Andrew Gazdecki - From living on food stamps to being a reason for many founders’ living!

The internet is like the great equalizer, in my opinion, where it gives just everyone an opportunity regardless of where you are in the world. And I think that's what's so special about startups and tech. And I see it all the time on Acquire where people sell businesses from any country you could probably name. And, you know, whether it's $50K or $100K or something like that, that's entirely life-changing. And those opportunities are only made available Right. Um, from tech.

Welcome to the Undefeated Underdogs podcast, where I unpack and narrate stories of ambitious people who turn obstacles into opportunities. My goal for this podcast is to create a platform to narrate underdog stories and maybe play a small, teeny tiny role in inspiring you. I intend to highlight the underdog mentality and make authentic conversations with people who play the long game. Take action with a chip on their shoulder and convert obstacles into opportunities. Buckle up as I'll be bringing some authentic founders, VCs, community builders, and content creators who got underestimated their whole lives, and yet they beat all the odds to become insanely successful. Now today I want to tell you a little bit about our awesome sponsor acquire.com. Selling a business is as tough as building a business. As someone who went through this process once selling my own startup, I know the pain it takes to get to the end zone. This is where our sponsor shines. Imagine this. You're a founder who's built a solid SaaS product, acquired customers, and generating consistent monthly revenue. The problem is you're not growing forever for whatever reason, lack of focus, lack of skill, or just plain lack of interest, and you feel stuck. What should you do? The story I'd like to hear is you buckle down, somehow reignited the fire, get past yourself and the clichés, and start working on your business rather than just in the business. You start building an audience, move out of your comfort zone to do sales and marketing, and in 6 months you triple your revenue. The reality isn't as simple. Situations may be different for every founder facing this crossroads, but too many times the story ends up being one of inaction and stagnation until the business becomes less valuable or worse, worthless. If you find yourself here or your story is likely headed down a similar road, I offer you a third option. Consider selling your business on acquire.com. Capitalizing on the value of your time is a smart move. Acquire.com is free to list, and they've helped hundreds of founders already. Go to try.acquire.com/sharath and see for yourself if this is the right option for you. Now let's get into today's episode. What's up everybody? Uh, I genuinely appreciate each one of you for tuning into the Undefeated Underdogs podcast. Today I have a very, very, very special guest, someone I actually kind of like seek inspiration every once in a while whenever I feel like low or whenever I feel like lost. And I feel this particular founder is phenomenal in many ways, and I'm actually very stoked to bring him on the podcast. So without further ado, welcome Andrew Gasdacki. How are you feeling today, man? I'm very excited to have you on the podcast.

Good, good, man. Thanks for that nice intro and excited to be here. Excited to chat.

Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, so for folks, I'm sure, I'm 100% sure that most of you know Andrew from Twitter, from Acquire and the content he creates, the content he produces for bootstrappers and other founders. But I want to also, I want to start this podcast with a high note by giving some of the Some of the amazing things Andrew did in the past. So first of all, Andrew Gazdecki needs no introduction. He's a founder, a father, he's a content creator, and he's an investor. He's multiple personalities packed in, baked into like one single human. He's right now the founder of Acquire, formerly known as MicroAcquire, the world's number one startup acquisition marketplace. I've heard Tons of tons of stories, founder stories, you know, Acquired changed people's lives, literally, like, you know, people selling like life-changing amounts of money just putting their startup in acquire.com. He's also angel investor with over 15+ startups in his portfolio, including Palantir, and he's ridiculously prolific. I'm repeating again, ridiculously prolific. He always often shares about his thoughts and playbooks, frameworks, lows, highs, and everything. And that's what I really admire about Andrew, man. You share like pretty much everything and you pump value and inspiration to founders. So, and I've learned a ton, like literally reading you and like being talking to you like a couple of times before. So that's the man. I'm very stoked. And welcome to the show again, Andrew. Right off the bat, I want to ask about a recent story you shared on Twitter, X, whatever people call it. I was very moved by the way you narrated it, meaning you really showed us the vulnerable side as well as the side where you actually like figured out or cracked. So talk to me about your storytelling journey and being a storyteller. How did you like overcome those moments where you feel like, you know, you said in one of the tweets, like you came from a poor family and, you know, you made it, right? So talk to me about the whole journey. Like what was you going through, like when you were like writing that thread and sharing with the folks? Just talk to me about the emotions.

Yeah, definitely. Well, I appreciate all that. And just as a small correction, I'm not an investor in Palantir. I put it on my website as a joke when I was first making it. I'm assuming that's where you got it, andregoesdecky.com.

Oh my God. No,

I'm not an investor in Palantir. But yeah, so I've written a full book just on my first startup, just because it was such an interesting experience. And I knew it at the time. And for those that may not know my background, I started a company in college. Before that, I had multiple failed startups or smaller startups, if you will. And basically just kind of outlined where I came from. Didn't really grow up with too much. Had a lot of grit, had a lot of motivation. Then just kind of shared the story of that and kind of the 2-minute version of it was, you know, father passed away when I was 6, grew up in this beautiful beach town, San Clemente. And I would always see, I'd have friends with just You know, huge mansions and stuff like that. And we didn't have that. And so by no means was my life, you know, like, woe is me or anything like that. But it wasn't easy. But I always had this, I guess, this thought at the forefront of, you know, how do you achieve that? And I remember asking my friend's parents all the time, like, what do you do? Right. Like, I remember, you know, feeling Kind of, you know, uh, different in high school and middle school. Like, in a town, San Clemente, spring break, everyone's going to Hawaii and stuff like that. I never went to Hawaii until I was like 22.

Right.

You know, so it was interesting. It was an interesting dynamic being— and I was originally born in Detroit too. So my parents, um, uh, from what I know, I lived in like RV when I was 3. I only recently found that out. Lived in like Rhode Island, Rhode Island, New Hampshire. And then my parents just said, hey, we want to do the California dream thing. And then they just moved to San Clemente. And then, yeah, father unfortunately passed away when I was 6. So entrepreneurship today is glamorized. It's sexy, it's cool. It's like, you know, some startup founders are revered as like the new rock stars. They literally are, they're like more famous than like Bon Jovi or something like that. And for me, entrepreneurship was like a survival mechanism where, you know, all my friends had all these things. And if I wanted a skateboard, I had to go figure out how to like get enough cash to go buy a new skateboard or something like that. I remember my shoes, I used to skateboard a lot. So my shoes always were messed up because when you slide it up on the grip tape, it kind of cuts them up a little bit. Yeah. So nothing like terrible, but it kind of made me think like, all right, well, how do you get that? And so as, you know, I think just from my upbringing, you know, money was such at the forefront and I was just so curious about it. And then kind of everything aligned when I just really realized I like business. I liked selling baseball cards. I liked playing around on eBay. I had an eBay store when I was 13 and you need to be 18. There's a funny story behind that. I actually met the president of PayPal once and told him, oh, I've been selling stuff on eBay since I was like 13. And he goes, you got to be 18. And I was like, oh, I mean 18, you're right. And he laughed as well. So yeah, that's kind of my background. You know, I just, I entered college at a 2.7 GPA in high school. So I knew from like a really early— some kids, like they grow up and they want to be this, you know, the quarterback of a football team or they want to play. I knew I wanted to be the CEO of a company. So it was always like this dream that I had. And so I was always reading, you know, different blogs or books, starting different things. I started out making websites on GeoCities for all the bands in my high school. What else did I do when I was younger? Just, I was just kind of that kid that always had some side hustle or something like that. And then when I went to college, I went to Chico State. And the only reason I got in was the SATs. I scored really high on the SATs. Now you need like a 4.0 to go there. And when I entered the school, I knew from the get-go I did not want to get a job. It did not add up to what I wanted to accomplish in life. And so I just saw it as 4 open years to figure out how to build some sort of company. So when I leave the school, I have a company to work on and to rely on because I didn't have a safety net. I didn't have anywhere to go after school.

Right.

My parents had already, or my mom at least, she had explicitly said, You know, you can't come back home or anything like that. So I spent those 4 years figuring out every summer I'd create a new business and then created a job board that connected mobile app developers to businesses. Saw kind of like how important mobile apps were going to be, specifically iOS apps, because this is when the iPhone first came out. And then I used that unique perspective or whatever you want to call it to go to a company called Business Apps, which was a do-it-yourself drag-and-drop mobile app builder. And yeah, I mean, started that when I was 21, sold it when I was 29, and here I am today.

So one quick observation is a lot of, like you said, a lot of founders these days, they by choice want to become a founder because, like you said, either it can be sexy or they want to make a living out of it. And most of them, they want to build something out of passion. But I think it's quite fascinating to hear a story like you You really had like no choice but to go. It's kind of like a necessity, right? Like when you stubbornly decided, I don't want to get into a job, I want to like, you know, pursue this, because you always wondered what would that life be, right? Being your own boss, creating opportunities for others and whatnot. And that seed, I feel, was planted in a very early age, if I'm not wrong. Like very young, right?

Very early. Very early. I always wanted to say, you know, I tried rather than what if. So I just kept swinging, you know, I just kept trying different things, learning basic stuff about the internet. And, you know, this is maybe like 2004 or something like that, 2006. So I'm starting to enter college. And that's when, you know, the dot-com bubble was in 2000. So no one was into tech. And then people started building businesses and really figuring out how to build a SaaS company. And so that's where I kind of narrowed in because I just looked at it like the barriers to entry are so low, the chances of success are obviously really low as well.

Hmm.

But I didn't have money to go into real estate. I didn't have money to buy a business. I didn't have money to The internet is like the great equalizer in my opinion, where it gives just everyone an opportunity regardless of where you are in the world. And I think that's what's so special about startups and tech. And I see it all the time on Acquire where people sell businesses from any country you could probably name. And whether it's $50K or $100K or something like that, that's entirely life-changing. And those opportunities are only made available Right. Um, from tech. So I saw that early and I said, that's what I want to do. Like, I think, I think I can do it. And I'm, I'm glad I went for it. I didn't, you know, candidly, you know, going back to business apps. So business apps, um, with the job board, I saw people creating the same app like over and over and over or requesting the same app and they were paying like $50,000. And so my original idea was to just have a template that I could customize and I could change the images. And then I would just have a low-cost agency where— and that's kind of actually how it started. So I ran around my college town and in a college town, push notifications for happy hour or push notifications for, you know, restaurants or like a simple, simple loyalty program. Was huge for college students. So that's how the business actually kind of started. I got like 30 customers on my own, built their apps, uploaded them to the App Store, which is— I'm a PC person too, so I had to get a MacBook. So I took out another student loan to get a MacBook. And yeah, I got like 30 customers and then I was like, oh, There's like these do-it-yourself like website builders. What if I had put like a SaaS interface on this where you can log in and people could edit their apps? Because I started to get a lot of requests of, can you edit this? Can you edit this? Can you edit this? And then another interesting part of that story is I'm not technical at all. So I made the— I could make like a website, I can do design. So I made the original website, but in terms of the iOS app, Um, I had no idea how to do that. And then also, um, just the backend framework of, and it looked terrible. It was like a blank page. Only I knew how to use it. Eventually cleaned that up, but Chico State also isn't known for its engineering talent. So I went on Upwork and actually found our lead developer. His name was Raymond Chester.

Hmm.

And he worked with me for, from the start all the way until the end. And All the engineers that we hired, I didn't know how to vet really good technical talent. So I just hired all of his friends, friends that he said were good. So we ended up having like a software dev shop in China. Kind of interesting. It just all happened randomly. And it's like the stars. I totally got to say I got lucky. The iPhone just came out.

Right.

Businesses were dying to figure out how to get into the App Store. I wasn't technical. I didn't raise a bunch of venture capital. I didn't go to Stanford, you know? So

yeah. You were a true underdog. You're— I think the reason why I was, I was like very excited to actually have this conversation is I feel by far you've— you, you're the one who showed both sides, like what it was being an underdog and how you can actually make it like the other side, which you're in right now. Like you're kind of like, you're like a North Star for many founders, right? So one thing I want to— you're a hustler by necessity. That's what I want to like point out from the beginning.

I myself and my friends would absolutely agree with that.

Right. So I think hustling by necessity is like a very strong drive, in my opinion. necessity is going to change everything. You don't think about results. Like you said, you take a lot of at-bats constantly, right? My question is, as a 6-year-old or a 13-year-old, or take 13-year-old Andrew who's selling stuff on eBay, man, what was your motivation? I mean, apart from like, you know, being poor or you want to like, you're hungry enough to make it to the other end. But who inspired you? Like, okay, you should be, you should have certain north stars, like where you can feel relevant. Okay. These are the folks who actually made it, especially in tech at that point. A lot of founders right now are going to your Twitter account or, you know, your writings, your content and seek, you know what, Andrew did it. Let me actually figure it out. Where did the 13-year-old Andrew went to figure it out?

I had no one, no one to, you know, I didn't have that father to give me advice or he's an entrepreneur and he was showing me like how to successfully build businesses. I would just read everything online. Like it became almost like it's all I wanted to do. I just wanted to play the game of business and It's kind of never stopped. I always joke around that some people like to play tennis or pickleball now on the weekend. I like to play startup. Now that I'm a father, obviously, the weekends are always usually spent with my son. But I did have some really good mentors later in life. So when I entered college, there's a few people That really, really helped me. So there was an entrepreneurship program. I was like living in that department and they hated me. Or no, I would say they, they loved me and they hated

me.

Well, so we had a business plan competition at Chico State and every year I would enter. And so I'm the only person to win 4th, 3rd, 2nd, and 1st. Oh my gosh. I entered every year and every time I lost, I would email them this big email being like, I remember one year I literally lost to someone who wanted to put chips in babies. So like, and I was, and I wrote a big email, like the capital requirements of this is just way too high. There's regulatory, like stuff and it's just weird. What? You're going to put chips in babies? This is in like 2010. Maybe now it's a little bit more normal.

No, not even now. It's, it's crazy.

Yeah. So I'm like, come on. Like, you know, don't give me a 4th place. Give me 3rd place. So I was always in there reiterating with different business ideas. And so big shout out to Ryan Johnson and Peter Strauss. And then Peter Strauss introduced me to probably the biggest mentor in my life named Christian Friedland. He built a company called Build.com in Chico, bootstrapped it, built it right after the dot-com collapse. And they do several billion in GMV online. They're like the Home Depot online. And he was, so he was a small angel investor. So with Business Apps, I ended up raising $100,000 from 2 people, one of them being Christian Friedland. And I would go see his talks at Chico and be like, I want to, I want to be like this guy. Like

he,

he had a similar background like me. Hmm. And He has a personality kind of like closest to Ari Gold from Entourage, if you've ever watched that show.

Right,

right. He's absolutely brilliant, super funny, but he really cared about me and my success. And I'd email him the big emails and he'd respond back with like, you know, big emails. He didn't make a lot of angel investments. So I would say I'm a protégé of him, if anything. He helped me get into other pure CEO groups. Like one of them was 10X CEO. And if you look up the companies on 10X CEO, it's pretty intense. A lot of them are public now and stuff like that. I ended up leaving that group just because I was like 25 and everyone was 40 talking about different stuff I just couldn't relate to. I'm like, I'm 25 or I'm 24. I don't want to hang out with a bunch of 45-year-olds.

Right.

Um, but, you know, maybe the lesson there, um, is sometimes just kind of seeing the world in your own eyes and making decisions for yourself, like you're forming your own opinions, it can be really powerful. And it did for me, at least. Like an example would be the stuff I was learning in school is like, I'm not going to really need this. So I'm not going to class or something like that. I was not a good student. And then in terms of, you know, I always say one of the best skills an entrepreneur can have is the ability to learn anything. And a big part of that is like, you have to really want to learn it. You're always best at the stuff that you really enjoy, and you do your best work when you're happy.

Right?

So yeah, when I'm selling stuff on eBay, I'd like research, how do you do it and all that stuff. But later in life, I definitely had some good mentors.

Love that. Shout out to— I think, you know, the— I think partly you were in a position where you were seeking constantly. And I think there's this famous quote, right? Like, when you seek, the right teacher appears in front of you. I feel like, you know, it's kind of like that situation that happened to me, and I can kind of empathize. But I feel kudos to you, Andrew. I feel it starts with— from you. You have to, like, start seeking, right? You constantly have to be or manifest or whatever the word, like, people call it. You have to be in that zone constantly so that the teachers appear, the opportunities appear, and, you know, whatnot. Talk to me. I feel one of the things I also want to cover in this podcast is I don't want to ask about your success stories because it's all there outside. And I know you probably would have went on podcasts, like, you know, talking about how you build business apps and, you know, being like, being one of the best companies back then and, you know, selling it for a life-changing amount of money and all that. But talk to me about your lows. Have you ever felt like, man, this is super hard? And what would you do even now today? Like, it's not easy to run a company, manage a big team. And create content and be happy and be present with kids, family, and think in future about like, okay, I want to be here in the next 10 years, right? Being ambitious. So talk to me about some of your lows you've experienced in life, startups, and what did you do to overcome them?

Yeah, good question. I mean, first to come to mind is probably when my father passed away, that really kind of changed everything for us. Because my mom had me when she was 20, and I have an older brother. So she had my older brother when I— when she was 18. And so we were just left alone in California. And so I would clean houses with her. And we lived off food stamps for a little bit. That was pretty rough in terms of just kind of figuring out like what happened. But I was so young that it didn't really like emotionally affect me too much. But that's when we, you know, moved into like a smaller house. And that's when like, you know, it kind of became clear, like life's going to be a little bit different now. I remember the day it happened. I remember seeing my father You know, my last, the last time I've never told anyone this on a podcast, but, you know, I saw him in the morning and he passed away from, from cancer. So, and the way it happened was crazy. My mom's recently shared some of the stuff, but she's kind of really, she holds stuff in.

Hmm.

But I guess he was diagnosed and then 60 days later he was just gone. They were like, you got a golf ball on your chest. And then gone. So it wasn't like a long drawn-out thing. It was just like, what happened? So that was really hard. But I think, you know, but the, the silver lining there is it really kind of put me in a position to understand that life is hard and bad things happen to every single person. And you can do 2 things. You can complain about it. You can let it hold you down or you can let it lift you up. And so I think a big driver now that I've kind of like reflected on a lot of the things I do is I want to make him proud. I want to— so he, my dad is a big driver for everything I do. I think about him a lot. And then other things just in terms of business and just going through that really just changes how you view the world and just You know, you're exposed to something so tragic so early. And then if you can somehow find a way to make that, make that bad experience make you a stronger person, or just be grateful, like, hey, like, I still live in this beautiful beach town. Like, hey, my mom still loves the hell out of me. I love my brother. He's cool. I got awesome friends. Like, you get this perspective where you get a lot of positivity in your life because you realize It could be a lot worse. Like, by no means was I ever, you know, feeling like, oh, like, woe is me, can't do it. I just didn't, I didn't take that, that path. I didn't, I had more of a, you know what, I'm gonna do something. I really want to do something interesting with my life. And I'm gonna figure out what that is. But then going down, just kind of my other things. I don't know, skateboarding, I broke my foot a bunch of times. That's a bunch of low points. If you skateboard and you break your foot, you like cry. That actually, like, because you, it's like something you love to do so much. And then you're, you just got to go sit at home for like a month. Right. That's probably not like That hard, but going back to the time—

I feel, I think—

Well, let me tell you a couple other ones. Some other low points was, so when I was first getting business apps off the ground, I remember cold calling small businesses and I got together a few friends in the winter semester of our junior year or something like that.

And

none of us could get a business to sign up. They had no idea what a mobile app was. So all my friends kind of left and we had just gotten this like cheap $300 office space, $300 a month. And I just stayed and I cold called myself alone in a room for 2 semesters. And that's how we got like our initial customers. But it was just me all alone and it was kind of lonely. Mm-hmm. But luckily, you know, I had friends outside of But I loved it at the same time, but that was probably a low point. Um, and then I guess we had this big issue with Apple. They actually were banning templated apps. That was, I like lost weight over that. That was intense. And the backstory on that is we were creating so many mobile applications, 1 in 5 or 1 in 20 apps published into the iOS App Store. Hmm. was published by business apps at its peak. And they all of a sudden just would not let us publish any apps. And I eventually literally cold emailed Tim Cook and had him reverse it. I don't know if I had the full influence over that, but it was, that may be a story for another time. But there's so many like little things in between of just, you know, every time I see a challenge, I view it as an opportunity to improve or an opportunity to get better. Or if I fail at something, like, what did I learn? And I think just having just sort of that mindset from an early age has just really helped me. So it's hard for me to recollect like hard times because like, I, I just know they're, they're gonna be there. So when you say hard times, it's kind of like Tell me about the time it rained or something like that. I just know it's gonna rain.

Hmm. And when

it does, like, I'll still have a great day and I'll figure out how to get through it. So that's always been my perspective in terms of, you know, how to get through hard times and adversity is to realize this is an opportunity where you can feel sorry for yourself and you can, you know, really let it hold you down, or you can figure out a way to turn this into an opportunity to grow or an opportunity to learn something, something that will be valuable either now or later in the future. And I think that really goes into just what's required to build businesses is there's way more down moments than up moments.

Word.

And I could tell you about a ton of like little ones, but none of them are like life-threatening. It's like not— I have a journal that I keep

Where

I'll write down like the big problem that I'm going through for the month. I look at it a month later, it's gone. So just having like that early perspective kind of helped me with viewing every obstacle as just another challenge to get through.

Oh man, first of all, I genuinely want to appreciate you for sharing the story about your father, some of the details that you went through. And I can't even imagine, like, you know, the whole experience. You know, I've never felt that. So losing a loved one, it's ridiculously hard. And at that age, it's like, you know, it's even unexplainable. And I feel, I think once you delivered that answer, I felt like everything else is immaterial. everything else you go through, or even like, you know, people go through, even I go through in my life right now, it's all like, none of that can actually weigh in the same way that what you experience, right? Like some of the, some of the adversities like people go through, it's major. I feel like those are all, you know, you can't reverse it. So I appreciate you for sharing it. And Man, it's like you said, it's like being a founder itself is a lonely journey, at least in the beginning. And when you do such things, right, like, and I feel like you're a very strong person by nature, given that the whole thing, the whole experience you went through, you kind of became stronger and stronger and stronger. And what would you advise people who didn't go through those opportunities but yet to want to become stronger like yourself? Right. Like adversities, some of them, for example, me, I didn't lose a loved one like you did, but at the same time, want to become stronger as an individual and a human being. So Any advice or where should we look into? I think for you, I think you think about your dad every single day and kind of drives you. What would us, you know, we should drive or like where would we look into?

Yeah, I think it depends on, you know, your goals. You know, if you want to build more grit, adversity, like you really want to give yourself a challenge, try building a company. Like, it's the first thing that comes to mind. You know, because you go through just so much interesting stuff, bad stuff, like someone great leaves, someone sues you. One time we were actually sued by Salesforce, which was funny. Wow.

Oh my God.

Yeah. You want to, you want to hear that story?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Please, please.

Yeah. So I got another one. Um, one time the IRS sent me a letter saying I owed them like $12 million. And I was like, oh, I was like, oh shit, I'm going— I'll just tell you stuff I've never told on podcasts. I was like, oh shit, I'm going to jail. Like, holy crap. Um, but again, I've always kind of just like had like a calm demeanor in those sorts of situations, just knowing that it's all, it's always going to work out. Like you're not going to, no one's going to get hurt. No one's going to get— so with Salesforce, what happened was we had a product called Business Apps Apex, and then TechCrunch published the release of it. And then Salesforce also had a product called Salesforce Apex. And we were a Salesforce customer at the time. So I was with My girlfriend, now wife today. And I remember where we were. We were at a friend's house in Tahoe and I got the letter. I'm like, oh my gosh, like what? Like we're done. And then we just emailed them and said like, hey, sorry. Like we didn't, we had no idea. And they were like, oh, no problem. And then that was done. And then the IRS one was when I first started Business Apps. Our payment processor was, was Braintree. So this was before Stripe and stuff. Setting up payments was, you had to like have a payment processor and then something that sat on top of it. So we had Braintree and then we had Recurly. But when I first started the business, I started as a sole proprietor.

Hmm.

And then they never updated that in their systems to a C corp, which is where we later incorporated. And so that was also cleared up in a day. It was just Hey, this is incorrect. I didn't sleep good either nights getting those notices. But yeah, I mean, life just throws stuff like that at you. And, you know, I could keep going on about just interesting stuff. Like you misspend in business, like you build a product that no one wants. All that stuff, you know, what do you do? Do you just give up? Do you learn from it? Do you, you know, what your actions from there are so crucial. And if you have this attitude of, you know, this is too hard or, oh my gosh, like, what am I going to do? And you're stressed out all the time. Number one, that'll lead to burnout because you'll just, you create this job that's just too intense and you hate it. So I always, I always say that you got to learn to love it when it sucks. Because it sucks a lot. You know, you, you, you know, when you first start a business, it's really exciting. You don't know where it's gonna go. And then you kind of get this like period in the middle where it's just mundane, consistent, but it's what you have to do. And you have to learn to love that middle part because that's where everybody usually gives up.

Okay.

So when you get there, like, just think to yourself, this is where everyone gives up when it starts to get a little hard. You know, people start— stop talking about your startup as much. People aren't necessarily excited about it. Like your birthday's over. And so now you've got to work with customers. You have to talk to them. You have to figure out what their problems are and really fix them. And then along the way, like, you know, the software you're building might take longer. It might require more people. It might be completely off base. And then— Right. you also have to learn sales, marketing, management, all these sorts of things. And these are all obstacles to overcome. And so you can say, I'm not technical, so I have no chance. Or you can say, I'm going to figure out how to do this, even though I have no idea how to program. And then on the flip side, as a technical founder, you can say, well, the reason my product's not successful is because I don't know sales and marketing. Or you can say, I'm a great technical founder and I'm going to become a great, uh, go-to-market founder and I'm going to learn sales. I'm going to learn marketing. And the best way to do that is through action, through, you know, teacher is the best experience where pick up the phone, cold call. Like that was one of the ways I would train sales reps. And many of them have, or a few of them moved on to be VP of sales or the managing people. I just, Do you want to hear this? Am I going too long?

No, no, no, no. Oh man, this is amazing. I thought we were going to talk some, you know, some regular stuff, but this is really gold to me. No, no, keep going. No. Yeah.

Okay. So this is how I would train sales reps and maybe this, I can kind of tie this together. So you would start as usually a sales development rep or an account executive and I would just Say, hey, first day, welcome. And for Business Apps, I never could hire a good head of sales until I moved to San Diego. I originally, this company started in Chico, moved it to San Francisco, later moved it to San Diego where it was acquired. And then in San Francisco though, I was managing the sales team and I would just say, hey, sit down and then call all these people. And then they had no idea what product they were selling, and so they would just get roasted on the phone. Like you would just be like, like don't ever call me again. Like da da da da da. And this is their first job in sales. So I'm you know twenty four, twenty five, twenty six at the time, and then we'd start training on day three. So they'd have two days of just getting. Roasted on the phone so they can feel that like, hey, if you don't know these answers, like people are going to be pretty upset and your job is to help them and you haven't learned how to help them yet. And so that made training 10 times easier because they would come in with quite like, oh my gosh, I was on this call and this guy just yelled at me. He's like, he had some questions about this part of the product. I had no idea what it is. It's like, all right, well, we'll get that answered for you. So everyone's ears kind of stuck up. Because they knew what it was like to actually do the job, but they didn't know how to do the job. And so when training started, they were much more attentive and they were much more eager to learn because they didn't want to just go on the phones again and just get yelled at.

Get yelled at. Yeah. Yeah. Oh

man, I wouldn't recommend that today, but just being young, it kind of was a thought process of, you know, let's kind of toss you in, in, in the pool really quick. Right. Cold calling is hard. It sucks. It's very difficult. And it's one of the hardest ways to sell. But if you get good at it and you can kind of get through those years of just cold calling, then eventually move into a closing role or something like that, you really appreciate that time when you just literally had to just smile and dial all day long. And I did it. And that's how I learned sales.

No, this is amazing. No, I think, appreciate it. I feel like the Salesforce story is amazing. IRS story was funny. A couple of follow-ups. One is you, so before I do like a follow-up, I recently had like similar experience. I built this thing called Bluebee. I started it in January this year. It was like an AI app. You know, I was like in a position where I thought like I'll solve the next problem. Which was not mine. Started it, failed, pivoted, and started something that I want to use. Realized that it's taking forever to actually build it, you know, with a technical partner. And like last week I said, you know what, it's not working. You should shut it down, move on to the next one. It's like you said, it's so freaking uncertain. that one day, like 2 weeks ago, I was actually— I promised someone to sponsor their podcast through this project, Blooby. And I was like, okay, let's do this. I want to support you and all that. And now I don't have it. So it becomes so uncertain and basically all of the moves are curveballs in a way, right? One thing I want to acknowledge Like you said, it's all about at that moment, the choices and the actions define what we want to be next, right? And it all boils down to that. Like, do you either, like you said, you feel like, okay, this is shitty, complain, cry and all that, or you can just pick yourself up. Okay, this is off, just dust off the stuff and like move on. You seem to handle all this very calmly. How the hell are you doing it? Like, do you do meditation or do you do any stuff that the habits that you've, you know, developed over the years that you feel like, you know what, it's chill. Like you've said, everything will figure out by itself, like, or you'll figure out by yourself. It'll work out. It requires a lot of Focus. How did you develop that?

I think it's just my personality, you know, like my mom told me some crazy stories about me as a kid just doing stuff. Like other fun facts about me, I was really into chess. I actually have like 30 chess trophies somewhere in my mom's house. And I was just really into the game. I would read all the books. This is in like 5th grade. So that's another fun fact about me. I think when I, when I, when I find something that I really like, I just go all in on it. And I kind of don't have an off switch, which is kind of, you know, it's hard at times because I enjoy it so much. But sometimes when it is hard, it's not fun. Like you, but it's almost like my body keeps going, but my brain just kind of turns off and I just, like, I guess a stress reliever for me is just working. And what I mean by that is if there's a problem in the business, I'll just do whatever it takes to get that problem fixed, whether it's redoing the sales process, revamping our marketing strategy. Yeah. Getting the right people that I need on board. So I just always view stuff as, again, it's not, it's not a problem. It's not a problem. You know, when I hear problem, I hear, I'm like, okay, good, good. We have a problem. Because when you have problems, that is an opportunity for you to improve. If everything's perfect, like you can't get better at anything. So if everything's perfect, And it never is perfect, you don't ever grow. So it's kind of like understanding just the reality of just, in my opinion, just life and business or whatever you're doing is it's never going to be perfect. The grass is always going to look greener on the other side. But take a step back, appreciate the stuff that you have. I told you some things that people might hear and be like, that's really tragic, but I view it as it made me who I am. Yeah. I wouldn't change a single thing. And so when I bump into problems, it's really just a mindset of, all right, been here before. Let's get this, let's get this shit fixed. Um, I'm gonna put in whatever I have to do to get it done. Um, I, I don't have like a, this isn't going to work ever mentality ever.

And you said it's—

I have more of a, and I haven't succeeded at everything, so I don't want to make it seem too—

Right.

Like, you know, I'm just shooting 3-point after 3-point, like I miss a ton. But, you know, there's a saying that people that know the most about winning know the most about losing. You know, you gotta sometimes just learning what doesn't work helps you figure out what does work. And so not being afraid, like a failure or looking like a dumb person or, you know, embarrassing yourself, like, you know, you're not that, you're not that important. Like,

you

know, it's important to realize that, you know, you're gonna make mistakes. It's inevitable. So just accept it.

Mm-hmm.

You're gonna go through hard times and feel like this isn't gonna work and doubt yourself. So just accept it. And I think that's where you get the real kind of raw entrepreneurs who— there's a group now that, again, I think went to Stanford, they go to Y Combinator and they're building a thing. And I wonder how those entrepreneurs perform under pressure compared to someone Maybe similar to myself who's had to overcome adversity and again, understands that there really is, there's no secret trick, there's no growth hack, there's no silver bullet. It's just putting in the hours and the work and being really, really consistent at it. And like you said, focus.

Hmm.

And so, Kind of a long-winded answer to your question, but I hope that—

I feel I really agree to what you said. One is, where is the thrill if everything is given to you, right? Like, life would be mundane if every startup project you take upon is going to bring millions of dollars creating, like, you know, whatever the thing that you want to aim for. I think the lows, that's how I view it. It's basically the lows are the opportunities where you reset yourself and you start from again from ground zero, right? Like you're so high that you were like kind of literally fell on the floor. Okay, now it's a choice to us to make, okay, how can I go back again? So I feel it's that resetting point. I'm not finding a good analogy, but I completely 100% agree with you. That's how I came to the US as well, with $500 in my pocket, figuring out. I'm still figuring out. I've never done anything that you did compared to you, but I think that's the beauty of it, right? Like, at some point, one of the 3-pointers will go into the basket without touching the net. That's the goal. And you just keep on taking these shots. I don't know. I feel like, you know, as long as we're trying, as long as you're shooting, is fine. Not necessarily like, you know, the shot should go in, right? If it goes, wow, that is amazing. If it didn't go, just like pick up the ball again. And shoot.

Yeah, I'm all about that. Guess what my son will tell you? My son's 3 and a half, but he's been able to answer this question since he was, let's call it 2. I ask him, what do we do when we fall down? Guess what he says?

Pick him up or?

We get back up.

Yeah.

Every time he falls, I say, hey, you fell. What do you do? He's like, you get back up. I'm like, that's right.

That's

right. Another, another couple phrases, um, that I just want ingrained into his mind is, you know, um, what do we do with everything, um, that we're trying to get better at? Like, we're consistent. We keep trying. We keep trying. And so he'll say, okay, I'm gonna try it. I'm gonna give it my best. I'm like, that's right. You're gonna try your hardest and you're gonna give it your best. Um, and then there's another one I'm working on right now. Um, More around like every night, I'll, I read to him and I, that's kind of my, I'm like the closer. So I'll read books to him and then get him in bed and in bed, I'm like, tell me about something you're grateful for. And so I'll say something I'm grateful for. So I want to instill, you know, the confidence of, you know, yeah, if you, you're going to fall down in life and when you do get back up. And then anything that you want to do, if you really want to be great at it, you need to give it your best and you need to, you know, put in, put in the work. And then also be grateful for what you have. And I think that mixture of, I'm not trying to give parenting advice here, but that's kind of

my— I feel like you have like a glass half full mentality all the time. I think that's how you think, like always see the glass half full. not the empty piece, so that you have something to look up to or like look forward to. It can be anything, right? I even, I don't know, man, how you did when you were that age at a young stage where you were like actually looking for a silver lining. That's insane to me. I feel like that takes, it requires a lot of courage and a lot of maturity actually to even go through that, right? So I mean, if you've done that, and I think, like I said, everything else would be like so small, so little, right? If when you remember that I'm— this turns out to be like more than inspirational to me personally, you know, this past 50 minutes, I'm all like, a couple of memories you said, I got like literally goosebumps, man. That's So unimaginable. And I'm so thankful and so happy to see you in the position where you are in. And you inspiring others is what I feel like is the best way to move forward. Right. Couple of more questions. Let's switch gears a little bit and talk about the tactical side. So you've built a no-code mobile platform before no-code was a thing. It was not like a thing, you know, till the last 5 years. How did you see the future like that? So the question I have is, what should founders learn about timing and how do they actually follow this gut that says, okay, you know, pursue this because this might be a thing?

Yeah. So this is a big one for me. So this is how I think about building anything I've ever done is, so that job board thing that I told you about, it was a piece of junk. It was called Phone Freelancer. I made the logo. If you put it in like website archive thing, that tool, if you've ever used it, you can see it. Yeah. But I knew iPhone apps were going to be a big thing. I just, I, the iPhone came out. I couldn't afford one, but all my friends had it. And I was like, what the hell is this thing? Like what? This is like a computer. Like you can go on the internet on this? Like, oh my gosh. And so I just wanted to put myself in that industry. Like put myself in there. And because I knew this was a paradigm shift, I, you know, I was thinking, you know, there was internet, now there's mobile. And I want, I think there's a lot of opportunity in mobile. And so I was really, really excited about it. So The point I'm trying to get at is you want to try to find a way to have a view on something that is unobvious to everyone, but very obvious to you that will become obvious to everybody over time. So what I mean by that in a personal example is I knew mobile apps were going to be big. I saw it happening on this job board. I saw people paying like $50,000 for these things. And so I said, okay, how can I build a company around this? And then that's kind of how the thought process went for that. And same with Acquire. I thought, after I'd exited a business, I was thinking about, I looked around the market, there had been no innovation. Even just going through the process of selling your business, like finding a buyer was so hard. And then due diligence, I had no idea what I was doing. Right. The other options in the market, you know, we're hiring expensive professionals, but for the lower end of the market, you know, you kind of have to sell your business to a business broker or an investment bank. They won't take you on generally. So I felt there was a huge void in the market. And so I made a bet that more people than ever are going to be building startups. They're going to be bootstrapping those startups and they're going to need a place to sell those startups. Because like you said, with the prolific— proliferation of, so, proliferation of no-code,

right?

It's enabled non-technical people to build startups and that kind of, that's kind of how I thought. And that bet turned to be, I'd like to think, true. Business apps also true. But it's find, you know, really put yourself in a market where you can gain these unique insights. And then make a bet on something that's not obvious today, but it's going to become obvious to everybody in the future. And they do say that statistically, there's a really good TED Talk by Bill Gross about the importance of market timing. Like as another example, there's many iterations of YouTube before it came out, but it wasn't until Adobe Flash came out that you could actually watch these videos on a

On a

device. On a browser without downloading or blowing up your router.

Right, right.

Like there's a number of different examples of companies that started too soon. Like the market just wasn't ready.

Right.

So that's kind of my thought process in terms of interesting businesses to build is think of where, I guess I'll throw in a Wayne Gretzky, Michael Scott quote.

Yeah.

You know, skate to where the puck is going, not where it is right now. That's kind of how I try to think. And, you know, you're not always going to be right. Like, definitely not, because you're trying to predict what's going to happen next. But that's how I've always thought about building businesses and which ones to enter.

And what are you right now betting on? Like 2023 Andrew, what is obvious to you that is not obvious for others?

I think it's the same thing that I took a bet on in 2020 when I launched MicroAcquire, now Acquire, where I think more and more founders are realizing that raising venture capital It's just not a game I think a lot of people want to play, and I don't think it's a game that first-time founders should play. I'm fully in support of founders that go down that route. I think it's awesome. The biggest companies in the world are built through the venture path. But I think when you think more practically and more realistically, the statistical odds of becoming successful if you avoid that And just the level of stress that you won't have if you don't have kind of these huge growth targets that you have to hit and all this pressure from other investors. For your first startup, if you're able to just solve a simple problem, it could be, you definitely want to focus in on a very, very specific niche to start and then sell that business so you become, somewhat financially secure, whatever size you build the business to. And then I always say, then go swing, then go swing really big because then you aren't putting so much pressure on yourself where this absolutely has to work. Otherwise, you know, you're back to square zero. When you bootstrap a company, you get any sort of customers, it has value. So I would say, you know, my bet now is still And maybe there's like an opportunity to rethink outcomes that are more realistic because there's also a saying that 90% of acquisitions are under $80 million. So if you just do the math on that, so most, like, if you're going to build a company, it's probably going to, it's not going to be a billion-dollar outcome. And so optimizing for that, maybe there's an opportunity to Align investors with that sort of outcome expectation. I don't know how all that math works, but I think there's something interesting there. So if I had to quit right now, acquire, and that's probably where I'd focus on is what problems could be solved to help more people get into entrepreneurship that's Maybe holding them back.

You seem to be someone who really, really gives a damn about founders, like all the time. Why do you care a lot about founders?

Why? I mean, it's just me. I don't know. I just, I always, I kind of joke around with friends, like, you know, I don't, I don't really— I'll get kind of nervous if I meet a founder I admire just because I admire your work, dude. I've been following you. I'm trying to think of an example of that. But yeah, I mean, it's like those are my people. Like, hey, we're playing the same game and you're just You're way above me. Like, that's awesome. And also, I think just the way that entrepreneurship changed my life, I think having the opportunity and the privilege to help people go down a similar path is really rewarding to me. That's what gets me going. I always joke around with my team that I'm kind of an unpaid volunteer at Acquire because if we have a good outcome, What am I going to do? I'm just going to start another company because it's what I love to do. So I'll be running this one for a while, but I don't have any material wants or anything like that. But what kind of really fires me up in the morning is helping people, inspiring people, talking to people like you. It took me a while to share kind of the background of myself and my story.

Mm-hmm.

But I think I, I enjoy doing it because there's someone out there listening to this that maybe has been through some hardship themselves thinking, hey, I'll never be able to do this, or hey. And it's like, you can, like, it's, it's possible. Like, people have done it and so can you. But if you're gonna think in a negative way of I can't do it, then it's probably not gonna work out. But if you have a positive mindset, And so every tweet, every, you know, I'm usually just trying to make people laugh, motivate people, teach people, specifically startup founders, because it changed my life and I love every bit of it. I love the good, the bad, you know.

How do you tweet, Andrew? I feel one of the things that I also want to like personally ask, do you just tweet it like as if some thought comes to your mind and you just like throw it out? Is there a strategy to it? I'm sure there is no scheme because you seem to be someone who's very authentic. So whatever the thing that comes to your mind, you just like, you know, share it with the public. But what's your creating process look like?

Yeah, I mean, do you want me to do a tweet right now? I just write them from my phone.

Just,

just, I'll, I'll, I'll write a, a Gazdecki-esque tweet.

Um, so we're live tweeting and this podcast is going on. That's amazing.

So, okay, so what do you think the hardest part about building a startup is?

Uh, I think the hardest part is Playing the long game, not wavering about short-term results, you know, having like a unified path where this is where I want to go and I want to go, like you said, right? Like, I want to do this for the long term. I think keeping up with that is really hard because you get a lot of distractions. And you tend to like, you know, lose focus. So I feel that's the thing, I guess, playing the long game.

Okay. I don't want to steal your tweet, but all right. I'm going to tweet this out right now. The hardest part of building a startup is usually just getting started. And the reality is there's no There's never a perfect time. So just go for it.

There you go.

So it's just from my phone. It's usually when Twitter had, you could see where the tweet was coming from. It's always from my phone. If you go back, it's always from my phone.

Yeah, source.

Because that's like, you know, like the best sort, the best form of marketing is just being authentic, just being yourself. Like everyone else is taken and be proud of who you are. Like, And that's another thing, like, you will inspire people, you will upset people, you will make people critics. Some people will completely— like, maybe someone in the street will be like, shut up, or something. I don't know. And I just like the tweet anyway. I'm just like, hey, I respect your opinion. Like, I have my opinions, you have yours. And, you know, I never— like, I don't care. You know, it's just, I want to just say what's on my mind, what I believe. Um, but yeah, Twitter and stuff like that, it— people have asked me that quite a bit. Um, but yeah, I write all my tweets and then I always joke that, um, Drake's my, my ghostwriter.

Probably, yeah. You, you have the bandwidth, uh, So now that you're talking about marketing, one of the questions I have or the topics I want to discuss is unconventional marketing. You actually introduced a lot of the things people do regularly right now these days, buying billboards on Times Square or the other thing like Cameo videos, like bringing these celebrities onto people's feed. And how do you get creative with doing things that, like, in your words, like, very unobvious for people in terms of marketing?

This is a good question. I like this. So one of my favorite parts of building businesses is creative marketing and really brand marketing. And so as a startup founder, And this has been particularly fun with Acquire, is I understand startup founders. I know what's funny. I know what's, at least I think it's funny. I don't know.

Yeah, it is.

But I see a lot of startups using the same playbook. They're writing boring content. They have a paid ad campaign. They have just something general. It works. But to really stand out in today's crowded market, you want to market in a way that doesn't feel like marketing, that really resonates with people, and that, you know, it can either be inspiring. You want to make people feel something. And so, you know, when you bring up the Russ Hanneman videos, RIP to him because he's no longer on Cameo, but he's doing good.

Yeah.

Yeah, great guy. But that makes people laugh. Probably. And then it also gets you—

Probably you should bring Brian Cox from Succession, that he can be a good replacement.

You know, I haven't watched that show. I've gotten into like 2 episodes. I'm like, I just, I'm not a big show watcher. And so me and my wife have tried to get into that one.

It becomes good. It becomes good. Like the first season is kind of dry. It's like The Office. You feel like what? What the hell? It's so boring.

Well, here's a funny random story. So I was with a friend. And I was like, yeah, I just started watching Succession. And he's like, oh, you're going to love when this character gets introduced. And I'm like, is it that kid who brought a girlfriend to this party and she took a picture and he got kicked out? And he's like, dude, that's season 4. And I'm like, oh. Me and my wife Michelle were watching. We're like, who are all these people? When are they going to introduce each other?

So you went ahead.

So if you want to, and maybe this is kind of like a twist, but if you want to talk about ups, you know, I got to give a shout out to my wife too. My wife, what was your question? I feel like we're just kind of going off on a tangent. No, no, no.

I think we were talking about unconventional marketing and, you know, what's, how do you do like creative marketing? Yeah.

Yeah. So I always like to think about marketing in ways of— Brand marketing. Yeah. I don't pick up the marketing book and then be like, I'm going to do all this stuff. I pick up the marketing book and I think about, okay, what's going to be the next trends in marketing? What can really stand out in marketing? Because I'm a big believer that customer attention is your true competitor in today's market. There's just so many companies. So if you think, You know, the one or two companies that sort of kind of do what you do are your competitors. I disagree. And, you know, they, you know, they're your competitors, but really your main competitor is customer attention. Like every day we're inundated with different products. My email inbox is living proof that there are lots of startups being made, just cold emailing me and it just doesn't get through. And so there's also studies that show that. You need— buyers need to see your brand. It might be like 10 to 15 times before making a buying decision.

Right.

And so understanding like the psychology behind people. And so when you make them have an emotional connection, whether that's through educating them, inspiring them, making them laugh is my favorite because everyone can relate to a laugh. And another fun fact about me is I listened to a lot of stand-up comedy when I drive to work every day, just so I was in a positive mood. I would, I would, instead of listening to music on the drive to work, indoor, I'd put on stand-up comedy. And I still do it today. So if I have like a talk I have to give or something like that, I'll usually listen to stand-up comedy before. So I'm like laughing and then it works for me.

That's awesome. Yeah, so you're talking about the unconventional marketing. Do you do like a brainstorming with your team? How do you come up with these ideas that people didn't think about? Right now, most of us are doing the billboards. It's a pretty common thing in tech, but you did that before anybody else. What's the creative process? that go behind Acquire's marketing. And I feel one of the things you're pursuing still now is to get the Twitter handle for Acquire. You're going on a war with Elon.

I want to talk about that one. I'll finally unveil the strategy behind that.

Yeah, yeah. We'd love to know.

We would've loved the handle, but we've known since December that Twitter X is working on a handles auction marketplace since December or since November.

Okay.

So about a year. And so it became this great way to just inspire entrepreneurs to just shoot your shot publicly. And so we're probably going to be sticking with acquire.com because it's more— what's the word? Shoot, I'm forgetting it. It adds uniqueness to the brand because there's other companies called Acquire, but we got the .com. So acquire.com. Right. But it was just all marketing. But you didn't feel like it was marketing. But every time I would do it, people would see it and be like, yeah, like, dude, let's get it.

Right.

So I was inspired by all the other people like rooting me on and stuff like that. But it's likely going to cost like $70,000 or something for the handle. So I don't think we're going to actually get it. But I did post up like a, hey, we'll pay $69,420. I'd pay for that because that's like ultimate PR. Like you get to do a deal with the richest guy on the planet in front of everybody. That would have been cool. Yeah. But I've interacted with the Twitter team enough or X team enough to realize it's never going to happen. So stop asking. It's going to go to the handoffs marketplace. But that's another example of creative marketing. Yeah. See, the examples that you're bringing up are things that people talk about. Right. You know, people don't talk about, like, you would never bring me on this podcast and be like, Andrew, I saw your Google ad campaign. I typed in acquire and I really liked the headline and it was great. You know, so that's how I always think about marketing is how can I almost put on, you know, a show or something entertaining or something inspiring for people to shoot their shots? Like, shoot your shot. Go ask the richest man in the world about some Twitter handle. Why not? It's funny. I had a blast doing it. And then the billboards, like you're talking about it. That's awesome. And then the Russ Hanneman, it's all about standing out and marketing. And so there's a saying, when everyone's going right, you want to go left. When everyone zigs, you want to zag. So you want to do Kind of the opposite of what everyone is doing in the market, because that's how you'll, you'll stand out. And it's also just more fun.

Yeah, you'll enjoy it.

Yeah, I enjoy the billboards. I think it's cool that like, we're in Times Square. And then people look at it and they're like, wow, that must have cost like $10,000. And it really costs like just a couple grand, because what we do is we use a company called Blindspot. And we just have it go up. So it only goes up for like 15 seconds. And so the cost is low. And then we have a photographer that just snaps it. And so it looks like this NASDAQ thing, but it's really just, you know, we just paid for the picture.

Right, right.

So that creative sort of scrappy marketing that's not being done by others is what's going to really stand out in your market.

Yeah. And I feel what you're trying to do, and I think what you suggest or advise founders to do is do marketing where you can talk about whatever the thing you did on a dinner table, right? You'd never talk about SEO marketing with your wife sharing a meal or your friend sharing a meal, right? But you'll definitely talk about, oh my God, you know what, actually I showed it to my wife when you did I think you or someone else actually posted my tweets on Times Square. I was like, holy shit, this is awesome. Like, I'm on Times Square. I don't even associate with Acquire or anything because I'm not working, but I'm there. So I feel that is something that is really fascinating to me. It's like dinner table marketing. Like, you know, you bring these topics together and you share with folks who doesn't even know Acquire or the companies, like, you know, they do these things. that brings word of mouth, that fastens word of mouth like crazy, right? So that's really fascinating to me and appreciate you for starting it so that other founders like me and folks who are listening actually taking lessons.

And last point I'll make too is the way the company that I always admire for marketing is Nike.

They

sell shoes. I got Nikes on right now.

Yeah.

But what they stand for is so much more. They celebrate athletes, they celebrate the sport, they encourage people to get in the game. That's like their whole brand message. And I think if startups think the same, there's a huge opportunity for you to create a community around your business. Of people that really are inspired by what you're doing or have, again, that emotional connection where you're celebrating when people are successful.

Correct.

You're helping people get into the game of building startups by teaching them and motivating them. I believe motivation is kind of the biggest stopper from people entering in. They're just, they don't have the confidence. They feel like they don't have the skill sets. They don't feel like they have this or they need to have this and this and this. And none of that's true. Just, you know, get started and then start learning. That's what you need to do.

Yeah, absolutely.

So if you're able to inspire your customers like that in a similar way to Nike, Nike is a really good framework. Yeah. Then I think you'll have a killer marketing strategy. And you also think about how you market differently because the better you understand your customer in terms of, you know, like what you just said, like it, made your day and, you know, it brought you delight and stuff like that. And I don't know what the ROI is on that, but yeah, you know, it gets you talking and I'm sure you shared it and—

Yeah, absolutely.

Again, the intention also isn't, you know, to get anything about it. So a big part of our marketing strategy as well is just giving away a ton of free value for free, a ton of free value. And then when it's time to potentially sell your business, We hope that you would consider us. So that right there is the marketing strategy I recommend to anyone who's thinking about one is give as much free value away and have a big ask at the end. I know Alex Hormozi just released—

His book.

Yeah. Cool guy. I've met him once, but he's not wrong. He's like, give away like a bunch of free value and then You know, have an offering at the end for later down the line. You don't know when, but you're giving away all this free value with zero expectation in return, and some will come back to use your business for whatever you provide because you built that credibility and that connection with that person far in advance.

And it's a long game, right? Like, so one of the ideas before I forget, I think you should buy fortheloveofstartups.com. And you should, I think in all of your tweets that you were putting for the handle, you actually end up with saying that for the love of startups, something like that, right? So probably it would be like cool to actually have a website where this whole journey is captured, you know? Did you do that or?

I mean, it's probably taken. We did almost buy werejustgettingstarted.com.

Oh. Okay.

But they wanted like a check or something. And I just said, nah, I've kind of purged my domain buying addiction. So after we got the big one, I was like, nah, okay, we're going to calm down here.

Got it. So one of the things I also want to talk about is you hired A-players because you're a team player and You've tweeted so many times about hiring generalists when you're starting and hiring specialists when you scale. So what is the strategy that worked really well for you in terms of hiring? Like, what qualities do you look in people that you want to, like, you know, advise for other founders to do the same?

Yeah, motivation, attitude, skill set, in that order. Can't teach the first 2. And I can't work with people who have a bad attitude and aren't motivated. I think if you're a really high performer, and I consider myself a high performer, it's really hard to work with other people that just aren't as motivated as you, don't have that positive perspective, don't have that, you know, like team mentality, no matter how skilled you are at your role. So I've always made an emphasis to really understand what the team that I hire is, what motivates you? Who are you? What have you been through? What makes you who you are today? Where do you want to go in 5 years? I want people that are driven and actually want to really do their best work when they're working with me. And then I also want to know, How can I make that happen? Because it's a two-way street, you know, it's not just, hey, you got the job, now you got to go do it, you know, now it's my job to inspire them and motivate them. And when I say two-way street, they're working to help my dream come true. But they also have their own dream, you know, so I always ask, like, what is your personal dream? Like, what do you— what can I do personally to help you get to where you want to go? Because I realized You're not going to work here for 40 years. And if you are, I'm going to have some questions for you at that

time.

But while you're here, let's figure out how to have you do your best work. And then in return, I'm going to help you. You want, okay, you're in sales, but you want to learn product. Okay, let's make that happen.

Yeah.

I've had people that started with me in customer success, moved into product sales, moved into product. customer success, moved into marketing. You know, I do a lot of internal promotions over everything just because, you know, if you take an early bet on me, you know, I'm going to return that favor. And, but when it comes to a team, I wholeheartedly, I have a lot of respect for, you know, solopreneurs and stuff like that and keeping the team like really, really small. I think those are great businesses. Sure. You know, just depending on your goals. But for me, I like to be surrounded by just a group that is just tenacious in terms of their motivation. Like,

right,

they're on my same page. And as a leader, you kind of set that tempo. Mm-hmm. And also, I'm not saying like, you know, hey, you got to work till like midnight every night. I'm just saying like, Let's make it really clear what success looks like in this role. And then let's figure out how to get you there. What tools do you need? What support do you need? And then when you have that cohesiveness on a team in terms of what is your mission, what is your strategy, how is this inspiring to you? That's how you can get the best work out of people and really get that extra. I always believe people have just an extra You know, 20, 30, 40, 50% of additional productivity you can get out of them by just doing the basics, not being an asshole, truly caring for them. I could show you in my Slack channel every single day, I thank a random person and not a random person, but

I

thank a person in front of the entire company every single day. It's called daily appreciation. It's got like 2 fire emojis, fire emoji, daily appreciation, fire emoji, then the person. And I tag them in front of the whole company and I just truly I'm appreciative of them working for that, for me and the team and, you know, helping our customers and helping build an amazing business. So when I look to hire, it's definitely, you know, motivation, attitude, skillset. And then when you get all that right, culture-wise, you build this culture that everyone just wants to be a part of and everybody makes each other better and everybody starts to become— Yeah. You build this self-learning— I don't want to say organism, but I'll go with it— where everyone's helping each other and everyone's getting— so everyone on a daily basis is getting better because they like working with each other. And when you like working with each other, you're going to help someone out. You're going to lend a helping hand. Like, hey, like yesterday, an example, we were reviewing a letter of intent that someone had just received. And I hopped on the call with, her name's Ebony. And she had never done a call like that. And I just said, hey, I'll hop in, let's go. And so when you kind of like lead by example and then also foster this environment where everyone feels comfortable asking for help and then other team members come and help or provide you know, whatever they may, may need to, to exceed in a role. I mean, that's when you have a really good team. As a team, there's a difference between a team and a group of just people working on something.

I love that. I think I love the differentiation. I feel you, when you're not being an asshole, I feel you'll be authentic, right? And authenticity really resonates with everybody. So that's, that's the best way to be a leader. And like you said, lead by an example. help them, kind of also care about them, that it's not my dream that you all are fulfilling. It's mutual, right? The two-way handshake is really important in team building. I love that. Let's get into the audience questions. You know, a couple of folks asked some interesting questions. I want to like, you know, give them a shout out. I think Darshan, you know, he asked a couple of questions. One, how did you drive the first 100 acquisition deals? I think you kind of covered Is it cold calling and was it more natural, more handholding? What's your take?

Oh yeah, I used to live on live chat. Like it was, so I launched during COVID and there was just nothing to do. There was nowhere to go. And so I was just working on MicroAcquire, now AcquireNow, pretty much every extra additional minute I had. I didn't want to watch the news. It was just red screens everywhere. It's like, okay, I wanted to put myself in a positive place where I can work on something I enjoy and really just make the most out of a bad situation. Right. So the first 100 acquisitions, I initially worked with an agency to build the product, seeded the marketplace by reaching out to a bunch of angel investors and VC funds and corp dev, corporate development people at larger companies to get the buyers on. And then oddly enough, when I did that, a lot of the people that I reached out to would say, oh, we actually have some companies that we'd like to sell. This is really interesting. And also vice versa, we'd reach out to startups. Would you be interested in potentially Ever thinking about selling your company? We built this marketplace. And I would say we, but it was just, it was literally just me.

Yeah.

And so we get some listings from there, but we'd also get like referrals. And then some startups would say, oh no, but I'm actually looking to buy. And so both sides were looking to buy and sell. And so initially did that, launched on Product Hunt, got Product of the Day. And that was, and then I actually didn't think it was going to work either. I just thought it was a cool concept that, and I could show you this journal entry, but the day before launch, I have a funny journal entry that says, I don't know if this is going to work, but at least the website looks, it's really well designed.

I'm proud of that.

So again, just like, I don't know if this is going to work, but just having that positive view of like, Right. Well, at least this part's awesome. Like, you know, so first, first 100 acquisitions was, was definitely manual hustling. I talked to so many buyers during that time, so many sellers living on live chat, you know, living on live chat can be kind of a big competitive advantage as a founder because you get so much information from customers about what they like, what they don't like, how to improve.

Right.

And people would give me so much feedback. So that really helped me understand, you know, how can we really make this work for both sides?

I love that. There's another question, which is, I think this is my favorite one as well. Over time, what has been the pattern theme you observed about why startups might get acquired? Is it product, founders, community? What is like a deal breaker?

I mean, there's many deal breakers. You can have the perfect business and have deal breakers, like not having truthful financials, holding things back or something like that. There's a lot of goodwill involved in acquisitions. So bring your company to market with goosebumps and all bruises and all, because those can be presented as potential growth opportunities to buyers that are looking to grow the business post-acquisition. And then In terms of what really sells or what buyers are looking for today, it's really just profitable businesses, businesses that are generating, they're healthy, they're generating predictable returns. So that's kind of the biggest segment. But then we have other segments like newsletters are really interesting.

Right.

We sell a good amount of e-commerce websites. We sell a number of, we just opened up this category, content websites, but mobile apps, Shopify apps are great too. But it all comes down to just the quality of the product. Obviously, if you have any sort of proof of product market fit traction, those startups see way more attention than Pre-revenue startups. And then also just being a good person. I mean, that's, it's always, there's a quote from Warren Buffett, it's hard to do a good deal with a bad person. So I think a lot of startup founders, you know, they'll list their startup and they think like, oh, it's just going to sell itself. And that couldn't be further from the truth. Your job when selling your business is to help the buyer fully understand every aspect of how the business operates and make their job easier. So we've actually, this year we built a sales team in-house for both sales and customer success. So when you sell on Acquire, you're not alone. But any type of just online type of business is seeing a lot of traction. It's been really interesting to watch. So there's not, our biggest segment is by far SaaS, but our other segments are starting to grow pretty rapidly.

I love that. Yeah, I think that's a clever move. Also, it helps founders who are new to this accelerate, help, you know, the sales team you hired, they will help the founders like, you know, get more skin in the game and like you educate. I feel one of the things I really appreciate is Acquire has a lot of educational content. Like, this is how you sell, this is how you write letter of intent, you know, this is the process and for folks who are not listed on Acquire can even founders can learn a lot. So appreciate that. There's another person from Twitter, Sandro, shout out to him for asking these 3 questions. I'll just go through a couple. One of the things he wants to check is what are some new features in the pipeline for Acquire? Do you want to share, give a sneak peek?

What are we working on right now? We're redoing our seller onboarding to make it a little bit smoother. Because a lot of people don't know what like TTM revenue is. TTM stands for trailing 12 months. So we're going to be smoothing that out so it's a little bit easier to understand because we get like 5,000 startups that register on Acquire every single month.

That's awesome.

So we dwindled that down to, you know, 200 to 300 new listings and we want to do even more. So just being able to talk to them sooner, make them feel comfortable because at the end of the day, what we're selling is trust. In sales, there's a saying, people don't buy things when they don't work. And so we're starting to layer on just more service and support about your acquisition because we realize it's potentially one of the biggest moments of your life. We want to be there to support you. Other product things, we have a really interesting buyer data matching tool that's coming out. Then we got another big one that I can't share.

Oh man, I thought like we'll give a sneak peek, but it's— I'm just joking. One of the other questions he had was lots of interesting stuff, lots of fascinating stuff coming in the future, rooting You know, waiting for that. One of the other questions, which is kind of like the beginning of my quickfire days, how did you validate the whole idea? How did you figure out product-market fit? This is from Sandro.

I launched

it. Just launch it. Yeah.

I mean, I just, I looked at the marketplace. I didn't see anything specific to SaaS. I didn't think any of the other marketplaces appealed well to startups in terms of positioning or marketing. And I felt there was an opportunity for more of a premium marketplace where buyers were verified. There's more security. There was an opportunity to build tools in terms of easily creating a letter of intent, easily creating an asset purchase agreement, going right into escrow. So I felt like There was a lack of innovation. So there's kind of a proven market of people looking like I would read these tweets about people buying companies and I said, that's going to be a trend. Okay. So I felt like the market was already validated. It was just, what does the product look like? So, you know, I always like to say, fall in love with the problem, not the product. And so I fell in love with the problem of how do I connect these buyers and sellers in a way that they're both comfortable with?

Right.

So finding product market fit, I did a little bit of pre-research, but then I, you know, you got to push it out because the market has feedback that you just have to hear. And I like to hear the bad feedback. I want to hear it. I want to know what sucks, what can we fix? Because, you know, pat on the back, you can't really do much with that. Like, good job, Andrew.

Okay,

I guess we'll keep going. But like, I love, so being on like You know, in communication with so many customers, um, pretty much every day for like the first 2 years, I was able to like really kind of tweak the marketplace to a point where both sellers and buyers were happy.

And I think you kind of implemented the same thing, right? Like you saw like a trend for mobile apps and that led to business apps. You saw like tweets. of people selling and buying stuff on Twitter. So I think that's a sign, I would say, like, where you—

Yeah, and exactly, you're really getting on something. Like you just mentioned, you know, we have a lot of content for founders. And that's because when I sold my first business, I had no idea what it— like, I didn't know what due diligence was. I didn't know what an LOI was. I didn't know what an IOI was, APA. Most founders today, I would believe that founders today are not really ever trained to sell their business, which is arguably the most important part of the founder's journey.

Right.

But there's books on marketing, sales, like literally every other topic. And so I felt there's an opportunity just at the very least, like let's educate startup founders on what acquisitions are, what are good deal structures, what are red flags that buyers You know, look for. So how can you avoid them? How can you set yourself up for success? So we thought there was also just a huge gaping hole in the market in terms of just content and knowledge being shared instead of it being hidden behind like a business broker or an investment bank or the other typical status quo options to sell your business.

I like that. Yeah, I think that that's what I learned personally when I was going through my SaaS startup shoutouts acquisition. I learned a ton from MicroAcquires blogs, like the videos. You really like, you know, this is for the first time I learned what is a letter of intent. You know, till then I had like no clue. Due diligence, have zero clue. Is that a thing? I don't know. So you kind of educated folks like me, you know, so appreciate for that. So before we wrap up, I do this thing segment called Rapid Fire 5. I just ask 5 funny questions. It's funny, or I don't know, you decide, but some questions that— yeah, and we can like, you know, close it out. Share, if you want to share like a life-changing story that you heard through Acquire, what would that be like? Not personal, personally yours, but any founder that you were like, wow, this is amazing, and Acquire enabled this.

I got one right off the top of my head. And this is one of the moments where I knew like, this is a business I want to run for the next decade. I got nothing else to do.

I

get to talk to startup founders all the time. Right. This individual in India sold a platform that helped students prepare for technical tests at like FAANG companies like Google, Apple, Facebook, And it was pretty successful. And he ended up selling it for, I believe it was a little under half a million or something like that.

Wow.

And he wrote me this long email that was just, I almost like teared up because, you know, I had helped him set up the listing and stuff like that. And I'd helped him with a few questions, but he was, the company was acquired and He's like 20-something, just getting out of college. So he told me he paid off his college debt. He bought his mom like a home.

Wow.

And just had so much just gratitude of like, dude, you literally changed my life. And it's, I know a lot of companies say that, like we're changing lives with our productivity tool. We're changing lives with our sales tool that helps you send emails a little fast, but at Acquire, we really do. Like, I was on the phone with another person yesterday, um, where he told me directly, he's like, hey, your company changed my life. Like, not just mine, but my family. And, you know, this was a multimillion-dollar acquisition. When those go down, it is life-changing. Your life has changed forever.

Right, right.

And you're on a different path and Sometimes, you know, like that, those moments just remind you of just how, like, how lucky I am to be running this business. But that's, that's my favorite one, because that was the one where I was like, I'm gonna do whatever I can to help as many. My goal is to create 1,000 millionaires through Acquire.

That's amazing.

I think just, you know, the opportunity that we have and just The lack of knowledge, the lack of a safe place that favors startup founders over the buyers and puts them in the best possible position to maximize your exit. That just, I haven't felt that existed and it's what I wish I had when I sold my first business. So that was a really, really emotional one for me.

I love that.

It's pretty hard to get me to kind of, you know, tear up like that. But I read that and I wrote him back like, you did it all yourself, man. Like, I'm happy for you.

But keep going. I love that. If you want to give a shout out to a founder right now in your arena or your visibility, who would that be?

I'd say Christian Friedman. I think he's working on something new right now, but that guy, he changed my life.

Awesome.

I call him my business dad on Father's Day from time to time. I'll text him like, happy Father's Day, business dad.

Just

because we had such a close relationship and he's just such a great guy. So I would say him. He's a legend.

And have you observed, do you want to give like a mention to a creative marketing You recently saw that like, you know, wow, this is really clever or funny or witty.

Creative marketing campaign that I've recently seen that I thought was interesting. You know, I really like, I like reading people's stories. I like reading people, you know, like when it's just like, hey, I just got my first customer or hey, I just got here. You know, those moments, I know what those moments feel like. And so I'll always just comment like, hell yeah, dude, even if I don't know

them.

So I don't know if that answers your question the way you want it to, but it's marketing. You know, it really is marketing. You know, it's them celebrating a milestone.

Is there kind of like a build in public thing, right? Like, you shared these milestones that you're narrating your story in public. So I love that. Of course, they will be like so kind of validating that people are actually progressing as an industry itself. So I love that. What's your favorite pastime with your son?

It changes. Right now it is definitely riding his bike. He loves to ride his bike. Uh, but, uh, selfishly going to parks because when you don't have a kid, you can't go to parks, otherwise you're a weirdo. But I love climbing like the big— there's been so much innovation in playgrounds. Oh my gosh.

Right.

You know, when I was growing up, and I'm sure you can relate to this, we just had like the steel slide that was like super hot and like a swing. Now there's like all these jungle gyms and stuff like that. And I'm all about that. It's like a, CrossFit workout. I got Julian on my back, like, we're going up here.

Oh,

um, so I, I would say that.

That's awesome. Uh, last question. I think you're a big stand-up guy, so who are you listening to right now, uh, that you recommend to folks? And who's your all-time favorite stand-up comedian?

Oh, uh, all-time, I'd say Brian Regan. He's kind of An older one, but I saw him in person. I like Chris D'Elia too, but he had some like scandals going on.

What are you listening right now these days?

Theo Von. Theo Von. I don't know why I keep listening to him, but he is, he's absolutely hilarious. He's maybe not so work-friendly, but I've just never heard a person who's able to like tell the story That's just so outrageously funny. So I'd say Theo Von.

Awesome, Andrew. We can go on and on. This is probably— this is like the longest episode I ever did in my podcast, and I didn't feel it. Like, I felt like I was just talking to a friend. We were just like hanging out. So this has been amazing. And there's like an element of philosophy, inspiration, motivation. There's like an emotional side of the episode. And on this other side, there's tactical, there's like very much tangible, where some of the moves about hiring, the marketing tips you give. And I just want to appreciate you, Andrew, man. This is amazing talking to you. And I probably have to bring back you some other time, but anything that you want to share before we close out?

Uh, no, just, just thanks for, for bringing me on the podcast. This is the first one I've done with, um, a shaved head. Um, if you're wondering, I shaved it, um, for a friend who, uh, she's battling, um, uh, um, cancer right now and she's gonna lose her hair. So I shaved my head for her. So—

Oh man, that's so sweet.

So this, this, this one's for, um, Estelle, if anyone's wondering like, where did all your hair go? But, um, Just thanks for having me on, man. I really enjoyed this conversation and I'm rooting for you and I love all the content that you post.

Oh, thank you.

I'm excited to see what you do next, man.

Yeah, I appreciate that. You've been always there to support, so I genuinely appreciate that. And for the folks who are listening, those are the people like, you know, we do these things for. And for all the folks who are giving us this time, We genuinely want to say thank you to you as well. And you make our— you are the ones who are like, we look forward to either serve and provide value for. And on that note, I just want to close it out. Stay— definitely follow Andrew. He's amazing, phenomenal, as you can see. And do share if you have any tips, share with others and do share this episode so that we can inspire one of the folks, one of the founders. But yeah, that's it. That's a wrap. And cheers, Andrew. Cheers. Thanks for coming.

Thanks for having me. I had a blast.