Acquisition Multiples Report: 2025 Findings

All right. We are live, everybody. Super excited for this webinar. We're going to be going over our recent Acquire.com multiples report. Super excited to share all that with each and every one of you. All right. Well, let's go ahead and get started here.

Let's do it.

So today we're going to be going over our recent acquisition multiples report. This is data from all the acquisitions that we closed in 2025 to give founders and buyers a direction into what we're seeing buyers actually pay for businesses on Acquire. And I think it's important to note all this data is representative of what our buyers are willing to pay and what they're looking for businesses. So hopefully this gives, it's a good guide if you're a buyer or a seller on how to successfully get acquired. And as a quick agenda, we'll do quick intros We'll go over what we do, why we do it, and then the reason you're all here, the multiples report. Talk about how we help. We create a lot of free content at acquire.com, from webinars to podcasts to help desk articles to blogs on pretty much every topic you can think of when it comes to acquisitions. So we'll point that out and see if we can help you. And then at the end, we'll talk about a free listing scorecard. So if you're thinking about selling as a founder, you can give us your information and acquire, we can give you some advice and feedback on how to become prepared, or if you are prepared, and help you further along the track to get acquired. And then at the end, we'll go over some questions. So if you have any questions, feel free to put them in the chat. Veronica from our marketing team will keep track of those, and we'll get to those at the end. Quick intro on me. My name is Andrew Gazdecki. I've been a startup founder for as long as I can remember. Prior to Acquire.com, I built a company called Business Apps. It was a drag-and-drop mobile app development platform, scaled that company to about $10 million in annual recurring revenue and sold that to a private equity firm. And then after that, for some reason, I started a crypto company called Acquire— or excuse me, Altcoin.io, and that was acquired by a strategic buyer. And now I spend the majority of my time helping founders successfully get acquired. At Acquire, we've helped over 1,000 founders get acquired. Um, it's probably the best part of the job is being able to celebrate with founders and helping them on to whatever's next for them.

Hey, what's up everyone? This is Ranier. So I've been in M&A, capital markets, and investment sales for over 12 years now. So I've seen all types of deals, and my goal with my clients is to help them get the best price, best terms, and make it as fun of a process as possible. And so we've worked so hard to get to this point. And my favorite part is helping founders just like Gaz get to the finish line and celebrate. And honestly, that's the best part. So over 12 years, it's, it's still the best part is just seeing founders celebrate at the finish line.

And Ranier has definitely helped a lot of founders get acquired. We've been a part of many deals together and it's always fun seeing you, you work your magic, Ranier, and help founders essentially become millionaires, which I think is Probably the most rewarding part of this job is seeing founders transition from, you know, the day in, day out to being able to capitalize on what they built. And then our mission at Acquire, it's, you know, making acquisitions easier for founders. When I sold business apps, it was such a confusing process from finding the buyer to trying to figure out what due diligence is, trying to figure out if I made a mistake. Am I selling the business for what it's worth? All of those headaches is what led me to Build Acquire to help founders go through a process that's much easier and allows them to move on to whatever is next for them. And again, we've helped thousands of founders get acquired every single day. We typically see about 2 to 3 founders get acquired on the platform. And this is, is really what we're doing is we're creating a new generation of founders where They're building profitable, lean businesses and they're seeing those businesses get acquired. And I would say about 90% of the founders that we work with, maybe even higher than that, typically will go on to start a new company. So we're seeing just founders operating at a level that I've never seen. And in the age of AI, I think that's just going to continue. So really great time to be a founder. I wish a platform like Acquire was around when I was a founder. Helped me get acquired. So that's definitely what we're here to do. And then in terms of traction, I started the business about 5 years ago, which seems like 20 years ago. And when you're in tech and with all the crazy changes we've been seeing, but we've done over 5,000 deals, we've done over a billion in closed transactions. Currently on the platform today, we have over half a million registered buyers, which is a ton. So lots of liquidity on the platform, tons of activity on both the buy side and the sell side. If you're looking to acquire a business, we have over 2,200 live listings on Acquire, and then we've served over 100 different countries. So we've done acquisitions on essentially every continent in the world today. All right, Rene, I'll pass it over to you.

All right. So We've put together the 2025 Insights and we've put together this Acquisition Multiples Report, and this is to help both buyers and sellers, founders, to really get an idea of what the market looks like, what multiples look like, what buyers are looking for, what they've looked for last year specifically, what type of deal structures that were made. And it really, at the end of the day, is to give you evidence of what's selling, what's going on in the market, and it helps you get an idea especially as a founder of, okay, how does my, my startup compare to all of these other deals that, that went on? So just to give you an idea of the last, uh, 4 years in the, in just macro forces. So 2022, everyone knows things were booming, and then all of a sudden the interest rates went up 400 basis points. So that really affected the market over the next 3 years. So 2023, from 17x, 7x, 7x to 5.5x. Multiples have compressed. So as liquidity is more— cost of capital is more expensive because of interest rates, buyers start sitting on the sidelines. They start waiting for the best deals. And so as founders and many startups saw, a lot of these multiples started to come down over the last 4 years. 2026, we'll get into that in the next few slides, but it's, it's still at the end of the day, a very active market. As you saw from our previous slides, we're still doing hundreds of deals each year. But just to give you an idea of the overall macro picture, multiples have compressed a bit over the last 4 years.

One thing I would add too on this, Ranir, is, you know, everybody remembers COVID when SaaS multiples were absolutely booming. And, you know, the amount of founders I, I've talked to that wish they sold during that time is so high. But I think another perspective of the trend that we're seeing here is Essentially COVID never happened. It was never real. That's when I think multiples were at a place that just didn't make sense. So obviously from 17x down to 5.5x, that's definitely a decline, but I think what we really saw was a bubble and then the bubble has returned to reality. So more of a return to norm rather than a decline in the asset prices. I don't know if you have a view on it, but that's how I've always viewed it is just We had this huge spike and then it just kind of came down.

Yeah, it was 0% interest rates pretty much, and everyone was going bonkers. And all of a sudden reality hit, interest rates went up. But again, at the end of the day, we're still seeing deals happen left and right. So if you're a founder, it's still, there's still a lot of action and deals to be made.

100%.

So here on this next slide, we've got the purchase price over net income multiple. From 2025 last year. So under $100K, you're still seeing 3.7x as the average sale multiple and then $100K to $1 million at 3.9x. So that's pretty standard when it comes to multiples in the 3 to 5x range. That's typically where deals are getting done. Sometimes you'll see some outliers of some really pristine businesses that are above that multiple. But just to give you a solid range, 3 to 5x is what we're seeing all across the board. And the average days on market is about 90 days, 80 to 90 days. We're seeing deals get taken down from the market when it comes to making a deal. We've also seen deals happen in 30 days for a lot of these deals that are priced correctly, competitively. You'll, we'll get deals done in 30 days or less sometimes. And this is over 136 deals that, that have reported their multiples and their sales. And again, we have thousands of deals on our platform, so we know exactly how long they're sitting on the market. What type of deals are getting done? What type of deal structures? And so that's how we come up with these numbers, and that's when we give you evidence of advising you on where to list your startup and sell your startup.

I think another big takeaway here is just the focus on profitability multiples. So profit multiples rather than revenue multiples. Not always the case, but we've definitely seen scenarios where, say, a business is doing $2 million in revenue but only $100K in profit. Will struggle to sell, and a business that does, say, $1 million in revenue and $500K in profit will see a ton of different offers from buyers. So it's definitely a market where buyers are looking at cash flow first and foremost. So that's why we're leading with the multiples on profit. Cool.

And then over 2024 and 2025, it's pretty stable when it comes to the average multiple. So 3.9x was the average Net income multiple, again, 90 days as well was the average days on market. And again, 100+ deals per year that we're selling and getting reported on. And again, as Andrew said, it's usually the profit margin, years in business, just really these clear-cut metrics that buyers are looking for, just year-over-year growth, huge profit percentage. And when it comes to buyers, they're still looking for the same thing over the last 4 years. It's just they're a little bit more picky these last couple versus, again, Andrew said 2020, 2021 was kind of a bubble, but now buyers are really, really looking for these high-profit margin businesses. [Speaker:ANDREW_GAZDECKI] Yeah.

And another way to look at this too is we talk to our buyers every single day. Every single day of the year, we're having conversations with buyers and getting an understanding of how they're valuing businesses. And really, buyers will say, look, I'm looking to see a return on the capital that I'm investing to acquire a business in 3 to 4 years risk adjusted. So how do you get that return? It's, it's almost always going to be through the cash flow and the profitability of the business, which is why almost all the acquisitions that we've been seeing today are generally from profitable businesses and not revenue-focused businesses. These are the confirmed net income multiples across 2023, 2024, and 2025. I think what stands out to me on this slide is just how consistent the numbers look. And if you compare this to, say, the public markets, we're going to see a lot more variation in the multiple. But across the acquire marketplace, we've seen a pretty consistent flow of buyers looking to buy profitable SaaS businesses between these multiples. And again, it's because the deals really pencil for the buyers that we work with, where they're looking to invest a few million, receive a return on that in 3 to 5 years, depending on the multiple that they see. And then beyond, beyond that, they would see profit from the acquisition. But if you're looking to sell your SaaS business and you price in these ranges based on what we're seeing with our buyers, you can almost certainly expect a good number of offers from buyers. Ranier, I know you love this one.

This is my favorite slide. This is the pricing matrix. So to give you a better understanding of what this is, so if you price your startup to sell, so the fair market value, if you look at the middle of the pyramid, if you price it at fair market value, what that means is 60% of the active buyer pool is going to give you serious interest. They're going to sign an NDA, which ultimately leads to more offers. So we've seen deals with 50+ NDAs signed, looking at the deal, ultimately 10, 12 offers sometimes. And even if you price it above 5 to 10% above the average market multiple or EBITDA multiple, that's when you really start drilling down the serious buyer interest. So that could bring it down to 30% of the buyer pool and 2%. So If you price it 10% or more above the fair market value, that's when buyers really just pass on the deal and say, let me look at the next startup that's priced to sell, which means that it's a serious seller that's looking to sell in a timely fashion. So it just shows the importance of pricing it right. And that's the whole point of this multiples report, is to tell you where deals are actually selling at, what the multiples are at. And again, if you price it fair market value, it shows your serious buyer interest. The more buyers are going to look at your deal, take it seriously, and that's when you have a better chance of selling within that 30 to 90-day timeframe at the best price, best terms, and the least amount of headache ultimately.

100%. And this is, you know, Ranier, you can attest to this, but this is what we spend a lot of time on with founders is, you know, helping them understand what their business could actually sell for. Because I remember when I was building business apps, you know, casually thrown around, I'd hear, you know, SaaS businesses are worth 10 times revenue or, 5 to 15 times revenue, some really wild multiples. It made me feel good, but I think the reality is a little different when you go to sell those. There are businesses that obviously sell for the strategic outlier multiples, but that's exactly what they are, is strategic multiples and outlier multiples. It's not necessarily the norm. In other words, if you are serious about selling, I think you need to ask yourself, is the fair market valuation something you'd be interested in? Because a scenario that we see, I think, too often at Acquire is a founder wants to go out, test the market at a really high valuation. They go out, test the market, and the market talks to them and speaks to them and says, the valuation is too off, there's not a lot of buyer interest, and they have to go back and typically reduce the price to get offers and ultimately sell their business. When if they had just started from a fair market valuation from the beginning, they'd be in a much better place. They would've potentially even seen more offers, more interest, and a better outcome. So that's why we do this so much at Acquire is we have all the data, we speak to all the buyers, we have our thumb on the market and, you know, we share this information to help founders be successful in the process of getting acquired because that's really what we're ultimately here to do. So moving on to this next slide, this is confirmed sale price to net income multiples. This is a good slide that's illustrating the— if you look on the left-hand side, that's going to be the multiple. Uh, and the bottom is the date. And essentially what this is saying is the majority of acquisitions are going to be between the 3 to 5 times net profit range. And then as you go towards the top, you can see, of course, there are outliers and we do see acquisitions above those multiples, but it's much more rare. And that's why we encourage founders to price where we're seeing the majority of activity happening on our platform. Because that's where the majority of deals are actually getting done. So again, when you price outside of these multiples, that's where the interest goes down and the acquisition is not nearly as successful. So pricing within these ranges is absolutely critical if you're serious about selling your business. Raneer, do you have anything on this side?

Really, I would just add, you know, the first 30 days on market are the most critical. That's when you get the most buyer interest and the best position to be in as a startup founder and seller. Once you put your startup on the market is once you have tons of buyers, multiple offers, you get some sort of competitive bidding war, and that's the best position to be in. Because if you only have one buyer, it's going to be a really tough negotiation to get the price that you want and the multiple that you want. So again, here's, here's the data, here's the evidence, and our job is really to help you have a smooth process.

100%. I'm glad you brought that up because you might be asking yourself, you know, how do I get a, you know, a super high multiple? How do I get into the top range of this? And it's creating those competitive bidding scenarios where buyers come in, they start at, you know, 5 times, and then they go up to 8 to win the deal. And then it starts getting crazy, and then it goes up to 12 and 15 and stuff like that. But that's always our strategy at Acquire is we want founders to receive multiple offers because there's a saying that we have at Acquire, which is if you have one buyer, you have no buyers. Because you're right, Ranier, like if you go into, say, due diligence and the buyer is aware that they were the only offer at the table, that takes away quite a bit of leverage. And there's no— there's at least not as much urgency to close. And if there's some issue that comes out or cold feet that happens, you don't have any offers to fall back on. So that's where we see the success rate of deals declining. And that's why everything that we do at Acquire is to try to create those bidding wars, because that increases the successful acquisition percentage outcome and then ultimately leads to a better price and then better terms, just a better, better ground for founders to stand on if they're negotiating. So, so good, good point to bring that up. This next slide is showing the average profit margin of startups that are listing on acquire.com. So you can see generally the startups that are listing on Acquire are heavily profitable. They're, they're very efficient. These are great businesses. And this is really what our buyers tell us all the time that they're most interested in acquiring. They are looking for businesses that are generating cash flow, that are capital efficient and are not losing money. If they're losing money, that is an area where we try to give founders guidance on how to address those issues before going to market, because the amount of interest you're going to see from buyers just absolutely decreases as it, as it goes down. And Ranir, I think you can, you can speak to that more specifically on this slide.

Right. At the end of the day, buyers are looking at, you know, what's their upside? What's the value that they can uncover after the acquisition? Can they implement a sales team, marketing team? What's the upside there? How fast can they recover their initial capital and how can they grow their business? So again, if you're already in a good position with a high profit margin, you're going to get tons of buyers, tons of competitive offers. And we just want to get you in the best position possible again to get you the best price, best terms. And a speedy close. So on this next slide, why is getting the asking price right so important? So the 5 reasons is you're increasing your buyer pool, as we mentioned, more offers, more competitive bids, more urgency from the buyers to close quickly. 2, you maximize the cash component of your deal. So again, what we haven't went through is there's tons of different deal structures that we see that the deals that take place, there's a cash component, heavy cash component. If you've got a competitive deal, Sometimes there's an earnout, sometimes there's seller financing, all types of different deal structures. But if you get the asking price right, you're going to get more cash at close. And number 3, helps you close faster, sell faster, and reduces the macroeconomic risk. Last thing you want is you're in the middle of the deal, interest rates spike up, another war happens, all kinds of uncertainty, and then all of a sudden the buyers get cold feet and you don't want that to happen. Number 4, easier to justify, so less admin and due diligence. Again, if you've got the asking price right, then it's just less questions for the buyer on how to mitigate their risk and their price, right? They already know how to add value post-close. And number 5, fewer post-closing conditions and earnouts. Again, if you've got a high asking price, the buyer's thinking about how to mitigate that risk. That means a bigger earnout component or seller financing component and potentially less cash at close for you as a seller. So all of these different things all affect you when pricing your startup going to market. And again, as I mentioned earlier, the first 30 days are so critical that you have to price it right, because if you don't price it right, that could extend your deal to 90 days, 120 days. Even longer, especially if there's only 1 or 2 buyers looking at your deal. So these are all extremely critical when putting your startup on the market.

100%. To me, the biggest one is just the increased buyer pool. I think by increasing the buyer pool and increasing the offers, that ultimately can lead to the best valuation and the best terms. And another thing a lot of founders don't typically think about is the deal structure. There's going to be a big difference between a deal structure where maybe the final number is $2 million, but 50% is on an earnout or seller financing, and then the million is on cash compared to $1.5 million and all of it is cash at close, or the majority of it is cash at close. But the biggest one definitely is the buyer pool, meaning You receive more offers, you have more leverage when you discuss terms or valuation because selling a business can be— there's a lot of parallels to, say, real estate where you go onto the market, the home sits cold, other buyers start wondering what's wrong with it or why it hasn't sold, or is there an opportunity to wait even longer to get a better price? So you really want to maximize that initial impression, and that absolutely 100% starts with the asking price. Every buyer knows the multiples. They typically have a buy box where they're specifically not even looking at businesses on Acquire outside of a certain range. And that's another part about the data that we have at Acquire is we know all of our buyers' saved search settings. So if we see a large amount of buyers only looking at businesses within a specific range, we're going to be encouraging founders to value their business within that specific range. Because if you're outside of that range, you're not even showing up to buyers. They're not even looking at it and then passing. They're just never seeing it, period. Which is why we are encouraging these valuations so much because it can be detrimental if it's outside of the fair market valuations that we're seeing. Okay. So Translating all this, profitable startups receive more offers on, on the platform, 100%. You can see by profit margin on the bottom and the percentage of startups receiving these offers. So as the startup becomes more profitable, we tend to see more offers for these businesses. And this is again a reflection of what our buyers are looking for to acquire, which is high-quality, durable, cash-flow-heavy businesses where they're able to put cash to acquire the business and then recoup that investment through cash flow and profitability of the business here. So no real surprises, but again, just reiterating just the view of buyers being so focused on profitable businesses. Raniere, would you add anything to this one?

The only thing I'd add is we've got such a diverse buyer pool, everything from private operators, entrepreneurs building portfolios, to private equity, to public companies. So we've got a deep buyer pool, 500,000+ buyers, all with, most of them with verified funds. And again, our buyers are serious. They're looking at deals. We have a ton of repeat buyers. And again, as Andrew mentioned, there's a specific box and checklist that they have. And if you hit all these boxes, there's a high likelihood you're going to get offers and multiple offers. And we're here to help you achieve that 100%.

I think the best way to view all this is, you know, put yourself in the shoes of a buyer. And the more you can understand how they make offers, what they're looking for from businesses, how they're valuing businesses, and if you're able to match all that, against the large network of buyers that we have at Acquire, you will be very successful. You'll see a ton of different offers. You'll be able to truly maximize those offers. But again, I think the trouble part or the hard part comes when you try going outside of that, just given how much our buyers tell us that this is specifically what they're looking for and what they're looking to acquire. So in terms of time on market, this could definitely depend on the size of the business, the preparation of the founder, materials available, how they price when going to market. But generally, on average, we see about 81 days on market. Obviously, we've seen deals much faster than that. We've seen deals much longer than that as well. Other factors can include, is there bank financing involved? Is there other investors involved? Is there other co-founders involved? The amount of moving parts will add to the timeline. And then the complexity of the business, if it's a very simple business that can typically go through due diligence quickly, or if they, if they price right and they are prepared and they run a good process and they work with the acquire team, they take our guidance and our advice. That's generally where we see the fastest outcomes because again, we know so much specifically about what our buyers are looking for. And when you check all those boxes, deals tend to move very quickly. It's, it's the situations where it takes a little bit more to understand due diligence. You need an initial call with the founder to get just basic information. So this is a good view into the average time on market. And again, there's a lot of variability in this time on market, but I think the biggest piece of advice I have for founders that could be listening to this, if they want to sell quickly rather than being on the longer side of the timeline, is take the acquired team's advice in terms of, you know, how to value materials you need when going to market, how to run the process, how to manage the initial calls with buyers, pointing out things that may be an issue to avoid any surprises. If you do all that correctly, you'll definitely be on the lower end of the days on market.

Well, so this next slide, cash at closing is king. And so the 5 most important things about getting the most cash at close: you get a clean break from the business, there's less risk to you, no risk to you, happier investors, seed money for new ventures, new ideas. You want to put your money into real estate, whatever you want to do, and then ultimately a faster close. And so again, as a startup founder, putting your, your business on the market, you want to position it with the best price to show buyers that you're serious so that ultimately you could get the most amount of cash at close, ideally all cash at close. And again, we're going to help you position your listing and your startup in the best possible way so that we can get you the most cash at close. The last thing we want to do is get you in a position where the deal structure has a lot of risk to you as a founder, or there's huge seller financing component, a huge earnout component where you may not realize that entire purchase price. So again, cash at close is king, and we're going to try to get you in that position in the best way possible.

100%. I think another way to think about earnouts and seller financing, they're not necessarily bad. It just increases your risk of potentially not seeing that full outcome. There's definitely acquisitions where earnouts are completely met or exceeded, but there's also A ton of situations where earnouts are not met and they're not exceeded. So that's why they say cash at closing is king because you're able to obviously secure the full amount for the acquisition or a very high percentage of the amount rather than putting it to risk for outside forces. The market changes, the business market gets disrupted, AI releases a new feature and you're not able to reach certain goals, stuff like that.

Cool. And then so comparing against the market, and I've seen this myself as well, I've worked at a few different brokerage shops, So under the $50K, you're looking at 0.6 to 3.9x. $50K to $250K, you're looking at 1.4 to 2.8x. $250K plus, 3.3 to 4.5x. Uh, another marketplace above the $2 million, 5 to 7x. $2 million plus, 7 to 10x. So the higher the purchase price goes, the multiples increase on average. But again, the 3 to 5x is pretty standard across all different marketplaces, all different brokerages that I've been at. That's, that's pretty standard for these size type of deals. And again, the, the market is still very, very active over the last 4 years, and especially coming into 2026 of what we've seen so far. And at the end of the day, you want to make sure that you're in a position where you have the, the most buyers, the most serious buyers. And again, the cool thing about Acquire I'd say one thing I'd want to add is we're selling deals in the 80 to 90-day average, where a lot of other places that I've been at and I've seen, it's usually 6 to 12 months. And that just shows the competitive advantage we have of having the biggest buyer pool, the most diverse buyer pool with funds ready to deploy. And again, if you have questions as a founder and startup, putting your business on the market, we have all the data here. We have thousands of deals that we see. Thousands of listings, all the data of what buyers are looking for, and we'll give you the evidence. That way you have the best outcome possible.

Love it. I mean, well said. I think just the— a big initiative that we always had at Acquire is just doing what we can to use data to influence better outcomes, to really give founders an advantage when going to market. And, you know, we share this information on this slide just as a view towards the larger, broader market outside of just our marketplace to show you that we're in line based on the activity and the deals that we're seeing. And I would absolutely argue that Acquire has a more efficient process. It allows founders to get acquired quicker. We bring the largest buyer pool to every single opportunity that we bring out of the marketplace. So great stuff in here, great comments. Okay, now we're going to talk about top 5 strategies to increase your valuation. There's obviously more outside of these, but to just give you a simple checklist, increase profitability and/or revenue, just grow your startup. That's going to be a pretty obvious one to all the founders on this call. But the more profitable you can make your business always will increase interest and will always increase your valuation. And just generally growing. If you're able to be at, say, $1 million in revenue today, but $1.5 million in 6 months, your business will be worth more in 6 months. So never stop growing. Never stop finding ways to be more efficient. Number 2 is going to be cutting expenses. I've seen thousands of P&Ls from different founders, and I don't think I've ever seen a P&L where there's not expenses that can't be removed, meaning there's small subscriptions to software that's not really being used. There's $100K in Google ad spend each month that's not showing an ROI. There's always something. So if you're able to, you know, spend some time— and this is just good housecleaning in general when you're operating a business— is go through all your expenses and see if there's anything you can find that's no longer being used or really questioned. Are ROI on certain activities. Um, uh, marketing is generally a big one, and then also it's just, uh, recurring revenue— or excuse me, uh, recurring subscription software items. Uh, I definitely think you could find a few there. So, uh, take a good look at expenses as if you were a buyer and you were diligencing your own business to acquire it. Uh, number 3 is going to be developing your IP, you know, improving your product, deepening your moat, figuring out what customers really love about your business and doubling down on that. That's one of the best ROI uses of your time and resources. Number 4 is going to be increasing efficiency. In the age of AI, I think there's just so much opportunity as founders to make your business as capital efficient as possible. And that goes hand in hand because that's what buyers today are really looking to acquire is very efficient businesses that don't require a lot of capital to run each month. So if there's ways for you to increase efficiency through AI, that's definitely a big one to increase your valuation. And number 5 is going to be prepare for an acquisition early. This could mean diligencing your own business, putting together a data room in advance, cleaning up and preparing your profit and loss statement, meeting with us at the Acquire team and getting our take on parts of your business that could use improvement or things that you can do today to essentially drive more buyer interest. There's a ton of different things that we advise on, on a day-to-day basis for founders that are thinking about getting acquired in 6 months or 12 months. Whatever your timeline is, we can definitely work with you and give you some advice. So definitely prepare early for an acquisition. That's a big one to increase your, your valuation. Ranir, anything you'd add on this side?

The only thing I'd add is for number 4, having SOPs in place is really critical as well. So just making sure that the incoming buyer knows exactly how to run the business once they take over. And then also one question that we always get from buyers is, you know, how much time are you spending in the business and can the business operate without the founder? So if you can start preparing to, you know, slide out and make sure that the buyer can can come in and have those SOPs in place and the business can run, you know, with, with not that much time from the founder. Those are things that really add value to, to your valuation.

True. 100%.

Cool. So then when we go to the next slide here, so what does that unicorn 10x multiple business look like? So you're going to have to have all of these things perfect in order to get this crazy outlier multiple. So you're going to have your finances of revenue, high profit margin, your net revenue retention, high cash flow. When it comes to business metrics, year-over-year growth, at least 3 years in the business, the more time in the business, the better. Low churn, a big TAM, total addressable market. The attributes, years in business, again, 3+ years is ideal. Competition, you've got a competitive moat. Compared to some of your competitors, and then your buyer network as well. So again, when you're looking for, you know, when you hear these outliers of these 10x profit multiples, it's going to be very rare to find these businesses that have everything perfect. And again, if you don't have all of these things checked, it's just an opportunity for a buyer to come in and say, okay, how can I add value and how can I uncover this hidden value once I take over? And again, they're thinking of implementing sales team, marketing team, etc. So just because you don't have every single thing checked off on this list doesn't mean it's not a, not a saleable business. We're still here to help you sell and we sell businesses all the time that don't have all these things perfect. But just get it in your head that, you know, these 10x multiples, it's most oftentimes an outlier.

100%. And no business is perfect. But like you said, that's a good opportunity for potential buyers and that That's what could actually lead to a successful acquisition, is when there's some area that a new buyer could come into and add value and grow the business. So if you're in this bucket, we'd be happy to chat with you and share kind of our thoughts, because again, the more preparation you can do if you're thinking about getting acquired, the better. So that's, that's about the end of this webinar. I hope you all enjoyed the data. We'll have all of this data available online pretty soon here, along with a recording of this. But if you've been thinking about getting acquired and you want to speak with us, we'd be happy to meet with you, talk more about how these valuations and this data could apply specifically to your business. We could talk about our buyer network, how we can help give you access to the 500,000 buyers on Acquire. And another thing that we do is we can take in this feedback and give you what we call a listing scorecard, where we'll go over some areas of your business that we think could be improved or would help evaluation or hurt your valuation and things to just generally think about as you start to get prepared. And this applies whether you're thinking about getting acquired next week or next month or even 6 months from now or 12 months from now. So if you're thinking about getting acquired, go to acquire.com. Feel free to submit your information to us and one of our expert M&A advisors will reach out to you to set up some time to chat. But thank you all so much for making the time. I definitely appreciate it. I hope this all was helpful. And at this time, we'll, we'll do some Q&A and we'll wrap it up. All right. What everybody think of that, Renee? I thought you crushed it. For what's— for what it's worth.

Likewise, likewise. I think all of this information is important. And again, founders, we get these questions all the time and we're here to help. We have all the data. And when it comes to doing a deal, it's really just forecasting a lot of these questions that buyers are going to ask and different points about your deal of how we can address. Again, it's not problems that kill deals, it's surprises. And the more that we can forecast any of these questions or surprises, the better it is for you. And again, we're here to get you the best price, best terms, and just the smoothest exit possible.

100%. All right. First question. What's the biggest mistake founders make when pricing their startup for sale? You want me to take this one or do you want to take it? I take the next one. Okay.

I can take this one. Biggest mistake. Again, it's just not pricing to what fair market value is. So again, Just don't get emotional. We're going to show you the data. We're going to show you what buyers are looking for, what they're asking for, what type of deals are going down, what type of deal structures. And it's really just having the expectations aligned of what you're looking for, what your goals are, pricing it correctly, and just knowing what buyers are going to ask and structure your deal properly.

Yeah, I would agree with that. Okay. Next question. What kind of startups sell the fastest? This, this one I think would be pretty straightforward. From what we see, it's going to be profitable startups with good clean financials from founders that are prepared, full data room involved, clear documentation, typically have been working with the acquire advisory team, taking the process seriously. But in terms of business attributes, I would say high profit margin businesses at fair market value valuations. That's— there's a lot of times when we see certain businesses come through to acquire with a certain level of preparation, and we can usually tell when there's going to be a lot of interest from buyers, and those are usually the attributes that I see. Okay, next question. What metrics matter most to buyers when evaluating a startup?

I can take this one. So yeah, just like we've been harping on this entire time, it's profit margin. So you want to have high profit margin, year-over-year growth, at least 3 years plus in the business is a plus, low churn, low dependence on the founder. You've got proper SOPs in place, documented. At the end of the day, buyers are looking for strong retention and predictable revenue. So those are all the metrics that buyers are looking for.

I'm grabbing a few questions from over here. As a buyer, how reliable are income and profit statements? I'd say very reliable. It's going to depend on the founder and the quality of their financial bookkeeping, though. Not every founder is going to be a financial expert, from my experience, and so sometimes the quality of the data is going to vary from business to business, but that's definitely a key requirement when looking to acquire a business. And if you come across something and just need some help, the acquired team is happy to assist as well. Another question we have, a SaaS for Latin America and Spain, is this something that works in your marketplace? Absolutely. We have Spanish-speaking advisors at the company. We've done, we did recently a $10 million plus acquisition in Latin America, and I believe the buyer was in Spain. Um, so absolutely, if you're, you're based in Latin America, um, and your native language is, um, Spanish, uh, we have a full team that can assist you. But, uh, we also have thousands of buyers interested in those businesses, which I think is, uh, the more important part. Is it better to sell your startup when it's growing or when growth slows down? Um, I'll take this one. Generally, we're, we see buyers paying the most for growing businesses. With good momentum, there's a reason to believe that the growth will continue. And I guess another way to think about it is when things slow down, you at least want things to stabilize. You don't want to be in a position where you're selling a business that is in a current decline that could be significant, meaning more than 5 to 10% per month. And at some point the business could theoretically go to zero. So definitely you want to sell when there's momentum and there's a view to see the business continuing to grow into the future. And that's how you really maximize the valuation. But it's impossible to time that. It's impossible. I think if every founder knew how to sell their business at the very, very top, we'd all be a bunch richer. Like my company Business Apps, I absolutely did not sell it at the top. I didn't sell it the bottom either. So I'd say, you know, before, you know, thinking about selling your business just based on growth, you know, ask your questions. Is it stable? Is it profitable? Do I believe this revenue will continue? Because those are the key questions that every buyer is going to be asking. Okay, Ranir, this one's for you. What can founders do today to increase their valuation before selling?

Just like Andrew mentioned a few slides ago, it's just increasing profitability, doing some housecleaning of expenses. As I mentioned, documenting the operations, SOPs in place, and just planning ahead. If you have an idea that you're looking or interested in selling or interested in getting a valuation, we're happy to help. We consult a lot of founders 3, 6, even 12 months in advance, and just be prepared so that when you do hit the market, you know, you got your valuation in place, you've got all of the documentation in place, and it just makes it a cleaner and smoother exit at the end of the day. So if you want to increase your valuation, do these things and, and you'll be in the best position possible.

100%. I think it, you know, to put it more simply, if you want to increase your valuation, uh, meet with us as a team and, and get our feedback, uh, let us understand your business and share, uh, everything that we've been seeing at Acquire, all the data that we've been collecting. Um, because what we can do is we can take this, this data and we can apply it specifically to your business. And right now we've just been sharing general multiples based on all the combined activity, but when we're able to understand the specifics of your business, the size, how long you've been in business, how profitable is it, how fast is it growing, we're able to apply that data much more accurately to your business. So, so feel free to meet with us and we'd be happy to do that. All right, Ranier, I think that's it. You know, thanks for joining me as always. I appreciate it.

Yeah, this was fun. This is fun. I hope everyone got some value out of this. And again, we're here to help. If you have any questions or if you want an evaluation on your business, we're always happy to help.

100%. All right, everybody, thanks so much for joining. We'll have the recording out soon. And in the meantime, if you have any questions, feel free to reach out to us at Acquire. We'd be happy to help. See you guys next time.

Yeah.