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New Micro Startups For Sale 🚀 - From Student to Entrepreneur

Ilya Novohatskyi

Nov 18, 2021

Hey everyone. I'm so excited to write to you.

Today, I will share with you many updates, from fantastic interview to Premium plan building.

You will get templates from our dear guest and beneficial information you can use right away.

Also, I found one very nifty project on the Product Hunt, and I think I should share it with you. It covers unknown but exciting projects all over the internet. Meet Insanely Useful Websites micro-startup.

P.S. How was your week? Share your failures and successes with me. I will be happy to support you.

Photo by Johanneke Kroesbergen-Kamps on Unsplash

👋 Welcome

Welcome to the 40 new people joining this week!

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🎯 Interview of the week

Last week I sat down to chat with the person who recently acquired a micro-startup. Bruce described his experience from starting as a full-time developer to creating his micro-SaaS portfolio.

We talked about the motivation behind acquiring micro-startups and the whole process of acquiring the recent one. The number of insights can't count. So, I want to share with you all the way.

Also, I plan to set a tradition to make similar interviews and Q&A sessions for Premium community. I have a hope to launch it at the end of the month.

bruce mclachlan @bruce_v3

Just bought 🍐 @Pear__HQ from @gonelf Wednesday: - I spotted this off market deal - initial contact via DM, get basic info Thursday: - 45min diligence call - established value Friday: - basic APA via email - funds transferred - assets transferred All done ✅

Goncalo 🆎 @gonelf

Just sold 🍐 Pear What I've learned from that? - Checking DM requests - Building in Public helped to explain the idea and research - Transferring assets might not be easy so start with a new email to ease it out - I have some money to invest in other projects

Introduction

Hi, I’m Bruce. I have been working in tech my whole life. I started as a programmer, then moved on to tech lead and architecture roles.

For the past few years, I have been working for a fintech platform company in Amsterdam as a technical director. I manage teams of solution architects and engineers implementing our software for customers across Europe.

This year I started looking into building and acquiring a small portfolio of micro-SaaS products. The objective is to gradually grow this as a side project to my full-time role.

bruce mclachlan @bruce_v3

My journey so far... 👨🏻‍🎓Student → 👨🏻‍💻Software Developer → 👷🏻‍♂️IT Architect → 👨🏻‍💼Manager → 🥇Leader → 🛠Entrepreneur (in progress) This is what I learnt at each stage... 🧵 👇🏻

How did you hear about Pear?

As part of my side project, Awesome Info Products, I was actively looking for any tools that could be valuable for creators of digital info products.

Some time ago, I saw Pear mentioned on Twitter, and I just followed the maker, Goncalo.

Pear allows a simple way for creators to put a subscription paywall in front of Notion pages. It was the kind of product that would be a good fit for my project.

How did you end up buying it?

When the seller posted a tweet saying he was letting go of Pear, I contacted him via DM and asked a few basic questions.

Since I had been researching this space, the product was not something new to me. So I had a clear idea of the capabilities the product should provide. And I knew what I wanted to validate with the seller.

From the beginning, he made it clear that the product was incomplete and still needed some work.

A positive aspect was that the seller already did some basic market validation. He had discussions with a few potential users and had a beta user sign up.

What was the process?

Day 1 - LOI

Once I had the basic information, I made a ballpark offer (call this the LOI) via Twitter DM. The seller agreed, and I proposed a due diligence call for the following day.

Day 2 - Diligence & Asset Purchase Agreement

The diligence call took about an hour. We covered the following topics:

Pricing: subscription, Tx based, lifetime
Market: competitors, differentiation, notable/large customers, growth opportunities
Marketing: list of users from initial validation, discounts/promotions, other leads/emails
Tech: stack, build, deploy, hosting, integrations, code walkthrough
Assets: domain, email, database, code, social media

Then I sent an email with a short Asset Purchase Agreement. The email specified the assets to be purchased, the agreed price, and timelines for transfer. The seller accepted.

Day 3 - Payment & Asset Transfer

We agreed that the asset transfer would begin on receipt of the funds. I transferred the funds in the morning.

The seller confirmed receipt in the afternoon and started moving all the accounts to me.

I validated that I had access to everything, and the transaction concluded by the evening.

What was the most challenging part of buying Pear?

Since this was a short sale cycle, there is always some doubt that I missed something. Some level of trust has to be established between both parties, even for smaller deals like this.

I feel we were both open and transparent, and this helped the process move faster.

What three things did you do right after purchasing Pear?

Confirmed access to all accounts.

Understand the code and make sure I can run the app.

Started working on the initial communication to beta users.

What are your plans for the near future?

There are three areas I will focus on initially:

Initiate a conversation with the beta users, and make sure they are still on board
Complete the remaining features
Integrate Pear's capabilities into the community at Awesome Info Products

The plan for the next six months is to grow the product and add additional capabilities.

Advice for buyers?

If you identify an opportunity for an acquisition, you should be in a position to move fast.

Be ready to make an initial offer(LOI) with limited information.

Do not overcomplicate due diligence unnecessarily.

🎁 Bonus from our guest

After chatting with Bruce, I was amazed by his story.

I asked him if he could share templates/screenshots of LOI and APA. And he pleased my ask. So I am glad to share it with you.

Letter of intent written as Twitter direct messages

See how structured and neat it looks. Bruce shows his genuine interest in the product. He describes his motivation and the next steps.

I like it because it shows that his intentions are serious. Straight and transparent negotiation made its work done, and they signed APA(asset purchase agreement).

APA is not necessary, but I see having it as an advantage. It helps you to avoid the hustle and make it more straightforward for both parties.

In the APA, you describe all assets listed, price, and timelines. Again, it helps both buyer and seller to be on the same side.

If you know the price, timelines, and assets, it becomes pretty forward to move on. You don't have to worry much because you know everything you should do and when.