SaaS Acquisitions w/ Charlie Joseph Founder of Bazaar Tracker

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Here we go. All right, I'm live with Charlie, someone who recently got Micro acquired for five figures. And I'm really excited to hear your story. I don't know the details, so I'm excited to, to have you on here. And thanks for coming on, Charlie.

Thank you. Thank you so much. It's great to finally be here.

So to kick things off, give me a little bit of background of the business that you had acquired. What problem did it solve, and maybe just like the two minute pitch behind it.

Bazaar Tracker is a item tracking platform. So it utilizes a API from a game. It pulls the current prices in from the game and it stores it in the database and then essentially creates historic rows of the game. This allows people to come onto the site, view how the item is performing. They may find that they want to buy an item now and sell it later on. If they know that there's a pattern within the game, they might decide actually they want to hold on to that item. Star Trekker just lets players of the game be able to see the performance of those items and they can make an idea themselves. If, you know, this is an item that could be profitable later on, essentially a stock market within a game.

How I describe it, that is so cool. And he sold it for five figures, correct?

Yeah.

Nice. Congrats, man. First acquisition.

It's my first sal and I mean, it was just great to sell it on Micro Acquire because there's a lot of platforms out there, but they're all targeted at the, you know, the bigger, bigger companies. You know, companies like the one I just sold being smaller, there wasn't really any other platforms. And so seeing Micro Acquire all over my Twitter feeds, it was just great to know that there was a platform now.

I appreciate hearing that and more than happy to help. I guess my next question would be walk me through your experience on Micro. Require you go live, buyers start reaching out. How did you find the right buyer to work with and how did the transaction go from there?

So we had lots of inquiries. We had some, which was just one message and then no one would reply afterwards. And we had the odd few that actually continued the conversation on one of the buyers. We got speaking with him and we could see that he had a strong interest. So we then moved to emails. We discussed over emails. We, we arranged a call, then we jumped on a zoom call, showed him the site. We went through everything. I discussed some ideas and he was really interested. That led on to a second call and then we expressed more. We showed kind of the functionality of the site, how we monetize, what our revenue figures were broken down and it went from there really. And then it ended up being that they were interested, they gave us a price. We negotiated back and forth for about three weeks and then the Thursday just gone. We managed to get a deal and it was finalized.

Nice. Well, it sounds like a pretty smooth deal. Were there any bumps in the road or any sort of headaches during the process?

It was mainly when it was come to the buyer looking for buyers because we had a lot of people that would message us saying I would like more information, but then we wouldn't get anywhere after that. That was the only part for me that I think were bumps. But with this buyer, it was good to see it straight through. It was nice to see where the buyer would like to take it. It's nice. I think that the buyer wanted to see where my ideas were and where I would like to see it in the future.

Nice, successful acquisition. That's awesome to hear. So a lot of entrepreneurs are probably going to watch this and, you know, wonder, you know, how can I sell my startup? If you. If you were starting over again and you were listing on Microacquire without any knowledge, what's like some advice you'd give to another entrepreneur looking to get acquired.

I would honestly say just keep trying, push at your product. One big hurdle I came across, which is why a lot of my other projects didn't do as well as this is. I focus a lot on the revenue of my product, not the product itself. So a lot of my products were too focused on the money and wasn't focused on pushing at the core. Whereas with this one, we pushed at the core and it ended up driving revenue and it allowed us to. When we then posted it on Microacquire, it looked more feasible.

Nice. And then let me see what kind of dog you got. By the way. I can hear it barking in the back. I love, I love dogs. I actually love Pomeranians. I have. I have a mini Yorkie and it barks and buries somewhere loud fashion. But anyways. So what are you up to next? You just got acquired. Any. Anything you're working on now that you're really excited about?

My next project now is with my. This one will be with my father. And this is a holiday booking platform. So it's over much more complex scale than what this one is. And I've already been researching, there's a lot of APIs that are going to be needed across the board. Flights, hotels, et cetera. That's Kind of where my next project is. So it's a lot bigger than my previous project, but it's something now that it's going to require a lot more time. But this acquisition now gives me funds to be able to go and do that full time and push at this project now.

Right on. So I love that. So as an entrepreneur, you just sold something for five figures. You got a win under your belt, I assume a ton of entry, a ton of experience, learning, mistakes, lessons, things that everything involved in creating a company and now you're moving on and creating a bigger company. Is that accurate?

Yeah. So one of the big takeaways that I had with this, that I learned along the journey was that as I said earlier, I, with all my previous projects that failed, they were all too revenue driven. From the start. I wanted to create something that made me money. But what ended up happening is those projects fouled out because. Because I was too focused on the money. I ended up getting demotivated along the journey because it wasn't making the money that I was overestimating. Whereas this project was. I had a job, I had steady income, I just wanted a project to create in my spare time. And it was actually solely aimed at being free. There was no revenue whatsoever put into this, but yet revenue actually fell into this. So in the end this played much better for me than my previous projects which were money focused.

I think. I think if I'm reading right, it sounded like you started working on something that you enjoy rather than something to make you money.

Yeah, it was. Because prior to this project, all my other projects I was trying to do full time and I was trying to generate as I was building them. Whereas with this project I had my full time job and I just wanted something to do outside of work that was a fun hobby. Then I could practice my skills, learn a few new things along the way. And it ended up going from just being this fun project that I ended up earning money from advertisements. Um, it can remain a completely free to use site, but we would sell Google Ads. Not sell Google Ads, sorry. We would put Google Ads on the site and then eventually we started contacting companies individually. That was to do with our community's niche. And we would go out to these companies and say, hey, we have this lot, top and bottom. Would you be interested in purchasing? And we went from having Google Ads which were making about 500 to $1,000 a month, to selling sponsored ads directly to the company for about 3250 doll. So like a massive scale of what we were making at Google versus what we were making by contacting these companies individually and saying, hey, you know, we've got a top and bottom placement. Would you be interested?

That's awesome. I'm, I'm so happy for you. And again, congrats on the successful exit. And I guess, final questions. I always like to ask this, but who is, who's your favorite entrepreneur?

My favorite person, aside from yourself, would be Adam Wofford. I hope I've said that name correctly. Just because I love how him and his team have built Tailwind and you know, how much they've scaled it and all the things they're building and going from just a little fun again project to something that has multiple team members and designs and everything else.

I wanna, I wanna like pick up and pet your dog, man, just by hearing it. And then final question. Do you have a favorite book that you recommend entrepreneurs read?

My favorite book would be Let me.

Go and get in.

Sorry, hang on. Have it on my phone.

No pressure.

Favorite book I'm still reading at the moment is it's called the Choice Factory. It comes to any partway for it. The Choice Factory.

What's it about?

It's about decisions that you can make on your website that can influence people coming on. So when it comes to payments and stuff coming in, it could be simple things like the 99 trick and stuff like that and moving the pound sign in front, little gimmicks like that. That for me open my eyes a bit because we're so used to just seeing those things and we don't think anything differently. Whereas, you know when you read through these dias and you go, oh my God, I've seen that. I've seen the 99 trick everywhere. Like 499 and 999, they're so simple and you wouldn't think anything of it.

So action, Actionable tips for building a company. I like it. I'll check it out. Well, it's been a pleasure having you on this podcast, Charlie. I definitely appreciate you making the time. And if people want to reach out and chat about your new project or just follow what you're doing, where's the best place?

Best place I would say is Twitter. So my DMs are open. So it's ey c h a Z Z A would be my best way. My DMs are open.

I'll have that in the show description. So. Right on, man. Well, again, great chatting. Please give that dog of a huge hug for me. And if I can ever be you know, help in any way. Feel free to reach out. And congrats again on the acquisition. Super excited.

Thank you so much. Thanks for creating Microacquire. I mean, it's as I say, it's good to have a platform for a smaller companies to actually be able to put our site somewhere and, you know, sell to people who still see a potential.

How much did you pay in our fees and commissions, by the way?

So we were going to use escrow originally and then Microquire. Zero.

That's right. Sorry, I just said shameless plug.

Fantastic. It was just. It's great to be able to post it on now. You know, the questions that you guys asked as well were fantastic. And I think that's good for both me selling it and the person looking to buy it that, you know, they get an exact idea of what the company is.

My pleasure, man. And I hope to do it again. So, Charlie, enjoy the rest of your evening and thanks so much for coming on this podcast. I really enjoyed hearing your story.

Thank you so much.

All right, cheers. Bye.

Thank you.