Shopify App Sold for 6 Figures on Acquire.com w/ Drilon Sqn & Dani Ibanez, Co-Founders of TrustApps

Foreign.

I'm here with Drylon and Danny, who recently got acquired for six figures on acquire.com. how you guys doing today?

Good, good. And you? How are you?

I'm doing great. I'm doing great. Thanks for asking and thanks for coming on the podcast. But for those that may not know you, do you want to give a brief introduction of yourself? Sure.

I am Joel. I'm software engineer with experience in building Web application and SaaS. I also work with the Belgian government as a consultant in cybersecurity and other things. You know, so I really need to, to be up to date constantly.

Yeah.

So I'm Danny, I'm not a developer, so I just have seven years experience in e commerce, marketing and advertising. So I did a lot of media buying for big famous companies. So yeah, that's, that's, that's. These are my experiences.

So.

So it's kind of different. We are different. But like we. Yeah, we together.

We.

Yeah, we match together.

We mesh together. Yeah. We are a team.

You guys finish each other's sentences. I love it. Exactly. Is this. So we're, we're talking about trust apps, which was a Shopify app that you had acquired. Was that the first business that you both started together?

To be honest, it's not our first business, but it's our first app that we have sold. And just to. To explain a little it. Trust Reviews is a Shopify app that helps shopify store owners collect and display the. The customer. Customer reviews, including photo, video content. Yeah, like this. So it was our third or four. Yeah.

Because we all. We already have businesses together, but this was really the first business that we sold as the business that we made together. So the first business that we sold together.

Yeah.

Nice. How did, how do you feel when the wire for six figures say your bank account?

I can ask like to be honest to. If someone wants to.

To.

To. Yeah. You need to leave it to. To understand like you're doing. You feel like nothing is impossible and you feeling like you're playing with, with the big guys. Even if there are guys that so sell their businesses for millions and millions. But yeah, it's exciting. You want to cannot describe it. Like.

Yeah, it's when we started at the beginning we never thought that we are going to sell it but because you know we have some other SaaS application. So this one was, was for I think 2022, 2023. We are focusing on trust apps and. But we have, we had another big opportunity in real estate so we need some, some liquidity to invest.

We we sold it because we, we had a big opportunity in real estate here in Belgium. We needed some cash flow, some liquidity, so we were thinking, like, which is the business that is the most ready to be sold at that moment? And it was Trust Reviews. So that's the reason why we sold it. But so the money that we had, we directly invested it in other real estate activities.

But you didn't, you didn't go out and buy a Ferrari or anything like that with the money?

No, not yet. Not yet, but.

All right, good for you. Well, hey, let's talk about, let's talk about Trust is. So Trust Reviews. Is that a app that you built under your main company, Trust Apps? Am I getting that correct?

Exactly. So Trust Apps was the company and Trust Reviews was the, the product.

Yeah, gotcha. What, what, what motivated you guys to start Trust Reviews?

We, we, we had, we wanted actually to, to create something that brings value to people, but also a product that was needed by a lot of people. Yeah. So me, I, I, I have a lot of experience in E commerce and I knew that there were a lot of review apps, but the features were not really, like, it was two years.

Three years, the same features, not up to date.

So, yeah, so we were like, why don't we try to make a review app, but with all those features that these other apps don't have? And that's how we then started and then we continued to develop the project and we knew a lot of people also in the e commercial and yeah, every day and we work with features, other features, and then.

I love that because it, it goes to show you, like, even if a category is saturated with a lot of other competitors, like, you can still build a nice business from it. Like, I talk to a lot of entrepreneurs that's like, oh, someone's already doing this. And every time I'm like, just make it a little bit better. And you know, it does. This isn't like a winners take all market, so I'm glad you guys went after it in terms, you know, get. Okay, so you launch Trust Reviews, it's going well, you start getting customers. Was there a moment where you guys felt like, oh, like, we've, we got product market fit like this, this, we're really onto something. Did you ever have like a light bulb moment, like, where you kind of sat back and thought, this, this application is growing way faster than we expected?

Well, as we already have experience in SaaS businesses, we did not make this mistake. Because there is one mistake some people do that you can avoid is when you start a SaaS business like Shopify app, for example, you need to not grow fast in the beginning because in the beginning you will have issues with the app, user issues. And once a user has an issue and the app's not performing well, he will lose the.

Just.

You just lose the customer. So we like how much time. Maybe the six or eight first months. Yeah, during the six or eight first months, we just shared the app with people that I know, that we know, and they just use the app and we were like, okay, still little by little, promoting the app, getting feedback.

Yeah.

To not have too much people in the beginning. Once we knew that the app was performing 200% well and there were no problems, we started the real marketing and the real promoting and then we saw the app like doing like this.

I like that. I actually agree with that train of thought. Um, have you heard of the Lean Startup or minimal viable product mvp?

Yeah, I heard something.

Basically it just means, you know, make like the simplest version of the product and get feedback as quickly as possible and then that's a great strategy. I'm more or less saying this for others that are listening, but with today, there's so many different products and there's so many different startups being launched created the quality, in my opinion, or customer expectations for an MVP or the first version has gone up. So I love how you spent a lot of time in terms of, you know, really perfecting the product before you, you know, push the gas on sales and marketing. Because you're right. Yeah. If you have a great product but it has a bunch of blogs, stuff like that, then next thing you know, you have a bunch of negative reviews on Shopify and then you're. Then the next problem you're having to solve is first you got to fix a product and then you got to fix your reviews issue. So that I love, I love how you did that. And if I could ask, you know, given you're in the Shopify ecosystem, was that your main customer acquisition strategy? Did you have any sort of paid marketing campaigns or anything like that? Or was it just all organic?

Yeah, so there was like organic. Um, we also put in the user interface of the app like a section, because this is the most important. Your customers will tell you how you need to develop the app. We, we've added like a section in which they can leave a feedback.

Yeah.

And it was like a little vlog in which everyone could chat together and put their ideas of which next feature, the feature they want to, to, to see on the app and the comments with the most likes or the most famous comments with the. The most people that like this idea. We then used it to develop this kind of feature. So people were talking with each other. And this also helped a lot to grow the app. But also with affiliate marketing with some YouTube videos and some e commerce. I will not say gurus, but E commerce guys that have YouTube channels and the quality of the product. Like in the, in, in the beginning we were really restricted with some people. We wanted to have the key features that the other app didn't have. And this people talked about us. Yeah, these guys, you can already have video reviews on their app while on the other big review companies you cannot add video reviews. And people talked with each other like that. And this is actually like also a great marketing strategy. Like just people talk about you stick.

With one feature that was missing and yeah, promote it. Exactly. And one more I can give as a developer is to avoid adopting the last fancy tech stack. You know, just stick with the technology you are comfortable with and go with it cheap, fast so you can continuously improve the application.

Yeah, I love that. I don't think there's been a study done, but your customers do not care what your tech stack is. They. They just care if it solves their problem.

That's.

That's it.

I see people in Twitter just talking about the new technology. You know, I want to use Next JS or something like this. It's not a problem. If you feel comfortable with it, just go with it and your customer will never know about it.

Yeah, well, if it's also a problem, that's all that matters. Love it. Now I want to hear about the, the acquisition story. So you, you listed it on acquire.com. tell me about how did the first, like two, three, four weeks ago, did it surprise you? Were you overwhelmed? Were you, like, how did you. How did it go the first, you know, month?

Like really it was faster than what we thought because when we listed our app on Acquire, we, to be honest, we did not really expect to sell the app because we just heard about Acquire from one of our friends that already sold one of his businesses on Acquire. So he told us, yeah, guys, this is a good platform to use. So we used Acquire. But when we started to create the app profile and when we listed the app on Acquire, it took like some, some couple of days and within three weeks or four weeks we already sold the app. Like really like it was like this, like fast like this.

Because yeah, we received some message, some NDAs, but it was really fast. And Smooth. So we did not encounter any challenge or.

Yeah, no, like, like the people that, I feel like the, the, the ecosystem like on Acquire, like the people that use Acquire are serious people. Like the people there are, are there to. For serious business. So they were like, when they contacted us to, to talk about the price of the app, it was like, yes or no? Yes or no? Yes or no? You. You want it? Okay, we talk together. And the first potential buyer that we talked to, like the first time in video call in Zoom to talk about that, this was our buyer. He bought just or up like two weeks later.

So, so just to summarize, so you built this application and you listed on the choir and it was sold for six figures in a matter of two weeks.

Literally two weeks.

And we have successfully closed the deal.

Yeah, that, that's insane. And then again, when the money hit the bank, what, what were you. What did you guys do? Are you like, again, sir, like, surprised by it or.

Yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's magic. Because you, like, for example, I know that in the United States, like, I don't know how the economy is there, but a lot of people can earn like 5k, 6k a month or in America, I think it's, it's, it's the normal salary. I don't know how much the salary basis is in America, but for example, here in Belgium, people earn €2,000amonth.

That's normal.

That's normal salary here. But Lola, when you talk about six figures, that's coming in your bank account, like in one time like this.

Yeah.

You're like, okay, what do we do? Do we buy a rari or just do we invest it in, in, in real estate?

Yeah, you did the right thing by, you know, investing it because then you could, you know, grow the money, I guess. Now I'm wondering. So you, you listed on Acquire, you met a buyer really fast, you had a successful acquisition. Is there anything you did in particular to prepare for the acquisition, to make sure that it was able to sell this quickly?

We went like, who can say before we, we wanted to sell it? We did a checkup of all the things. Is the app working well? Is everything on the, on the, on the dev side okay?

Yeah, we have a lot of documentation.

Documentation, the accountancy, the finance report, financial reports. Everything was clear.

The technical side should be robust. So, yeah, we are not going to sell something, but we did it while.

We were listing the app, because when we created the apps profile on Acquire, like Acquire is asking like some Kind of informations and these things. For example, the financial reports. We had a financial report, but not as much as detailed as we should have. But when we did the checkpoints of acquire, before listing the app, we needed to do it. So when this is also part of. I think the good side of acquire is that it helped us to prepare different things in order to be ready to be sold to a buyer. So it was like maybe one week of preparation.

Like just quick checkup and maximum one week.

Yeah. Because the app was already working perfectly. So the. On the app side, it was not a problem.

Yeah.

That's awesome. What was, what was your favorite part about listing and getting acquired on acquired?

Starting. Starting with the escrow. Like this was like. Because you know that you're going to sell the app when you start to escrow. Like if the viewers are looking at this, this podcast, if they don't know what it is, is it just. In order to make sure that the buyer has the money to buy the company, he needs to fund his account on escrow. So the platform is securing the money. So let's say you, you sell the app for $200,000 example, he needs to add those money on his account escrow. Then you need to give all the accesses of the app to this buyer and then you receive the money. But this process, this was the most exciting because going to sell the app.

And there is no, there is no.

Scam and it's, it's, it's perfect for both sides.

Yeah. We have that product suite in place where you can use our letter of intent builder and then comes the asset purchase agreement and all those terms flow directly in escrow.com. so, yeah, I can't recommend escrow enough so you're safe and secure in your acquisition because the last thing you want to do is take it off platform, have someone randomly say, send me the assets and then you're left potentially with, you know.

Yeah.

No, no money and no application. So anyone listening? You use escrow. That was a really good point right there. I guess another question I have is now that you've gone through a successful acquisition, if you had to give three tips to maybe other, you know, startup founders, entrepreneurs looking to sell their startups, what do you think those three tips would be?

Okay, I mean, so, so sorry. One. Yeah, so the first thing I, I would say is make sure your business is not going down when you, when you try to sell it. Of course, if you want to get the most of the, of the app. Because if you, if you are trying to sell a business that is going.

Down, I will ask questions why are you selling it? And yeah, so when the business is.

Is going up, I think it's the best.

Yeah. If the business is going up or it's just like normal, then you normal go.

You can, you can solve in Shopify. It's even easier because you can't lie. You know.

Yeah. There are the numbers.

There are the numbers. You, you cannot modify those, those number. It's by Shopify. So when the buyers see it. Okay. Everything is okay here I, I can see the heist, the history.

So yeah. So basically don't try to sell it if it's the business is going down or if you also want. Because you need to tell yourself that people are putting a lot of money into your company. Like they're ready to, to. To spend 500000 whatever. They are going to spend money on your business. So you. Everything needs to be like transparent. So if you can have problems in the business, it's normal, but you need to be transparent.

Exactly.

Then you have the things that you need to be transparent in the financial reports or in the accountancy, the technical side also. So these things, I think if you, if you respect these things, you are on the good way to, to start the negotiations. After all the tips. It depends on the size of the business. You have a business who 20 million a year, you have 500 employees. You will have to follow different kind of tips than if you have just a business that makes 100,000 a year. But these are I think the same things for every business.

Those are some really good tips and I agree with all of them. And I'd also add escrow to your tip list in terms of, you know, if you do an acquisition, use escrow, keep everybody honest, do it correctly, even if it takes an extra week. It's much better than ending up with.

Of course. And the fees are not even that high, really low fees. So you, you don't even. And I prefer even there are. If there are high fees, I prefer to pay fees. But I'm sure that nobody's going to get scammed.

Exactly. Yeah.

So it's basically insurance to make sure that. But yeah, what you're essentially saying is the more you prepare before your acquisition, the more that you more time you put into it in terms of putting together profit loss statements. So a buyer can really view the true financial performance of your business or common questions that they might have or even just putting together like a asset transfer plan, just anything that shows buyers that you have Put time into thinking through this acquisition and giving buyers information upfront before you speak with them really sets you apart from a number of other businesses. Because if you reverse roles as a buyer, yes, they're paying a lot of money, but they're also spending a lot of time and they're also looking at a lot of different businesses. So the more that you can repair and show that this is a serious acquisition, you're valuing the business correctly prepared. And then, yes, be transparent and honest about everything because if you're not, it'll get found out and due diligence. And nothing kills an acquisition faster than surprises. Even if you have, like, bad stuff, just say, like, hey, listen, we tried this marketing campaign. Didn't work. That may sound bad to you, but to a buyer that could be, well, I'm an expert in those marketing campaigns and stuff like that. So. Good, good job. On, on, on. Just the whole process, it sounds like from start to finish, it was smooth acquisition.

It's like, yeah, because when, when we wanted to, before we wanted to, when, when there was the process of selling the app, I was like, how are we going to make sure that he's going to send us the money or we giving the accesses? So then it was, yeah, I was asking myself, like, because we already sold businesses, but like here in our country, not with. Because the buyer was a buyer from the United States. So it's another continent. We are here in Europe. So it was like, do we need to fly to fly out and to go there or. And then he, the buyer told me, no, there was escrow, so no problem, blah, blah, blah. And I was like, okay, but escrow is, I think the number one, number one tip. Always work with escrow. It's the best thing you can do.

Nice. Love it. I guess I'm asking kind of a fun question, but if you had to describe acquire.com in one sentence, what would it be?

In one sentence, how do you spell.

Acquire to find the form? No, like, we didn't prepare this.

No, like, it. It's just nice. Just because you need to, you need to go. You need this one sentence.

If you had to give acquire.com a new tagline, what would prior.com I have.

Like some ideas, but it is, it's in my, it's my language in French. But yeah, I cannot translate it like this in English. It's not the same. Like, just help me.

I would say it's the number one marketplace for solo product.

Yeah, it's like dereference. Like, yeah, like, if you want to buy food, you go to the grocery market and that's it. If you want to sell business, you just go to acquire.

And if you in the other side, if you want to buy also. Yeah, buy valuable business, just go to acquire.com.

But the tagline is like more acquire.

Yeah.

Difficult, I guess, for.

For. For you guys. I mean, if I had a tagline, it'd be. Got paid six figures in two weeks. Thanks. Acquire. I don't know. Yeah, yeah.

Something like this.

Yeah, yeah, two weeks.

Got six figures in two weeks. That's like some rapper. Rapper things like they use in their. In the six. Got six figures in a week or something like that.

Probably. Probably make a song out of it. Well, hey, you know, final question. You know, like any entrepreneur I speak to, they're always building and I. What are you guys working on next?

Oh, the.

We have this real estate project that we are on.

It's normally this year. Yeah, we finish it. It will.

Because we. We bought a big thing and then we. We are renovating it and then to sell. So this is our. One of our main activity now. Yeah, but we. We have other SaaS businesses for here in Belgium.

In Belgium. Yeah. Yeah. So.

But this is like automatic. So we are now on this and.

We are working in a new project. For now, it's just like an mvp. The only thing I can say for now it's based on AI.

Yeah. Of it. Well, when you launch it, let me know. I'd be happy to, you know, support it. And I want to check it out just considering how successful this business was and then obviously the successful acquisition. So thanks for coming on the podcast, guys. Again, congrats on the. The acquisition and I'm rooting for you both.

Thanks, thanks, thanks.

And.

And I would like to add it will not be a chatgpt rapper. Like, we see a lot of those.

So thank you.

We are looking for something new. Yeah.

Innovate.

Yeah. But let's keep. Let's keep it secret for now.

We will. Hopefully we'll be back, like in some couple of months on this podcast.

Maybe in a couple years you'll be back saying, hey, we sold for, you know, seven, eight figures with your new. With your new startup. So we'll see.

I hope.

I hope so.

Yeah.

I hope so.

All right, guys, it's been a pleasure. Thanks for coming on.

My pleasure. Thank you.

My pleasure.

Thank you. Thanks for inviting us and.

Yeah, my pleasure. Congrats again on the acquisition.

Thanks, thanks.

Cheers.

Goodbye.