SaaS Acquisitions w/ Petros Kyriakou Founder of Bookis

Foreign.

Petros, we're live. Thank you so much for coming on this podcast. I saw that you recently acquired, or excuse me, you had a company acquired on microguire for five figures and learning more about you, you know, you want to give a quick intro to start?

Yeah. Hey, Andrew, thanks for having me. Yeah. Where to start?

You know, other questions I would have is. And really this is to help, you know, other entrepreneurs looking to sell their businesses. But tell me about your experience on Microacquire. How to go, how did you find the buyer? What did the sale. Just walk me through. Kind of like you found the buyer.

Yeah.

What did Petros do? How did you close this acquisition?

Funny thing is, I emailed you because, you know, on Microacquire, for people that don't know you post your startup, you start getting messages and they might seem a bit random, but these people are just asking for access to private information. And at first it was a bit weird for me and I emailed you and I was like, yeah, how do I start a conversation? And they start, you know, telling something just to get the info. How do I keep it going? You told me something like, you know, if you're interested, let's talk, let's schedule a call. And yeah, one of these buyers actually wanted to have a call and discussion and they said that they're interested and that they wanted to check out the quality of the code before buying. And yeah, we scheduled a call. I talked with the engineers, I showed some of the code and after that, if they were happy as part of the discussion, was that they will send a letter of intent. Yeah, and they sent that. I signed. Then I said on the Microacquire that there's a button basically that says that you are negotiating with this buyer so you're not accepting any other offers and messages. And from there it was actually was pretty easy. We didn't even have to do a tent of sale document. All they wanted was the domain and the source code. The buyer created an account escrow involved in escrow to check both sites. Firstly, that the money is there. From there you provide the resources. In this case, domain and source code. Buyer accepts, escrow, checks that the domain was transferred, and it releases the money. I have to say that it was a pretty pleasant and pretty fast transaction. It only took 10 days or so, which is pretty sick. Yeah. And that's it in a nutshell.

Yeah, nice move on pushing for conversations with buyers. I always recommend that because it's key, because if you meet a buyer and they're just Asking questions but not willing to hop on a call. They're probably not serious. So that's one of the easiest way to weed out non serious buyers from serious buyers. Right. Just saying, hey, I appreciate your questions, let's discuss on a call. Because that way you can get to know the buyer, you know, you can feel them out, you can, you know, really build that relationship. And I think that's also important for the buyer too for, you know, acquiring your company. Like, who are you? Do we get along together post transaction, like will you help me out? And so nice job on that. You know, now that you, you've had a company acquired with other entrepreneurs listening, what would be some of the main, like advice or learnings or maybe like some surprising things that you, you know, maybe went through getting micro acquired?

Yeah. In general, being in a startup means that you are wearing a lot of hats and you, you know, you're doing a lot of things, tons of hats.

Every, every hat. I mean, I'm even wearing a hat. Literally.

Yeah, that's a type of hat.

Sorry, go on.

Yeah, you need to be a jack of all trades at first before you have, you know, your own stuff, you know, before you hire anyone. And yeah, it's a, you know, it's pretty complex. You have to make decisions all day, but at the end of the day you have to move forward and don't do. What I did, which how it became that I sold bookies is that I let the startup roast for three years. Basically I have not that much sailing experience. I'm more of a technical kind of guy. And basically I had it as a side project all the time and you know, I had it in the back of my head but I wasn't really pushing it. And when, you know, as time passes, was going in a corner of my mind and I was, wasn't really paying that much attention and giving that much effort. So the point is if you're going to start something, you have to keep pushing every day and don't let it be something in the back of your mind because at the end of the day it will not be successful like that. Yeah. So one of the things I want to tell people is that you have to either learn to sell to sell your startup or you have to pay someone to do that for you. But yeah, after three years almost, yeah, I was trying to close it and that's how it came to microacquire, to sell it in good fortune. It was five figures. But yeah, it doesn't really happen to everyone like that.

Well, Huge congrats on again on the acquisition and our success. I'm really looking forward to seeing what you do next, man. Hopefully you come back to Microacquire with, with trace commas.

Maybe in a few years time. Yeah, for now I have something in the works, but it's not really ready for showing it off or anything. But yeah, if anyone wants to follow along on my journey, you can follow me on Twitter. Probably you will leave something in the notes for that.

I'll have your Twitter, your LinkedIn and.

Then.

All information to contact you.

Yeah, yeah, that would be great.

I guess I always like asking these questions at the end just for fun. I didn't tell you I was gonna ask these questions, but I just decided randomly why not. Who's your favorite entrepreneur? Okay, you can't say Elon Musk.

I can't.

Okay, you cannot. Everyone, everyone always says Elon Musk. And he's, he's probably mine.

It's my first choice.

Yeah, yeah, it's everyone's first choice. So I like to try to get like a, if you had to think of anyone but Elon, who would it be? And you can't say, and you can't say Microquire.

That's my second choice. Yeah.

I'm just kidding, man.

Actually, you know, I have a few friends, but they're not that big. If we're talking big entrepreneurs, then it's.

No, it doesn't have to be big. So my favorite entrepreneurs are the ones that are just grinding it out. Like the ones that are basically pushing through like the hardest times. Like those are the entrepreneurs I respect most. So if you want to give a shout out to a buddy, feel free.

It's a shout out to Steph then. Now his second startup, the first one didn't go that well, but he's granting and he also got some investment. It's called Skillfield AI. They're trying to, don't remember exactly what they do, but yeah, they trying to basically help HR to hire the best fit for the companies. Yeah. So shout out to them, Steph. So that would be my choice.

Yeah, I, I, I really appreciate you sharing that because sometimes entrepreneurs like, they give it one shot and they give up. But you know, you learn from failure, you learn from success, but you actually learn more from failure. It hurts, but you know, you come back stronger and you know, all the mistakes you've made in the past, you probably won't make them again. So that was awesome.

Yeah. To be an entrepreneur you have to love the process, right? It's not only about success, which might be a bit of an end goal to, you know, get you, for me, the financial freedom. But you learn a tone through failures, as you said. And that's where the gold mine for me is. And keep pushing. I keep learning. I've been doing it for a while, but only the recent years I started doing it. Seriously?

Yeah. I always say try and get to a place where you enjoy working on your startup as much as your favorite video game, because when you love it, if someone else loves it more, like, you know they're gonna be you. But also. And it's not about winning either, but if you're just having fun all the time, like, you're winning, so. Right on. Petros, I really appreciate your time and you coming on here, and if I can ever do anything in the future to support you, feel free to reach out.

Sure. Thank you. Andrew, thank you very much for the opportunity to talk out and your platform, of course.

My pleasure. And congrats again. Hey, you're in that position. Club man. Cheers.

Thank you. All right.

All right. See you, Pedros.

See you.