From Side Project to SaaS Exit: Genius Sheets’ Journey to Acquisition

Foreign.

I'm here with Trevor, the founder of Genius Sheets who recently got acquired on acquire.com Trevor, how you doing today?

Good. It's nice to finally connect with you.

Yeah, likewise. For those that may not know you, do you want to just give a brief introduction of yourself?

Yeah. So my name is Trevor, was the founder of Genius Sheets before and now working a new product. Maiko background in finance for a long time and then got the entrepreneurial bug when I was at business school and so launched launched Genius Sheets out of that.

Right on. Well, so I've been to Genius shit, tell me what problem did solve. How did you think of the idea? Let's start there.

So originally I was in business school and my background is finance and so getting deeper into the startup ecosystem became painfully obvious to me that financial modeling was broken for most companies. Big companies have Oracle S base and other products that plug in Excel directly to the underlying data sources where the data's coming from. Small businesses really didn't have that capability. So Genius Sheets originally was a Excel plugin, Google Sheets as well that took data right from QuickBooks and put it into Excel so you could build kind of dynamic, flexible financial models.

Nice, I love that. Tell me about how did you get the first customers for a product like this?

I'm trying. So a lot of manual outreach, a lot of just like emailing CFOs, emailing accountants. My network wasn't super great for that at the time. Not that many SMBs coming out of Columbia Business School. So a lot of just like, you know, cold calling to like just any way I could get in front of customers.

Nice. And then if you were giving advice for a founder that was launching a new product, where would you direct them? Would you tell them try cold outreach? Would you tell them social media, posting something different based on the business, like what advice would you give to attract your first customers.

Social media I think has become a little bit more crowded if you don't already have an audience for kind of your individual profile or business profile network like personal networks are always going to be the best if you have them. The second best then becomes alumni basis. So reached out to a lot of alumni, both for my undergrad and then my MBA program program as well. And then after that kind of comes to like, you know, less easy ways of either cold outreach, putting together marketing, doing a product hunt launch, just figuring out ways to find where your buyers are going to be. So we did some things in the early days of like, you know, sponsoring newsletters, getting in front of influencers within our segment that wound up really being really good and pretty scalable early on, which was helpful as well.

Nice. How long did it take you to build the product? And did you build it? Did you have someone else you were working with?

Yeah, my co founder and I built it. We had some help outsourced as well. My co founder was still part time at the time that we were building it. And it took a while. I mean, it took far longer than it should to build. And one of the challenges was getting listed on the Microsoft Excel app store was a kind of big hurdle. Took us months at that point. And so one of our biggest challenges and regrets looking back was like not shipping something faster, getting in people's hands and getting that feedback. We spent a long time kind of like iterating and building initially, heads down.

Nice. Was there any feedback that you got that in hindsight was really obvious that you wish you knew at the beginning, or any feedback that you got that changed the product completely?

I think one of the biggest challenges was just like selling into finance and accounting teams is pretty rough. And so there became a pretty large glut, especially in the CFO market in 2023 and 2024, of, you know, 15 different SaaS tools, all targeting CFOs for Series A through C startups, with all of those same companies having very little budget and not that much appetite to spend on anything more than one tool. And so we had gotten warned by a lot of people about like market dynamic beforehand and always took it a little bit with a grain of salt.

Nice. Would you do any sales calls or was it complete product led growth or would you do like one on one onboarding calls or anything like that?

We tried, we tried to do a mix. So it was product like growth where people could start using it, sign up, pay for a subscription without ever talking to anybody. To the extent that people wanted to have calls or wanted a demo to see what it was the platform platform was about, you know, I was always flexible, able to have a call with them. I also always tried to be very involved on the support side. So after users would sign up, I'd offer to get on a call with them to show them product and make sure they got stood up. That wound up being really beneficial from a retention standpoint of the users that signed up, paid and then booked an onboarding call after were far more likely to be with us six months later.

Right on. Was there ever a moment where you kind of sat back and you're like, oh damn, like we have product Market fit like this is store and then I assume because there's a QuickBooks integration, you probably got some customers that way too. Do you have any thoughts on like the benefit of building integration tools or within marketplaces like this?

The benefit is when you figure out the distribution mechanism, it works significantly better than like doing outbound sales. So in the QuickBooks example, because it was a part of their platform that they were missing, they partnered with us, put us as one of the like featured apps in their app Exchange and it drove a massive, massive amount of traffic in a way that like we wouldn't have been able to drive if we hadn't gone through and thought about that like partner distribution mechanism.

Nice. So let's fast forward a little bit. So things are going really well. You have partnerships with QuickBooks, you're in the Microsoft app store, you know, things are growing fast. What made you want to sell the business?

I think we started to come to the realization that it wasn't necessarily going to be a venture scale growth opportunity in the way that we originally thought it was. And so we started working on another product, really focused on AI and it became pretty obvious to us pretty quickly that AI for, you know, early stage CFOs, the market wasn't there. They weren't going to be the right demographic or the right buyer for what we wanted to build. And so we had this product genius sheets and then we started working on a new product which is ultimately Mica that we're working on now. And so as we started building more of these AI features, we realized we still had this like valuable business that we were operating on the side and started to think through ways to monetize it really through ultimately selling it.

Nice. I love stories like this where you realize that you know the outcome you're looking for isn't there venture scale, because that's not easy to do. But you can still sell the business to someone that is okay with, you know, quote unquote lifestyle business or a profitable business. So it's like a win win sale, partnership exit. Love that. Tell me about your, your first week on acquire.com you list you go live. Did it meet your expectations? Did a lot of buyers sign any A's? What did that look like?

Yeah, so we were pretty nervous going in to how it would work, what it would be like. I think I was a little bit skeptical as well. We had a call with one year specialists which was pretty good. She, she gave us the advice of just list a little bit low, almost like real estate, like list A little bit low. You'll get offers and you. While the listing's fresh and everyone sees it. So I was like, okay, we listed a little bit below the recommended amount and we wound up just getting inundated with buyers. And so we got a number of term sheets within the first week, sight unseen people, without even talking to us, and put ourselves in a good competitive process where we ultimately close for a lot more than we listed for just because of how the competitive dynamics worked.

Nice, I love that. Tell me about the calls with the buyers. How did they go? Anything surprising? Were they all kind of the same high level? Just like someone's listening, probably thinking, you know, when I get on the phone with the buyer, what do I say? What do I do? What can I expect? Any thoughts?

There's, I think it varied depending on the type of buyer. So the buyers we talked to that had a really deep finance or accounting background really understood the product and who it was serving and who we were selling to. There was much less questions around that and much more around like, what does usage look like? Like, what's your retention numbers? Like going into all the nitty gritty of basically trying to find where there's hair on the deal or not, like trying to uncover the secrets for the people that really didn't have the subject matter expertise and were more just SaaS buyers potentially interested. I think there is a lot more education up front in like what this tool is, who it's for, how they would go about marketing it. And so pretty quickly we realized that there was a large enough concentration of finance buyers as people with a real subject matter expertise that that was probably going to be a much better fit to both take over the business and not have the hassle of us wondering, a, is it going to continue operating, but B, during that transition they know exactly what they're getting and that we can be like, feel good that we're giving it somebody who gets it.

Nice. And then you mentioned you received multiple offers from different buyers. How did you make that happen? Did you really prepare before going live and acquired? Did you have really good buyer calls? Did you. Was it the pricing that you listed at? Like, with someone that's saying, how do I receive multiple offers? How would you give advice for someone looking to, looking to do the same?

I think the biggest thing was the pricing. Like we definitely listed it a little bit low out of the recommendation rather than on the high side. Um, and were once again very surprised on the upside of how many active people were on the platform to the point of like, I could have negotiated higher and kept the process going longer and gotten more out of it. I just, at this point was so busy with the other stuff I needed to get it off my plate that we picked who we thought was the best buyer at the time on a price that we thought was fair and went through with it. And so we spent some time getting things ready. It wasn't, you know, not that much is required of it to get it into the process. And so that was really the biggest insight of really, like, listing it for something valuable. And we did one or two looks or in the marketplace to see what else was there, if anything similar, just to have an understanding of kind of how we comp to the rest of the market.

Yeah, that's super smart because it is kind of like real estate, where if you have this, you know, let's say attractive open house, where, you know, it's an attractive price and buyers can come in, check everything out, they get excited. That encourages more buyers to submit offers, and then more submit offers, you have more leverage. You can negotiate on the final price or terms, whichever one's more important. It sounds like it helps you maximize your acquisitions. That's awesome.

I thought it was interesting as well that if in the way that it's different than real estate, there's a lot more premium around that initial blast of, like, here's this new deal. Whereas, like, yes, there's a little bit of that on the real estate market, but, like, buyers in the market for times different prices. And so I really want to maximize when all of those eyeballs were on the deal for the very first time, that, like, we were putting our best.

Yeah, first impressions really matter, you know, because a lot of buyers, if they feel like there's no buyer and no one else is interested and there's really no reason to submit an offer because they can wait. Maybe the price comes. Comes down, or even worse, maybe they think, you know, what are other. But what are other buyers, you know, being scared away about this deal? You know, that first impression really does matter in terms of preparation and valuation. Almost all the acquisitions that we see close usually happens really, really fast because the. The work is done on the preparation, initial listing. So it sounds like you crushed it there.

I wish. My only regret is I wish we did it sooner.

Nice.

Love that.

And then tell me about the buyer that you ended up selling to. You mentioned this person, I assume, had a finance background. Did you get along really well with this person? Was it the final valuation? Like, what stood out about them specifically? That made you say, you know, out of all the offers that we received, this is the buyer I want to move forward with.

Yeah, I think it was a combination of the speed to close, so our ability to get everything done that they knew what they were getting. We'd been through some of the diligence processes, but not doing anything overly cumbersome. They understood the market really well, and so we didn't have to spend a ton of time kind of explaining things to them. We had a pretty good understanding that, like, they could take it over from day one and be in a place to just start hitting. Hitting the ground running. I think that was important as well. And then price, obviously, they wound up having we had multiple buyers at the same final price, and so we ended up going with them because of those other two reasons, kind of as the tiebreaker.

Nice. Okay, so you find a buyer, everything looks good in terms of the offer and the valuation, and then the terms. You sign that, you move into due diligence. How did that process go? How long did it take? Any hiccups? Any surprises? Any advice for people about to enter due diligence?

I think just try and be as upfront as possible around everything that you're selling to the people. When you're getting the offers, especially if you have multiple offers, it's better to be upfront and be like, hey, this is the deal. Like, not try and hide anything. Due diligence. We were fortunate we didn't run into that issue. What we ran into, actually is because we were listed on the Microsoft App Exchange. Microsoft makes it really, really, really hard to transfer that to another entity. And so we wound up having a bit of a prolonged process because of Microsoft support and going back and forth. Microsoft for almost two months. The rest of the diligence for us was very straightforward. I think we had provided all the underlying documentation originally when we were going through the initial process, and then we provided some access to our systems and other places once we had everything signed, just to make sure that, you know, all the T's were crossed and I's were dotted. And so overall, I think the more information you put up front, it really helped. On the back end of the diligence, there wasn't that much. It was a lot of, like, let's transfer accounts and make sure, like, when you tell us there are 100 users here and for this segment, that there are 100 users.

Nice. How long did the whole process take from start to finish, from when you list on acquired.com to when the final wire hit Your bank account.

It was probably four months for us with over a half of that being delayed by Microsoft.

Oh, no. This is probably a very specific question, but any tips for getting an application across the Microsoft ecosystem?

Try and find a friend who works there high up. Like, that's literally the only thing that worked for us is like, we had to get senior management involved out of like the IT loophole we were stuck in.

Oh, wow. Okay, good to know. Well, congrats on the acquisition, Trevor. I'm glad everything, you know, worked out really well. I guess my last question on that position would be if you had to give another founder three pieces of advice to achieve something like you did, where they get multiple offers, they really maximize their exit. What do you think those three pieces would be?

One is you're building the product think through, like on a sustainable basis. Like, what mechanism are you going to be able to acquire customers? I think one of the biggest questions we were getting is kind of like, where was the traffic coming from and where are these new signups coming from without us having to pay for it? So that was really important for the buyers as they were thinking through. And then from like building and maintaining standpoint, like, think about how manual it is. Like, one of the nice things about what we built is it was entirely plg. You didn't necessarily need a human involved for it to continue operating. And so the buyers were looking at that and saying, look, like, if you've got new people signing up and connecting, like that makes it much more attractive for my margins if I know I don't need to spend all of these X, Y, Z resources doing those types of things. And then the third piece of advice is just go for it. Like just build something. Build something. Add a stripe link, get people to start paying and then you never know where you'll end up.

Love it. Trevor, what do you work on next?

So my GO is a voice to CRM solution. So we help really outside sales teams get data back into systems like Salesforce using their voice. So a seller can leaving a meeting quickly say, hey, I just met Andrew. Loved him. Remind me follow up in two weeks. And that all goes into the right places.

Nice. That sounds like I'll put a link in the show notes that if people want to connect with you online and follow more of your journey, where can they find you?

LinkedIn is where I'm most active, so I do, I do most of my content over on LinkedIn. You can find me Trevor Lee.

Right on. All right, Trevor. Well, congrats again on the acquisition. And thanks so much for coming on the podcast.

Appreciate it.