The Cost of Bootstrapping

Andrew Gazdecki is the founder and CEO of MicroAcquire, the world’s most founder-friendly startup acquisition marketplace. MicroAcquire helps entrepreneurs buy and sell startups.

After founding and later selling two successful startups, Andrew decided there needed to be a better way to connect buyers and sellers in the startup marketplace. He founded MicroAcquire to fill this void in the startup acquisition arena.

In this episode, Andrew shares how he grew his Twitter audience from 30,000 to 70,000 followers in a few short months. He uses his connections with others, his partnerships, his brand, and savvy marketing techniques to boost engagement and attract followers. It’s a fun and entertaining episode, and I think you’re going to enjoy it.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• The one thing you should spend at least half of your startup’s budget on
• Proven strategies and tactics to grow your Twitter account
• How to bootstrap your business and retain your autonomy

Links & Resources

• TechCrunch
• Cameo
• Effie
• Empire Flippers
• Flippa
• Bizness Apps
• Sam Parr
• Stripe
• Baremetrics
• ChartMogul
• Bumble
• Brandarrow
• Bootstrappers.com
• Y Combinator
• Salesforce
• Nick Huber
• David Cancel
• Josh Pigford
• Clearco
• AngelList
• Avaloq
• Naval Ravikant
• Dharmesh Shah
• The Ladders of Wealth Creation blog post

Andrew Gazdecki’s Links

• Follow Andrew on Twitter
• Follow MicroAcquire on Twitter

Episode Transcript

00:00:00 Andrew:

I’m a big fan of stair-stepping and entrepreneurship. One of my favorite tweets that I’ve ever written is, “Start with an agency, get to cashflow positive, and then bootstrap an asset—whether that’s a SaaS company or your e-commerce business—sell that asset, become financially secure, and then do whatever you want.”

Along the way, you prepare yourself for the next stage of business. 

00:00:35 Nathan:

In this episode, I talked to Andrew Gazdecki, from MicroAcquire. Andrew started a couple other businesses and sold two of them. In that process, he decided there needed to be a better way to buy and sell businesses. So, that’s where MicroAcquire came from. Their marketplace originally focused specifically on SaaS businesses, but they broadened to all of software.

The reason I want to talk to him—he doesn’t write a traditional newsletter or something like that—but he uses audience really well to grow MicroAcquire. He uses his personal brand connections with others, partnerships, a bunch of fun things.

We get into how he grew his Twitter audience from 30,000 followers just a couple months ago, to over 70,000. His approach to Twitter, some of the arguments or beefs that he started with TechCrunch and others, and where he thinks those lines are.

We also get into how he uses Cameo; he has these great ads announcing partnerships and others from Russ Hanneman on Silicon valley talking about this, and they’re really entertaining.

So, there’s a lot of fun things in this episode, and I think you’re going to like it.

I’ll get out of the way, and we’ll dive in.

Andrew, welcome to the show.

00:01:41 Andrew:

Thanks for having me, Nathan. Always a pleasure to be chatting with you. 

00:01:44 Nathan:

There are a lot of companies in the brokerage/help-me-sell-my-business space. I think of Effie International, Empire Flippers, Flippa, all of these. So, one, you’re going into a really crowded market with MicroAcquire, and then, two, you’re coming at it like you’re a force of nature.

Sam Parr and I we’re actually talking about this, of how some people start a project and it’s like, “Oh, I’m going to do this thing.” And then other people do effectively the same thing. I mean, it’s different in a lot of ways, right? But the same category, and come in and just completely dominate, and grow so fast, and it feels like a fundamentally different thing.

What’s your take on that, of coming into a crowded space, and then the amount of momentum that you’ve come in with?

00:02:34 Andrew:

Yeah. I have a lot of respect for all those companies that you mentioned, and appreciate the compliment.

The market that is specifically acquisitions hasn’t seen a lot of innovation in a decade. Two of the businesses you mentioned are service businesses, Flippa being a marketplace. I looked at that, and I just thought, there’s an angle here where sellers could benefit more than the buyers, and I felt buyers were benefiting. So, I took a left while everyone was going right.

Then coming in from an entrepreneur’s view instead of a buyer’s view, or an investment bankers view, or an MNA advisor view, this was me saying, okay, I’m gone through two acquisitions, I think I have a few unique insights into what it would take to make me comfortable putting my business, generating millions of dollars, on a new marketplace. Then, what information and educational pieces would I need to feel comfortable to facilitate an acquisition.

So, I just built what I felt acquisition should be. We still have a long way to go. We’ve done a really good job of connecting buyers and sellers, and all the acquisitions are facilitated off platform. We’ve been working on a lot of tooling to really add value to the acquisition, if that makes sense.

So we’re looking to innovate on things like due diligence or even simple items like writing a letter of intent or streamlining escrow, because everyone complains about escrow.com. so yeah, I mean, sometimes it just happens in markets. Like a new entrant comes in with a different angle towards the problem And different viewpoint. and I think my unique, insight there was just, I had been on. The side of the table that maybe the other, companies had not. but it’s also, a giant market. So I, think, arising boat lifts all tides. So, you know, we’re here to my require. I just made my group or to help entrepreneurs get acquired and, and, succeed.

And so, I think also as, you know, Mike require pick steam and helps everyone else in the market as well. So, but, yeah, I don’t have a good answer to that. I don’t know. I think if I, if I, this, this will sound cheesy, but you know, I, I I’d like to say I built my group hire would love, like I launch...