Operations
I Asked Engineers About Platform Support. They're Annoyed.
I've Spoken with Hundreds of Engineers About Platform Support. Their Horror Stories Made Me Thankful I Bought Gigalixir.
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On buying, operating, and selling software businesses.
Operations
6 Surprising Things I Learned After Acquiring WP Folio for ~$750,000
Six months ago, I closed on a ~$750,000 acquisition that challenged a few things I thought I knew about buying online businesses. I hadn't acquired from a portfolio company before, so I had some things to learn…
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Operations
How I Slowly Molded a 7-Figure Business to Run a Few Hours per Week
When I acquired QuotaGuard in 2013, it consumed 40+ hours of my week. Now that same business generates seven-figure revenue on just 2-5 hours of work per week.
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Selling
3 Keys For Selling Your SaaS Business Above Market Value
In this essay, let's talk about three things that you can do in your software or SaaS business that will actually help make itself higher than average market value.
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Buying
WebStreet / Michael Frew Acquire BWPS Business
I'm excited to share that, together with WebStreet, we've recently acquired a BWPS business offering WordPress plugins designed for content protection and monetization.
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Selling
6 Things to Stop Doing When You Want to Sell Your Software Business
The first six things Founders should stop doing when they're considering selling their SaaS, Software, or Online business in the next 6-12 months.
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Buying
What's The Deal With Y Combinator Startups Selling On Acquire.com?
Why are so many venture capital and Y-combinator funded companies showing up on Marketplaces like Acquire.com? Why are they not showing up with more seasoned Online Business brokers or more alongside sophisticated M&A companies?
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Buying
The Surprising Truth: Sellers Don't Chase the Highest Offer
Many times a business will look "out of reach" because the offer prices are higher than you can reach with your resources.
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Buying
Should I Buy a Starter Online Business First?
One of the questions I've heard the most is, "Should I buy a 'Starter' online business first"? This is a fundamental question, as time, money, and resources are extremely limited.
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Financing
Boopos Capital – Financing Review for Online Business Purchases
One of the most frustrating things about online investing is finding the perfect business, but not having the money to buy it. When you're trying to acquire $100k – $5 million dollar online software businesses, there just aren't many lenders that work with individual investors purchasing companies with no hard assets to repossess.
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Buying
Gigalixir Software Acquisition (SaaS)
In 2017, Gigalixir started as a simple idea to help make app deployments one-click easy for the growing Elixir community.
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Selling
Built to Sell – Jon Warrillow – Book Essay
This Built to Sell book essay is part of a series of essays highlighting key aspects that impacted my career as an online SaaS/software business acquirer and operator.
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Buying
LetterStack Online Business Acquisition
I'm excited to announce a recent small online business acquisition to add to our growing portfolio of online businesses.
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Operations
What Did We Learn From The Pandemic?
Like most people, I talk to my cat. Even when other humans are around.
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Due Diligence
Online Business Acquisition Costs You Won't Find In a Broker Prospectus
Whenever an online broker lists a business for sale, the prospectus will include the ongoing costs for the online business acquisition. These costs are what the current seller and broker believe the new owner will incur moving forward.
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Due Diligence
Failed Acquisition – Lessons Learned from Acquiring the Wrong Business
In 2016, I purchased an E-commerce business that sold plugins for the Magento storefront platform. As a result, a lot of my capital was tied up in a low-margin, resource intense, and challenging business.
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Buying
Hours != Value: What Makes a Small Software Project Sellable?
I'm continually surprised at how smaller project developers fail to understand what makes a purchase valuable to a buyer. Even worse is the disingenuous way these sellers try to trick buyers into purchasing their worthless code.
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Buying
8 Buying SaaS Businesses Insights I Learned from David Newell's SaaS Business Valuation Guide
David Newell from Quiet Light Brokerage is one of the most seasoned SaaS-oriented brokers in the online buying and selling community. He recently dropped a 13,000(!) word knowledge-bomb on the topic of How To Build, Value, and Sell A SaaS Business for 6, 7 or 8 Figures.
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Personal
Software Engineers Need a Backup Plan
My first job was as an Associate Engineer in an Artificial Intelligence lab at a large company. Still, I was dabbling around in software development back then, doing just enough not to get fired.
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Operations
Online Business Operations during a Pandemic – July 2020
It's almost half a year into this pandemic, if you can believe it! If March 2020 was the longest month ever, the last few months feel like they've flown by.
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Personal
What is the Question that People Ask You Most Often?
The Problem with Limited Self-Promotion. If there is one question I hear from every friend of mine, it's a variation of the question, "I'm sorry I don't already know this, but what is it you do again?"
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Buying
Why Buy Instead of Build
I have undergraduate and graduate business degrees, yet I never had a single class covering marketing automation, contractor hiring, cash flow management, online advertising tactics, distributed product development, remote team culture, multi-channel customer support, or converting email leads into online customers.
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Due Diligence
Unknown Unknowns of Buying Online Businesses
We've all heard the Donald Rumsfeld quote about the "Unknown Unknowns" by now. It's easy to laugh at until you find yourself faced with a situation where an unknown unknown from a business you bought, or a project you inherited, creeps up and surprises you.
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Operations
Online Business Operations During a Pandemic – April 2020
Writing this at the end of April, we now have a full month of global shutdowns behind us, with the partial reopening of some Chinese manufacturing and small portions of the US economy.
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Personal
Why Write Now?
This is the website I wish someone wrote when I was in my 20's and 30's. Back when I was "working jobs I hate, to buy shit I didn't need".
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Operations
Online Business Operations During a Pandemic – March 2020
The Coronavirus pandemic has closed a majority of economies, banned retail and in-person businesses, and brought the global economy to a halt in a manner unlike any experienced before by anyone alive today.
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Buying
Don't Buy A S**tty Little Business
I've been thinking a lot recently about niches to buy businesses and software projects and can't get a lecture out of my head from a guest speaker in my graduate school program.
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