years. Build something great. Make it profitable. Sell when the right opportunity comes along. Then take everything you learned and go build the next one. Doing that a few times sounds like a pretty awesome career as a founder. P.S. thinking about selling your startup? Our team will help you understand what your business is worth, prepare it for buyers, and guide you through the entire acquisition process. Meet the team here: acquire.com/guided-by-acquir…

This agency is running at whopping 70% margin! Makes branded content for government and automotive clients, bootstrapped from day 1. Insane margin for a creative agency. > $423K TTM revenue > $304K TTM profit > 72% profit margin Now live on @acquiredotcom: app.acquire.com/startup/wCGa…

One of the weirdest moments as a founder is realizing someone else wants your startup more than you do. You've been staring at the same business every day for years. You see every bug. Every annoying customer.. Everything that's broken. Every growth idea that didn't work. Then a buyer comes along and sees something completely different. They see your customers.. Your brand, product, team. And all the things they could do with the business that you probably don't have the energy to do anymore. Haha! Sometimes you've been so close to your startup for so long that you forget how valuable the thing you built actually is. That's one of the coolest parts about talking to buyers. You get to see your startup through someone else's eyes. P.S. thinking about selling your startup? Our team will help you understand what your business is worth, prepare it for buyers, and guide you through the entire acquisition process. Meet the team here: acquire.com/guided-by-acquir…

There's a huge difference between being worth $10M on paper and having $3M sitting in your bank account. Founders usually understand this after their 1st exit.. A high valuation feels awesome. But you unfortunately can't buy a house with it. You can't invest it either. You can't use it to fund your next startup. Plus there's no guarantee you'll ever turn that valuation into cash. Then you sell a company and the wire finally hits. Suddenly you have real money that can compound for decades and it gives you the freedom to decide what you want to do next. $3M in the bank can be a hell of a lot more useful than $10M on a cap table. P.S. thinking about selling your startup? Our team will help you understand what your business is worth, prepare it for buyers, and guide you through the entire acquisition process. Meet the team here: acquire.com/guided-by-acquir…

A founder making $400K a year from a startup they own 100% might be richer than a founder running a $50M VC backed company. Startup valuations can mess with your head. One founder owns 100% of a business making $400K in profit each year. The other owns 10% of a company valued at $50M on paper. One has cash growing their bank account. The other has equity that might eventually be worth millions... or might be worth zero. And the bootstrapped founder can keep collecting profits, invest the money, or sell the business someday. Valuation and wealth are two very very different things. Don't underestimate how powerful it is to own most of a profitable startup. P.S. thinking about selling your startup? Our team will help you understand what your business is worth, prepare it for buyers, and guide you through the entire acquisition process. Meet the team here: acquire.com/guided-by-acquir…