How This Founder 30x’d a Business Before Selling It: The Story of Copycopter’s Acquisition

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I'm here with Sanjana who acquired a company called Copycopter. How you doing today?

I'm doing great, thank you.

Tell me about Copycopter. Tell me what it did, what problem did it solve.

Copycopter, it's an AI all in one AI video generator. With like, users can generate complete AI video using just a text prompt. They can choose music, voiceovers, animations, they can choose the AI art styles. So that's an all in one AI video editor.

Nice. So this podcast is super interesting because you acquired Copycopter, what was revenue at when you acquired the business?

So when I acquired it was at 800 MRA.

And then what was it at when you sold the business?

It was at 32.

Yeah.

$32,000.

Yeah.

Mrr.

Yeah.

So you 30x the business?

Yeah, I 30x the business, yeah.

That is incredible. And then so to get more specific about what copy copier did, it essentially made YouTube shorts, TikTok shorts in an automated fashion. Is that correct?

Yeah.

So viral shorts maker then initially it was in that state to generate like a small 30 to 60 second clips. Then I had the idea to introduce like a long form video, like three minutes video. And so we did a lot of developments after the acquisition.

That's incredible. Tell me, how'd you grow it?

So when I started, I saw the initial developer, Kamil, he didn't do any marketing. He didn't do any much marketing at all. So I had a content team in house. So then we plan, we create a new Instagram TikTok accounts and new ad campaigns and we start to push videos one by one, day after day, every day for this, every six months. We pushed video every single day, like two, three videos. And and we also created like a lot of sub accounts for different niche, like copy copter trends, copy copter fashion, copy copter politics. Like we did a lot of different niche. Then we use meta ads and we also tried Twitter ads, TikTok ads. But then I saw meta ads is the one working really well. So then we kept pushing meta ads. Yeah, that's how we grew it. And we also did some influencer campaigns. But meta else is the one, the main revenue generation method.

That is awesome. What did you see in the company to make you want to acquire the business? Did you just see a really good product? Did you see no main marketing channels stood up? Like, what made you excited and confident that you could grow this business?

Yeah, so during that time I was working on another AI image generation app. And so we had, I Had the idea so we should make it, add some video filters or effects. But then I was just browsing aqua.com and suddenly I saw something in AI video niche and I sent a request and I, I saw like, okay, this is what I want to do by myself before, but it's not gonna be easy to do from a scratch. Then I immediately send a message to Kamil and ask him if you want to close the deal the same day.

Yeah. How long did it take you to buy the business from? Can you walk me through that process? You signed the NDA. I'm sure you got a call with him. You did due diligence. What did that whole process look like?

So the first I, I reached out to Kamil, maybe at night, I didn't get a reply. I sent a reply and I was so scared someone else will buy the startup. So then I sent the message on LinkedIn and then he said he saw that message maybe. Then he said, okay, let's continue the chat on acquire.com then we start to discuss and we, we didn't even make a call. I said, I need it, I need it now. I buy it now before someone else. And he said, there's a. Another person also trying to buy from us. Then we did some negotiation back and forth in chat. Then I said, okay, I will send you a transfer directly. Just I need it. I don't want to spend time on due diligence or anything because I really like the product and I saw the potential. I say, yeah, let's do it within like next 12, 24 hours. We did it.

Nice. Walk me through. Just in terms of the product, was there any changes that you made or features that you added? Or did you just leave everything as is and you just focused entirely on the marketing?

Yeah, initially. Then I made an agreement with the original developer. He said he can work for like salary, hourly salary. So then I had a lot of plans and we start to introduce new features right after like next one, two weeks. We started to develop to introduce all the new features we had. We optimized it for mobile. We did add a lot of voiceovers and music option. Like, we start to develop it right after acquisition.

Yeah.

Nice. And then you decided to sell the business? What did that decision look like?

Yeah, so I was running, I tried to raise fund in because I'm based in uae. But I went to, I got approached by few San Francisco headline VC and two, three VC firms. But then they said the traction is still not enough. And I try to also raise funding because I was Doing all this from my savings and the business even the we are getting revenue but still and I had another loan commitment here. I had a loan business loan I got like two years ago. So like a lot of things came together and suddenly like the still the business profits are not enough to cover all of these expenses and I really needed to find some funding and even though I didn't want to sell it, I had to take a decision after six months. It's because of the. I had liquidity problems.

Thanks science. Before we move into the story of you finding your buyer selling the business, if you could give three tips to anyone hearing this. Like I want to buy a startup, grow a 30x like what do you look at? Like what are some tips you would give someone to do something similar that you did?

So what I say is many investors or they say like don't try meta ads or don't try ads. I see but I see ads can give like really give you a boost but you have to. I did I, I made that mistake initially like without optimizing all the like tracking or we, we, we didn't track properly all the ad conversions through meta ads for the first week or two. Then I got an agency to set it up the campaigns properly with all the pixel purchase actions. Then we started to push ads slowly like $10, $20 per day budget. Then based on that we start to increase it slowly. So I think that's something I say anyone can start advertisement but start with small budgets with and also with proper traffic. Yeah, nice.

In terms of what you look for in products, is there like a type of sector you get really excited about or maybe the customer is marketers. Is there something if you were going to acquire another business, is there like a special set of criteria you would look for?

Yeah, right now I'm looking for like AI voice startups. I see like AI call AI voice anytime interested in that specific niche right now. So I've been looking for few other startups in acquire.com and also I'm working on something by myself these days.

Yeah nice.

So walk me through the acquisition process. You, you list on acquire, what happens?

Oh I listed on acquire and I got lot of support from Ali and Roger and yeah they Ali suggest me all the. I had a call with Ali and she suggested me all the steps I should do. Like what should I say? Like how should I reach out to the interested parties, what should I send them all of these tips and I watched Aquare and like a full like documentation about the process. So I spent Like a day watching every, all the videos there. And then I listed the website. So it's pretty straightforward. It was easy and smooth. I can connect Stripe analytics, all of these platforms.

How was the conversations with the buyers? Were they easy, were they fast? Was there. Did you immediately know who would end up acquiring the business?

Yeah, I had a feeling like we got a lot of interest. I got I think 60, 70 leads and there were like a. The buyer who. He was the one who I think first reach out like first few buyer interest parties and he said he's interested, he want to discuss with his team. The price was little bit high the initial price but then I kept reaching out to everyone. I sent them, I sent updates to everyone asking them how do you have an update about the update And I also sent everyone data room. I had first I had like two interested parties and then they asked me to give them the data room access. So I prepared a complete data room but for them. But at the end he didn't buy it so I decided to send it to everyone else. I think that made a big difference when I sent a data room with all the points analytics, every single update with P and L. Like all the things I didn't had to list on aqua.com like a lot of data I added in the data room.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean giving buyers just more information and more details about your startup always helps, you know because it also shows that you're serious about getting acquired and just makes buyers life a lot easier. So it's super smart. You did that. How many offers did you end up entertaining for this business?

I think I got like five serious offers.

Yeah.

Five.

That's awesome. And I mean that's so important too because if you have just one offer it can be really hard to negotiate a better price or better terms. What about the final buyer? Really stood out that made you you know, want to move forward with, with them to sell your business.

Yeah, so he initially he, he want me to, he negotiated like he want me to take equity and retain for like a three years listing period and want me to work as a like a partner initially but the offer was a little bit lower than the selling price and but I needed cash. So then still like he's very responsive and other two parties they, one party asked for like a very huge discount when he chat with me. And yeah so this we're the last person like the guy who bought the website here. He was super interested in the business and he, he really liked the tech stack and the platform overall. He also had ideas. Okay, I can do this. Like, we had so many ideas. I knew.

Okay.

He thought the same. Like, when I acquired, I also didn't focus too much about the profits or anything. Like, I saw the potential in this platform overall. We built.

So.

So he also knew the potential. Not only the profit, so only the revenue. He was interested in the potential in this business.

That's awesome. And then tell me about, like, you signed the letter of intent with this buyer. What did due diligence look like? How long did it take? Any hiccups or surprises? How did that go?

Yeah, so due diligence, it had. We did like a two weeks period. Yeah, it took like two weeks. I have to prepare some access API documentations and all of that. So my cto, he helped me with that. But anyway, it's overall like a two weeks process. So it was smooth. No, there wasn't any surprises because I discussed it by a like, intense survey. So we had good discussions. He asked all the right questions and I gave him all the right answers. So we didn't have any surprises.

That's awesome. And then escrow closing, all that went smooth as well.

It's really, really smooth. I think that SRS Aquarium is a really good company. And yeah, they are very responsive. I know I, I had experience before with. I'm not saying it's like escrow.com that they take weeks to respond, but this SRS aquarium is really good company.

I think.

Yeah, that's our other escrow service, aside from escrow.com, escrow sacrim.

They're.

They're exceptional.

Yep. Yeah, that's perfect.

Well, tell me, if you were talking to another founder looking to sell their business, what's the three top tips you would give them?

Um, I think, yeah, they have to be responsive on Aqua. Com. They should install like, they should like always check if there's a message. And they should also communicate really well with the interested parties. And also, yeah, I think that that thing I missed some time. I try to look for some startups on aqua.com, but then I had to wait like sometime 12 hours, 24 hours to get access. Then when I get the access, I don't even remember why I click on that listing. I lost interest. I see that issue maybe. So I think I have to be responsive with the bias.

Yeah, being responsive is huge because it's a sales process and when you, you know, we're slow in a sales process, everything gets slower and then a lot of deals just don't close. What do you work on now, if.

I can ask, I'm working on AI calling startup for UAE market, especially because here the VOIP terminals are blocked. So I'm doing a lot of manual work here, like setting up my own GSM gateway infrastructure, like whole calling network here. So I'm going to start a AI calling startup in Gulf region and then expand to US and up market.

Right on.

All right, well, thanks so much for coming on the podcast. Congrats again on both acquisitions. Growing a startup 30x and then selling it again is a. That's incredible. So, yeah, stoked for you and hope to have you back on the podcast again soon.

Sure. Talk to you soon, I hope. But I hope to use Accredit Console. It's a perfect platform and thank you for making it awesome. Appreciate that. All right, cheers. Cheers.