Practical Founders Podcast

#141: Inside Acquire.com's Process for Selling Sub-$5M SaaS Companies - Andrew Gazdecki

Apr 25, 2025

55:39

Creator website

AI Summary

AI Chapters

Episode notes

Podcast summary created with Snipd AI

Quick takeaways

Acquire.com democratizes the market for smaller SaaS businesses, providing resources and support for founders generating under $5 million in revenue.

The platform emphasizes a thorough and supportive sales process for founders, equipping them with knowledge and tools to navigate selling their businesses effectively.

Buyer demographics on Acquire.com are varied, including individual entrepreneurs and financial buyers, each looking for different attributes in profitable SaaS companies.

Deep dives

Overview of Acquire.com and its Purpose

Acquire.com serves as a marketplace tailored for the buying and selling of smaller, profitable software businesses. It primarily focuses on bootstrap founders generating under $5 million in revenue, providing them with tools and an online platform to list and sell their companies. This approach democratizes access to the market for these founders, who may find traditional M&A advisors unfeasible due to the smaller deal sizes. The platform has facilitated over half a billion dollars in transactions, highlighting its significant role in the niche market for SaaS business transitions.

Intro

2min

Navigating the SaaS Marketplace

17min

The Evolution of Software Entrepreneurship

11min

Streamlined Process for Selling SaaS Companies

5min

Navigating the SaaS Business Sales Process

3min

Navigating the Due Diligence Process in SaaS Sales

2min

Navigating the SaaS Sales Landscape

14min

Maximizing Growth Through Strategic Acquisitions and Customer Metrics

3min

Andrew Gazdecki is the founder and CEO of Acquire.com, a marketplace of buyers and sellers of smaller, profitable SaaS products with revenues between $100,000 and $5,000,000. Andrew sold his own software company and learned how little support and information was available to sell a software product for under $5-10 million in deal size.

Acquire.com has helped over 2000 entrepreneurs sell their software products for a combined value of more than $500 million. Acquire offers additional support to help founders package, promote, negotiate, and close their transactions. Potential buyers are vetted for financial viability and identity confirmation before getting confidential details for any deal.

In this episode, Andrew describes their typical seller and buyer profiles, the typical process for a founder to sell a small and profitable SaaS company, typical multiples of profit that financial buyers offer, and founder transition periods.

Quote from Andrew Gazdecki, founder and CEO of Acquire.com

"There are three buckets of active buyers on Acquire.com. The first is below $100,000 net profit. That's going to be an individual buyer looking for something with maybe a little bit of product market fit. They want to take the product, grow it a little bit, see what they can do from there. They're buying a very, very early startup. So some buyers will actually start small and then work their way up.

"From $100,000 to $1 million in net profit in our middle range, the buyer will a blend of "micro PE firms" and holding companies that want to get their hands on a business where there's a lot more going on. And then a $1 million in profit and above is going to be for the more traditional private equity or strategic buyers."

Links

The Practical Founders Podcast

Tune into the Practical Founders Podcast for weekly in-depth interviews with founders who have built valuable software companies without big funding. Subscribe to the Practical Founders Podcast using your favorite podcast app or view on our YouTube channel.

Get the weekly Practical Founders newsletter and podcast updates at practicalfounders.com.