How to Win More Deals on Acquire.com | Webinar Replay

Foreign. What's up, everybody? Thank you so much for joining another acquire.com webinar. This one's going to be good. Lots of good tips in here for anyone looking to acquire the first startup. We'll go ahead and get started in just a minute. We'll let people join, but in the, in the meantime, let me know where you're from. I always like to start the webinars. Just your location. I'll go first. San Mateo. It's really cool because we usually have a pretty Global audience@acquire.com We've done acquisitions in more countries than I can count, so just would love to know where you're based. If you have a second, type it in the chat. All right, St. Louis in the House, UK. What's going on? Dean, Alabama, London. All right. Yeah, we got, we got two different countries in here. I'm sure there's others. So if you're, if you're up for it, feel free to share where you're from. And we'll get started here in just a second, too. Lithuania. Duluth, Georgia. I think I pronounced that right. All right, I'm gonna go ahead and share my screen. I'm gonna start the presentation. And again, as always, if you have questions as I'm going through this, please type them in the chat. I'll spend some time at the end. We'll have a short Q A. We also have some new features that we just launched@acquire.com we have a reduced price, listing fee for buyers, and also a AI agent search. So I'll do a brief demo of those features at the end. And hopefully with this webinar and the new functionality that we're dropping, it just makes acquisitions that much easier for all of you. So without further ado, I hope go ahead and get started and we'll get rolling. Okay. Today we're going to be talking about how to win more deals on acquire.com and a brief introduction of myself. My name is Andrew Gazdecki. I am the founder and CEO@acquire.com in my previous careers, I had built and sold multiple different startups. And that really led me to create acquire.com because the acquisition process can just be really confusing. It's not really transparent. And at Acquire, what we do is we bring transparency to the entire process through efficiency and streamlining really cumbersome processes like finding a buyer, going through legal doctoration safely and securely, closing with escrow, essentially doing everything we can to make acquisitions easier. And then this webinar specifically is about how to stand out as a Buyer how to build trust and actually close acquisitions. Because for more context here, a lot of the acquisitions we see on acquire.com are multiple offer scenarios. We also see every listing receive about 50, 60 upwards of 100 NDAs signed by buyers. So doing everything you can to stand out is actually critical to successfully closing on a deal. So what you're going to learn today, we're going to be going over what sellers actually care about and also what they don't care about. Just things to talk about, really putting yourself in a seller's shoes. Also going to talk about how to avoid rookie mistakes that kill deals. I see this all day long in terms of mistakes on really both sides on the sell side and also the buy side. How to build trust and stand out, how to value and structure your offer. So, so what are valuations in terms of SaaS, businesses or E commerce? How should you even structure the offer? Is it just all cash? Is there a different combination that you can utilize? To answer your question, there is. And then how to run due diligence and close smoothly. So going to learn quite a bit here. Hopefully this just gives you that extra push to submit your first offer, close that first acquisition and get moving. So why this matters? Buying a startup isn't just about having the funds. It's about trust, speed and clarity. Most buyers lose deals because they don't communicate clearly, they don't understand the founder's business, they don't build any kind of rapport. And we're going to focus on fixing that today. When I work with different buyers@acquire.com it's really obvious when they haven't done their homework and that can be a immediate DQ from the sale process where maybe they have a pre canned message, maybe they hop on a call and it's clear they haven't done their homework. These things really add up and can just give a bad initial first impression to sellers. So definitely easy mistakes that can be corrected. And really to point out great deals don't wait. And today you're competing with thousands on acquire.com we have over half a million registered buyers. We've helped over 2,000 startups get acquired. We have over 2,000 startups live on the marketplace today we've closed over half a billion in closed transactions. We've assisted founders in over 85 plus different countries. So what this really means is again, you have competition. You don't want to go into a process assuming that you're the only interested buyer. Again not doing simple things like describing what is your plan, how are you Planning to structure this acquisition, reading materials that sellers upload. And we're here to really make sure that these things don't happen so you can win every single deal that you are interested in and don't have these small mistakes leading to things slipping through the cracks. So what sellers care about and what they don't. It's really important when you're working with different sellers to really put yourself in their shoes and understand what's important to them. So when you are speaking with them, it becomes apparent that you're a buyer that they want to work with. What they care about. Right at the top is going to be, can you actually close? Do you have the financing available? Do you have a plan in place for due diligence? Do you know essentially what you're doing to get this acquisition across the finish line? Are you serious? Meaning are you just wasting their time? If they go and answer a list of questions for you, is that going to go anywhere or are you just trying to gather information, maybe just learn about the business a little bit more. This is a big one as well, because if a seller feels that you're not serious at any point in the process, they're likely going to start ghosting you as a buyer. Do you get the business, for example, if it's a really technical business, having a development background is going to be critical. If it's a E commerce business, understanding how E commerce businesses work is also going to be critical. And then can they trust you? Acquisitions, a huge part of it is trust. And so if a seller doesn't feel that they can trust you, meaning you say you can close, you're serious, but there's just something about this whole process of working with you that makes them feel untrustworthy. Everything is going to go out the door. And then last, is it going to be smooth? A lot of times when I see multiple offer situations, we will actually make recommendations@acquire.com to work with the buyer where it feels that they have the most experience in terms of acquisitions. They have a plan for due diligence. They have a straightforward timeline of how long the process is going to take. Because the last thing you want to do as a seller is go into an acquisition with a buyer where it's unambiguous, they're not sure when it's going to close, financing isn't clear. That's just going to be a bumpy road. And so the more you can outline why it's going to be smooth, the better. And what they don't care about is things like your passion, your AI plan, your 100. Just browsing messages, flaky replies, big vision, but no roadmap. These things are all awesome. They're, they're, they're great. And you definitely want to share parts of these. But I wouldn't lead with these. I wouldn't address these awesome points right here without really touching on what sellers care about. If you do both, that's amazing, because sellers, they want action, they don't want ambition. And again, sharing all this with sellers can give them a view into what their business is going to look like if they do sell to you. But definitely don't skip over the basics, because that's absolutely important. So moving on to mistakes that kill deals, number one is asking questions that are already in the P and L a lot of time. Founders put a lot of time in preparing acquisitions, and they're creating all this material for you as a buyer to review and understand the business. So going through this all ahead of a call can be huge. Throwing out lowball offers with no context. This is a big one that we also see at acquired.com, where there's not a lot of thought into the offer. It's almost a spray and pray approach to see if a founder is really motivated to selling the business. I think I don't recommend doing this. They almost always will be rejected by a seller. So really put thought into your offer. Speak with sellers up front, meet them and understand the business. Go through the materials. The next would be ghosting after showing interest. If you're not interested in a startup, I definitely recommend just telling them you're not interested, giving them some feedback, because that feedback can be really valuable to the seller to help them. Course correct. For example, maybe they're priced way too high. Maybe there's something about the product or service that gave you a red flag. Maybe you read some reviews from prior customers that weren't happy or satisfied, or maybe it's just not a fit for you. Whatever it may be, it's. It can be hugely valuable to the seller to share that information. Showing up to the calls unprepared. I don't think anyone on this webinar likes to have meetings that aren't productive. So every meeting that you have with a founder, understand that they're probably having 10, 20 different calls with other buyers. And so it can be an exhausting process. And the more you can make that call feel productive, they were able to really share a lot about their business and you had done their homework. I think that is a great call. And should be a goal for every single buyer. And then lastly is being vague about funding. A big fear that a lot of sellers and founders have is going through signing a letterman's hand, going through into due diligence and then finding out that the financing is not available to actually close acquisition. And this can happen for a number of different reasons. Sometimes buyers with good intentions, they'll try fundraising in the background to close acquisition. I do not do that. I recommend being upfront about financing. If that is something that you have to do. Where you need to have a signed letter of intent to take to your investors to raise funds to close acquisitions, just tell them that. Be upfront, be honest. And if you do have financing already lined up, I highly recommend verifying these funds with require.com you get an awesome little badge next to your name and that increases buyer or excuse me seller responses by upwards of 2,300% and really shows sellers that you are serious and you can close quickly. So how to stand out fast? You want to read everything before you reach out. There's so much information on a listing and this can also save you time as a buyer where maybe the questions that you have for a founder is right on the listing it's uploaded under the supporting documents. You always want to ask thoughtful specific questions which also ties into the first point which shows that you've gone through the materials, you understand the metrics or the numbers and the questions that you do have are related to information that's already been shared to you. You can reference real metrics, churn customer acquisition, lifetime value. Also explain why you're a fit. Maybe you have a background building a similar business or you've worked at a company that is similar and then be honest about your plan and your funding. I think this is probably the biggest point is really every founder wants to know that number one, their acquisition is going to close. But then two, the business that they built is going to be in good hands post acquisition. So maybe you have plans to grow the business in a specific way. Maybe there are certain products or features or services that you would like to add on top of the business. Maybe you have an existing company and this would be added into the existing product or service that you offer. Anything that could be interesting to share with a seller to really make you stand out. Because if one buyer's plan is to essentially take the company, downgrade it, just milk it for profit and yours is to focus on growth and taking the company farther than the founder could originally, that's going to really stand out and that's going to be very appealing to the founders. So if that is your plan, absolutely share it. Because remember, founders don't want to be interrogated, they want to be understood. So understanding their current business, why they're selling the materials that they've uploaded, really showing that you have done your homework because they have also done their homework. So really finding that middle ground and putting yourselves in the seller's shoes can make all the world of difference. And then also like seen in this image here, you can verify your funds with Acquire. We can help add a beautiful badge. And this gives sellers so much confidence and typically is the first thing that they're going to look at. So if you haven't verified your funds with Acquire, it's super easy to do. Takes probably two, three minutes. It could dramatically improve your experience when reaching out to sellers. Now here's a winning checklist for buyers. If you can't answer yes to all five of these questions, it probably means that you're not ready to, to acquire this business. A lot of the buyers that we work with on acquire.com this is the first business that they've acquired. So by no means do you need to be an acquisition expert, do you need to be, you don't need to be a fund manager at a private equity firm. But going through these questions right here, I think can really help shape your decision as to if this is a good business for you to buy. Number one is do you understand the numbers? Have you gone through the pnl? Do you understand where revenue is and where profit is and where the margin the business is? Number two would be have you built trust with the founder? Have you set up a call? Did you have just good vibes on the call where you really got to know the founder, why they're selling, you went over any questions that you have after going through the materials? Number three would be have you major intent clear in terms of your plan post acquisition or even during due diligence, Meaning maybe you need the founder to build a couple new features or something like that to really go after the go to market plan that you have in mind for this business. That would be your intent. So structuring the deal around that and really making it clear to the founder your expectations and your plan for the business post close is going to be massive. Number four would be do you have a real transition plan? Meaning have you thought through how to transfer all of the assets related to the business? How long do you need the founder to stay on? This is going to be a big one because A lot of the buyers I work with, they haven't put any real thought into how much time are they going to need the founder. And when they have a transition plan, it's usually structured and communicated pretty vaguely. What I mean by that is it could be something along the lines of I'm going to work with the founder for three months post close. A better version of that would be I'm going to work with the founder three months post close for no more than 20 hours per week, or maybe it's 10 hours per week. And they're going to be specifically helping me with customer support, understanding marketing, and building out this one feature that we talked about that is a great transition plan. Because advice that we give to every seller that we're working with@acquire.com is to get specific on the transition plan. So if you can bring that to a seller upfront, all the better. And then can you actually afford this? Again, going back to the financing and the funding, that is a huge aspect. No acquisition can obviously close without financing in place. So just being honest with yourself and if you say no to any of these questions, I would look at the question why you answered no and see what you can do to fix that. Now, moving on, how to value startups. So evaluations isn't a vibe, it's a formula. And a lot of the side on the sell side, when we deal evaluation, it can definitely be a vibe. So this is a conversation we're always having@acquire.com is how do you value the business? No, it's not because your competitor was sold for XYZ amount, because the revenue is here. Um, that can be the case. But from what we see is when you're buying a business, you want to start with a revenue or profit multiple. You want to look at things like churn margins, growth, founder involvement. All of these things, depending on where there are, where they are is going to influence the final valuation of the business. Agencies and content businesses and E commerce businesses are generally going to have a lower multiple. When we're talking about SaaS, we typically see businesses getting acquired between three to five times profit or two to four times revenue. It makes sense to use a revenue multiple when profit is low and growth is high and when margins are better, that's when you're going to want to look at a profit multiple. Typically when the business isn't growing as much, but it's highly profitable. Red flags here are going to be where you see one customer accounting for a large portion of the revenue. This would be called customer Concentration, one time revenue spikes from one time payments, maybe lifetime deals, things like that you definitely want to look closely at. And then also things like declining traffic, monthly recurring revenue or net profit, any sort of financial number or usage number that's dramatically going down is going to be a red flag for you as a buyer. And remember, you're not just buying income, you're buying risk. So it depends on what your risk appetite is. And I think this really ties into your plan for the business as well. If you're buying the business to hold and essentially reduce costs a bit further and just pull out the profits, you want to have a very stable business with low churn. And then if you're buying a business where maybe you have a plan to grow the business a lot more, maybe there's a, a few marketing channels that haven't been stood up, maybe the positioning or the messaging of the business is completely off and you could fix that easily. You might be willing to take on more risk, but remember that these things are red flags and you want to keep an eye out for them. So you're not overvaluing a startup because that can lead to a situation where you might buy something where it doesn't work out. Now, crafting the right offer, a strong offer tells a story, not just a price. And what this means is you want to be able to walk founders through your offer in very clear ways to understand it so they know specifically how you got to that number. A lot of the times when we receive offers, we see situations where the LOI sent the numbers there. But the best way to do that is to send the LOI and then send a message or an email to the founder and tell them specifically how you got to that number. And it makes sure to keep your term simple. Explain your financing, share a clear timeline to close. So an example of this could be, you know, maybe Your offer is 500,000 cash and you can say based on the last trailing 12 months of revenue or profits, we're using a multiple of 4.2x. The terms for this acquisition are pretty straightforward. We're going to do 80% cash on closing, 20 seller financing paid out each month for the next 24 months. We're going to be financing this with a bank loan. And then our timeline for close is expected to be about 45 days. There's just so much information there compared to just receiving an LOI doesn't really have any context for me to easily understand because you also have to remember almost every founder that you're going to be working with as a buyer, this is their first acquisition. So receiving offers is not something that they see every single day. So the more that you can do to help walk a seller through all these items, to really get them comfortable, to understand how this is a good deal for them, is going to serve you really, really well as a buyer. Now, deal structures at work, you definitely want to look at seller financing. Seller financing, for those that aren't familiar, is when you are essentially making a loan with the seller. As an example, let's say the business generates 5,000 in monthly profit and you say that you're going to finance the deal for $1 million total, 80% cash and close, and then 20% is going to be seller financing. So that means that 200,000 at the end is going to essentially be paid back to the seller through payments from the business. So when you acquire the business, that revenue is still coming in, but you weren't able to secure all the cash upfront, or maybe you wanted to de risk the acquisition. And so each month you would make payments and installments for that full portion of 200,000, generally with an interest percentage as well, for an extended period of time and for an amount agreed upon. So 200,000 over 24 months, you can do the math on that in your head, you would be making those payments every single month. Earnouts based on retention or growth. This could be you do not want to see revenue decline by this amount for this period of time. Or it could be you want to see revenue increase over this period of time and you have a portion of the purchase price that will be paid if those conditions are met. Holdbacks for things like support. So this would be where you have a purchase price, but you're holding back a period or, excuse me, a portion of that purchase price for a period of time for something to get done, it could be to document the way the code works, it could be for transition support, it could be to build a feature, anything where you want to hold back a purchase of a portion of the total purchase price to ensure that something gets done. Equity rollovers. This could be essentially where the founder gets equity in the new entity that you own, where you're going to be acquiring the business into, so they have some incentive to continue to help you with the business and answer questions or handle product development, whatever it may be. And always remember, everything is a negotiation as well. If a seller believes that you're going to close, they'll definitely be flexible on price, term structure, you name it. Because if you can show that this acquisition will close. They know they're not going to waste their time. And that really paints the future of what it could be working, what working with you could be like. And that that will make things just so much better for you as a buyer. But understand it is a negotiation. So if a seller says, you know, 1 million asking price for a business and you feel the business is worth, you know, 750,000 or something like that, you were able to talk with the seller and structure a deal that makes sense for both sides. We see so many acquisitions that acquire that are completely win win, where this is how the buyer is valuing it, this is where the seller is valuing it and finding a way to meet in the middle through the total purchase price or maybe getting creative with the deal structures. There's a lot of tools at your disposal as a buyer to really make any sort of acquisition work for you. Next would be being clear on closing and financing. Do not make the founder guess here. If your closing timeline is 15 days or 30 days, you want to be very specific. I always like to see buyers reach a point where they're also able to outline how they're going to be spending this 30 days, for example, the first week we're going to be going over finances, second week product, third week marketing and support, whatever it may be. Just having the ability to give sellers some sort of expectation of what this process can look like, I think is amazing. I think that puts everything on the the right footing for due diligence to start. Because unfortunately, I have seen just too many acquisitions fall through because just timelines, expectations, just things weren't communicated as well as they could have been. And so you get into due diligence, everyone's getting exhausted, something comes up, things get delayed. And just at the beginning, if communications were were a bit better and expectations were clarified, the deal would have closed. So do this upfront. I think it's in everybody's best interest. And then where's the money coming from? Is it cash you have on hand? Are you utilizing a bank loan? Do you have investors that you're working with? Again, over communicate your closing conditions and your financing as well. What's your plan from loi to close? Walk them through it again. Clarity builds trust. Vagueness kills deals. I've seen it just way too many times. So easily presented. Due diligence without drama. So sellers want clarity, not confusion. Ask what you need, not a data dump. This is really at the beginning of due diligence, where you don't want to overwhelm a seller with too many requests. So initially, the best due diligence processes I've seen are clearly outlined, the expectations are clearly communicated, and you're not asking for literally everything in the world where it just becomes overwhelming. So an example of this would be, you know, for the, the revenue or the product, you're being very specific of the items that you would like to review rather than expecting the founder to understand that. So for finances, instead of saying I'd like to review literally everything, you can get very specific on what you'd like to review. And same with the product as well, instead of, you know, hey, I want to go through literally everything being very specific here. Being organized and quick. I don't think either a buyer or seller likes due diligence to drag on. This is also an area where a lot of deals unfortunately fall through. So being organized quick, being very efficient with the time, I think is great. Set a clear diligence window, meaning if you agreed on 30 days, really stick to 30 days. Communicate frequently. One tip I love here is when buyers and sellers have a weekly schedule call, no matter what, meaning even if everything's being accomplished and you have nothing to talk about, still have a call each week and just talk about the weather. I do not have a problem with that. But the point is there's almost always something that comes up in due diligence. Maybe a buyer find something that isn't satisfactory or something like that. And just a simple conversation can completely clear it up, but it's not big enough to bring up. And then you find another small issue. And those two small issues are now one big issue. And then if you had a weekly call, you can communicate between each other. And I think the, the deal would will close. And again, it just puts everybody on much better footing and over communicate. Over communicate. You cannot over communicate in an acquisition. And remember, you're not auditing a public company here. So just you will find things that aren't up to what you thought. Like it's just the way it is. Like you're, you're buying, you know, businesses that are, you know, sub 5 million in revenue. So there always is going to be areas for opportunity, for improvement. Most founders won't have the level of detail that you may expect. And that's just the, the natural state of acquisitions of the size. And so keep it founder friendly, have room for error, and just also have your expectations going into the acquisition process that things will come up. But this is why communication, having a clear diligence window, being organized is so important. And just having that that quick weekly checking call I think can really help pretty much every deal issue I see close now. Buyer A versus Buyer B. This is really where you want to be Buyer B and not buyer A. So buyer A sending generic emails, low ball Lois. It disappears every time a seller messages him, misses calls. You don't want to be that person because also understand this community of acquisitions is fairly small and so you can get a reputation pretty quickly from doing things like this because entrepreneurs talk. They definitely, definitely talk. So you want to have a great reputation where you send a thoughtful outreach, you submit competitive offers, you follow up quickly even if you're not interested. You have your financing clearly laid out as well as a transition plan. This will always set buyers apart. Just doing these very, very simple things will really set you on the right footing and help you close more acquisitions on acquire. Now here's some red flags that spook sellers not being clear on financing, having really, really slow responses, or always being out of office or always on vacation. I see this with buyers who just aren't sure, meaning they aren't exactly sure if they want to acquire this business. And so they're kind of dragging their feet to see if any other buyers are interested. And as soon as another buyer is interested, then they get really interested. Have conviction in what you're buying. And again, going back to those questions that I I shared earlier, the ones that you need to say yes to to be ready to the deal, don't be this buyer where you're dragging your feet, you're not too sure. Have conviction and really have a plan when you're reaching out to sellers where if they're able to meet what you're looking for in an acquisition, you're ready to move. Because like they say in acquisitions, time truly does kill deals. And then not having a transition plan doesn't understand the business model. Strange or overly complex terms. I've seen some crazy terms and offers on acquire and almost always these deals will get rejected and not accepted. So if you're not familiar with standard acquisition offers or terms, a great tip here is just use chat gbt. Just type in, you can copy the whole listing and say, hey, what are some things I could I should be looking for about this business? Who are the competitors? How should I structure an offer for this business? And you'll get some great advice. And then also the point of the end is if it feels like a hassle, sellers will move on. I think this goes for both sides. Both sides want an acquisition without headaches, so really try to bring that experience to sellers how to be the favorite Top buyers get first looks and off market deals. Be fast, be ready. Be clear. You want to be that buyer. It will pay dividends. Even if you're doing this for a deal that eventually doesn't make sense for a reason, bring your best foot forward on every single opportunity that you can on acquired and will absolutely pay off. So too long didn't read this is the quick summary. If you do these four things, you're going to be in great shape. Do your homework. Do as much homework upfront to avoid wasting a founder's time because they're busy. They're going to be meeting with a bunch of different buyers. Not to say that everyone's time isn't valuable. I think there's some mutual respect here where sellers should also be doing homework on you. They should likely look to see if you have proof of funds. Look at your LinkedIn profile. Review any questions that you have over the chat, but you as well can go through the supporting documents, the profit lot statement, look at the product. So when you come to that initial call, you'll be very prepared and it will it will be obvious for the buyers that do do their homework. Communicate like a real person. Meaning you don't have to ask 1000 different questions up front. Just communicate like you normally would. Don't over complicate it. Make offers that feel serious. Again, every every seller wants to work with a buyer that is professional and has a high likelihood of actually closing the acquisition. So this would mean don't send lowball offers. Don't send basically blanket questions to a bunch of sellers. It's really easy to tell and it'll shoot you in the foot and then make it easy for sellers to say yes. Some of the best buyers that we work with, acquire.com have just such a stellar reputation, meaning when they send an offer we go oh perfect, like this is a great buyer. We've seen them on this transaction, always communicates really well, has a fantastic transition plan, buys businesses and does this each time you want to be this buyer and build your reputation over time. And each interaction you have with a seller is an opportunity to build that reputation. And also if you're not aware, we've expanded to every type of profitable online business at Acquire, so we're no longer just a marketplace for SaaS businesses. If you're looking for a marketplace or mobile apps or Shopify apps, Shopify apps are great acquisitions as well. If you're looking at SaaS businesses but want something a little bit more contained I actually acquired a Shopify app about two years ago with some friends. It was awesome. It's generating about 60,000 in TTM profit. We generated that back and then later sold the business. Highly recommend checking those out. Content, e commerce agencies, crypto, tons of other categories. So check those out if you haven't already. So now I'm going to go over just a few new things that we've been building@acquire.com I'm really excited about these two features, but the next steps for you. I recommend every single buyer in this call, log in acquire.com, complete your buyer profile, verify your financing with us, and then set up your search criteria. When you do this, you'll receive instant alerts when any type of new deal goes live that matches your criteria. For example, if you set your criteria to SaaS, businesses with more than a hundred thousand TTM profit, as soon as it goes live on Acquire, you'll get an instant email. You can set daily emails, weekly roundups. I'll show that to you in a second. Once that's done, start reaching out to founders again. The best deals don't wait and neither should you. So I hope you enjoyed this webinar and I hope this is some good advice to get you in the game. So now I'm going to go over and again, if anyone has any questions after this, after I walk through the product, I'll, I'll go over any questions and hopefully get you all in here. Okay, so two new features launched today. We have one called a reduced price action. This is a feature that I think is long overdue. It's only for paid buyers, so if you haven't upgraded to a premium buyer plan on acquired.com you can go go ahead and do so. But if you log in, it's going to be this card right here, reduced price. And when I click into this, I'm going to now be able to see all listings on acquired.com that have reduced their price. So this is a great way to save time by finding motivated sellers. Maybe they're interested in selling their business quickly and they're. If you log in, it's going to be this card right here, reduced price. And when I click into this, I'm going to now be able to see all listings on acquire.com that have reduced their price. So this is a great way to save time by finding motivated sellers. Maybe they're interested in selling their business quickly and they're maybe they priced the business too high previously. This is a great way to find acquisitions that could just Be win wins for everybody involved. And then before I go on to the next feature, I want to show how to set your criteria. So log into acquire.com and then hit this criteria button here. And whatever you have set up as your criteria, meaning I'm interested in SaaS, businesses and mobile apps and Shopify apps and newsletters. I'm only interested in paying maybe half a million in terms of net profit. I want it between 30,000 and 117,000. I'm gonna hit save. And now anytime a new deal goes live that matches that criter area, I'll get it instant alert. Now going back to the price reduction area, you can also sort by business type price highlights, meaning recasted financials. That's where we've looked at the P L. We've looked at expenses that generally won't carry over to the new buyer to show more of a true number for profit. Connected metrics. This is an awesome feature. So if I go into any of these businesses, let's try very my AI models. Oh, this business is growing fast. So this could be a really interesting business right here. The number one platform for comparing AI models. And when metrics are connected, you get a real view into Stripe or Paddle or Braintree, whatever billing system that they're using. And then also search traffic as well. And if you come across a listing where you would like this to be shown, feel free to just ask the sellers, like, hey, can you connect the metrics? I'd love to check them out on acquire.com and that's really easy for them to do. Okay. And then the last feature that we released today is going to be our AI agent. So@aqua.com, we're doing a big push with AI and we're going to be integrating a lot of functionality with different AI agents over the next few months, the next year. But what this does is allows you to easily search any type of listing on acquire.com with a single phrase rather than going through every single listing and figuring out where which one went all the time. I get emails from buyers where they say something like, hey, I saw this listing, I loved it. But now it's, I can't find it anymore because we have over 2,000 listings on Acquire, so there's a lot of inventory on our marketplace. But let's say I want a SaaS business or finance teams with over 50k profit and so I can search this and this will go through every single listing on Acquire and will give me startups that will match this based on a number of different criteria. I can also do broad search such as SaaS, business and the no code industry, something like that, Apply that, and then this will again go through every single listing. Just saving you a lot of time as a buyer to really find deals that really could be interesting for you based on your specific criteria. Okay. All right, now I'm going to go ahead and answer a few questions, then we'll, we'll go ahead and wrap this up. Okay. So what's the biggest red flag that makes a seller ignore or ghost a buyer? There's. There's a few. I would say the biggest one is if you spam the seller, meaning you send them a ton of different messages. Or if you're not able to answer simple questions such as how do you plan to finance this acquisition? If you're a buyer on this call, you should expect every seller to ask you that question. And if you're not able to answer it, then I think all trust is, is going to be lost. But also being just really flaky in terms of your response time, if it takes you a few days and not doing what you say you're going to do, meaning you miss a call or you say you're going to submit an offer and then you don't, that's a quick way to potentially lose a deal. How can I make my offer more appealing if I can't compete on price? Move and close with speed. If you are in a multiple offer scenario and it's between one offer that can close really fast and your reputable buyer or another offer that's a little higher. But maybe the buyer doesn't have acquisition experience and there's a few things that just are throwing the seller off. They're going to go with the deal that has the highest probability of close and where the timeline is shorter to close. Deals without headaches are always recommended from the acquire.com team to seller. So absolutely keep that in mind. What's the best way to build trust quickly with the seller I just messaged, I would say going through the materials and complimenting on their business, you know, regardless of why they're selling, they've built something of value. They built a product, they found customers that is not easy to do and that puts them above 99.9% of startups in my book. So communicating that and then your background. Why is this business interesting to you? How do you plan to finance this acquisition? How quickly do you plan closing anything to really address kind of the common concerns that every founder has when selling their business? How much Detail should I include in my first message to a seller? I would just include like one or two lines about yourself and why you found the business interesting. Like, for example, my name is Andrew. I have a marketing and sales background. I found your startup really interesting because you sell to sales and marketing teams and I've used a similar tool. Do you have time for a call? I have two questions. Something like that. Is there a specific timeline most sellers expect for closing a deal? There absolutely is. I think between 30 and 60 days. Is the expectation beyond that, without clearly articulating why, is generally going to be a red flag in my book. For example, if you're using a SBA loan with the bank, that can extend the timeline and that's understandable. But if that's not communicated up front and the exclusivity period is 90 days and the due diligence timeline is going to be 90 days, that's going to be outside of common expectations, in my opinion. What makes founders pick one buyer over another when the offers are similar? That would be just reputation and trust and rapport built during the process. How do I avoid wasting time on startups that aren't serious about selling? That's a great question. I think you can tell a lot by the materials that are uploaded and then the responsiveness of the seller. Those are the two points I would recommend before getting on a call. If they're quick and they have a lot of materials, those are generally great opportunities where they're motivated to sell. And then also you can look at the. The reduced price room just added. Sellers that are generally motivated to sell will likely have reduced their price at at some point. So how do I avoid wasting time? Not that one. What's one small thing that buyers get wrong all the time but don't realize? I think just understanding how much other entrepreneurs talk with other entrepreneurs. There are so many Facebook groups and Slack groups and founder text groups that everybody is in. Um, so one bad experience with a buyer really is communicated across so many different founder circles. So there's just so much downside for buyers to give founders a bad experience. So much downside. When you're not interested, tell them why you're interested, not interested, or if you have concerns, tell them upfront. Doing these small things I think are just so important to buyers, but I don't think they realize just again, how much founders communicate and how doing this for one deal could actually hurt them on another deal that they're even more interested on. So just always carry yourself with ethics and put yourself in the Founder's shoes. How would you like a buyer to go through this process with you? That really carries far. Okay, I'm gonna go ahead and answer these last two and how do I position myself as a credible founder friendly buyer without over promising sharing your experience? If you don't have any sharing that as well. Like, hey, I've, you know, I've been doing my homework. I've taken the acquire.com academy course, which is a great course if you haven't taken it and want to learn the basics of buying and selling startups. But my point is being upfront, being honest and transparent, just being an overall trustworthy person is going to be the way to go. And you definitely never want to over promise. You want to under promise and over deliver in these scenarios. So if you think it's going to take 45 days to go through due diligence, say 60 days, give yourself a little bit of buffer. So that's my best advice there. When is the right time to ask detailed financial or operational questions during the process? Those are completely fine. Before putting out an offer and going through due diligence, if that's what you need to get to an offer, articulate that to the seller. This is what I need to get towards an offer and I appreciate if you could, you know, go through these questions with me again. Just being honest and straightforward and transparent goes a long ways. All right, everybody, thank you so much for your your time today. I, I definitely appreciate each and every one of you joining this webinar. If any of you have any questions or need help, the acquire.com team is here to help. And I hope to see you all next time. Thanks everybody.