Startup Acquisition Stories Podcast with Minh-Phuc Tran, Founder of Queue.so

All right. I am here with Fuch who recently had a company acquired. Really excited to speak with you Fuch. How are you doing today?

I'm good. Thank you Andrew for hosting me. Such a pleasure and honor to be on here. So hello everyone. I'm Fuchsia, I am a software engineer before and then I quit my job to build six startup internment and then recently I sold one of the startup on my require. It's called Q. So nice.

So for those that may not know about the startup you sold, do you want to give a little background on the problem it was solving and what it did?

Yeah, yeah. So QSO is a Twitter scheduling tool for Notion. So basically it's just like the very basic standard Twitter scheduling tool that you see like typhully buffer this tone but this tone work directly integrated into Notion. So people using Notion to manage their content and workflow can just use the software directly in the Notion instead of having to go out to a different software. So that's the problem itself. So it's very useful for like teams that run on Notion and then they do not need to go to a different software. Different they do not need to sync all of their data and content to a different software.

I like that. How did you get your first users customers for the product?

Mostly by building in public on Twitter. So back then I was just tweeting about I'm building this tool, it help you to scheduling tweets directly in Notion and there's a lot of people using Notion on Twitter and I excited to try new products on top of Notion. So that's helped me to get the first customer.

Nice. Very nice. And then so you see some success with this, with this product. What made you decide to list it on acquire.com?

So I used to think that I would spend most of my time working on Notion specific products because I did that for almost a year and then a lot of people know about that but. But then I did launch another product and I had a little issue with Notion. So Notion basically not really like that product and they have the as a platform have something to say about how I should approach that product. So for that I do not really like that like being told to do something by another company. So that's when I saw like the platform risk is something that like I do not really like to work with. With. So before because of that I decided okay, Q is working, people are using the product customer requesting more features, but I'm not really interested in developing it anymore. So it's better to let someone else who is more excited about this kind of problem to develop it further and then I can focus on other products and problems.

Nice. That makes complete sense. Yeah. If you're not, you know, excited about what you're building every day, you know, might be.

Yeah.

A good time to look at selling it.

Yeah, it's totally different. Like in the beginning it feel like the best thing to work on in the world. But then after that it just feel like a 9 to 5 job after a while and it even worse than a 9 to 5 job because I do not really enjoy working on that product anymore. So any customer support ticket becomes like a very like mundane kind of task.

Yeah, that makes complete sense. So you, you listed on acquire and what, what happened? What was your initial like impression when you listed?

So like people talk about, I didn't really know how Microacry worked before at all. I just know that like there is this micro acquired marketplace that every few people, a lot of founders are selling their products successfully on the platform. So I just go to the website and then I just follow basically on the instruction there and just list my product. And the one thing is like I remember like I needed to come up with the asking price so like how much multiples of the ARR that I should ask for. And then I did a bunch of research and then asked a bunch of people and then come up with like 7 or 8 multiplies of the annual revenue and list the product there. And then just within like one day there's just a lot of people reaching out and sending messages. I'm really surprised. I didn't really expect people to be that fast.

That's awesome. That's awesome to hear. Yeah, sometimes it can be a little surprising even to me just how many buyers will just reach out for, for certain products.

Yeah.

So quickly it's almost like buyers are just scanning acquire.com just all day long. So that's awesome to hear. Okay, so you got all these buyers now and you got to find out who's the right one to work with. How did you end up, you know, deciding to sell to this specific buyer? You don't have to name them, but just what, what did they do to stand out? What, what made you feel that the buyer you chose was the right one?

Uh, yeah, I actually went to like two different buyers until I actually decided to sell to one of the buyer. So like one of the buyer was an indie hacker. So he's very similar to me. He's like a software developer who also want to Start his own like SaaS company and then he just really interested in the product and we did talk a lot. I really enjoy talking with him. I really wanted him to take over the project as like a solo founder and then develop it further. But then like he was not really happy. So that indie hacker wasn't exactly happy with on the financial data when we do like due diligence and because of that it makes sense and there's nothing. So I didn't lie anything on the listing. But just like when he went deeper into the financial data and on he saw like too much risk for him to take that business solo so he decided to put that away. And then I talked to another buyer. This time he's not a developer, he's not an indie hacker. He own a VC or he work at a vc. I'm not so sure he probably on that vc. So he basically buying a few different products and he have like a developer's team that would just like develop that product further. And he just like have a portfolio, portfolio of product within his vc. So that's why it's just make it much easier for me to see how this product can be developed and grow further.

That's awesome. So I mean on one hand you had a product that you weren't interested in developing further and then you were able to sell it to someone who can, you know, kind of breathe some fresh energy into it and really kind of build it out further. That's awesome.

And also like the guys seem to need a lot of quizzes. Like in the first con that we talked to each other, he already know about like how the product is doing, like how many followers on the SEO ranking, on the SEO research. All of these things I didn't even know about. He said like he did a bunch of research about that already and this product just like do really well on the SEO side of things. Something I'm not so sure. And then he just like really want to buy the product.

Yeah, those are my favorite buyers ones that do pre due diligence because there's a lot of ways to, you know, look at website traffic with tools like Ahrefs or Semrush or.

Exactly.

Just looking up your Twitter page and any mentions from happy customers, stuff like that, using the product. I think those are all things that buyers can do without ever setting up a call. And then when you get on the call, it's a great way to stand out because you know you really like you said you had a lot of buyers reach out and then you sold to someone who had done their homework. And the calls are so much more productive that way. So that's awesome to hear. In terms of due diligence, how did that process go?

I think like, so I did that two times. 1 like ended up not like going forward and then the last one we find out the deals. So like the second one was pretty easy because like the guy pretty much did his homework. So all we needed to do is to talk about the code base and transferring how I like design, implement this product and how it can be developed further. So basically like all about technical and only things related to like financial, business, marketing and on that guy already know everything. So I didn't really need to do anything. I just only do like technical due diligence.

Nice. And then. Yeah, because due diligence can be, you know, either months or, you know, much faster than that depending on, on the buyer or just the size of the business. I've seen due diligence processes go for, you know, three, four, five months depending on how the. The size of the business and also the buyer.

Yeah, that's true. For me it went like I think it was. It's done within two days. Like yeah, like we had only one. Yeah, we, we had only one con and then I did one video recording and then that's it. So like the day after, we just finished everything.

Oh wow, that's. That might be a record. The five word one. I guess. You know, my next question would be, so you're done with due diligence. I assume you agreed to, you know, purchase price. How did you go about, you know, transferring the assets?

Yes. So we decided to break it into two payment, two installment. So the first half he will pay and then after I get that first half, I would transfer the assets of the company to him. And then the last half of the installment, we will break that into three different installment. Again, that's kind of weird. But then because like in the last part of Access Chamfer, there's like a lot of like code based AWS accounts, stripe account, all of these. So I try to get like a little bit more money and then I transfer a little bit more. Again, a little bit more money and then I transfer a little bit more. So that's how it works. Basically just break it down into multiple installments.

Nice. I like that because the risk, you know, the acquisitions, I think for both you and the buyer. Yeah. You know, taking it one step at a time and not, you know, basically ensuring as a buyer that, you know, they're going to get all the assets and they're going to have you around for support and stuff like that. So good job there. I guess my question, my next question would just be, you know, the acquisition went through successfully, you went, found a buyer, you went through due diligence, transferring assets. If you had to give like a few tips to, you know, another founder looking to sell a similar product on acquire.com what, what do you think it'd be?

I think just to be on first, just be really honest about what is the product doing, how much money is he making. Just make it really clear and transparent. Try to give as much information to the buyers as possible so that you do not need to talk about that again to the buyers. And then the second thing is there are a lot of buyers who do not really know what they are doing. So they just text you and ask you like, can I ask more information about this product and ask this. So I just have like a template that message and I just send out to all of these people and most of them just like disappear after a few messages. Only the one, the one that like didn't really ask a lot are the one that actually gonna be serious about the product. So usually they know and they did the research. A lot of people, I think like Mayor Acquire has a lot of buyers, but a lot of them also do not really know if they want to buy something or do not really know what they want to buy. So they just like try to ask every product and get as much information as they think they can. And then it's just like there's a lot of like work, like messages that you need to reply but didn't really make any sense after a while.

Yeah, I mean when you have a lot of buyers reach out, you know, some are going to be interested, some when they see the product, they're not interested at that point. So I, I can definitely understand that. So I guess, you know, if you had any feedback to give to, you know, buyers, what would it be?

Feedback to buyers?

Yeah, just as a buyer, you know, what in terms of, you know, catching your attention or, you know, and giving confidence to you that they're serious, you know, what could a buyer do better on, on acquire.com.

That'S a really good question. I didn't really think about it, but like, I think like the, I didn't really have a good impression to certain buyers, but more like I have a lot of bad impression on a lot of buyers. And the Biden question is like they ask very generic question like how much this product is doing what is mri? What is the tech stack? These questions shouldn't be asked at all because like all the information are already available on the listing. So they shouldn't ask this question at all. They should know that. Yeah. So I think that is the bad impression. So my filter just like filter all of those people that ask very basic question like that.

So basically questions that are stated on the profile already that you shouldn't even. They're already answered on the profile.

Yeah.

If they're asking those questions, they're probably a pass.

Yeah. So I guess they just like copy and past one message to all different seller. And I don't think these buyers are very interested in the product. So I think like if the feedback is like they should do their homework and then just like focus on a few specific startup that they really want to buy so that they do not waste time of themselves and also the seller.

Yeah, that's great. It's great feedback. I guess my last question would be is I know you build a lot of products and I assume you're working on a few other ones now.

Yeah.

What's kind of taking your main focus right now?

So right now, to be honest, I don't really have a main focus yet. Currently I'm working on a new product. I have like one existing product, two existing product that are in production. So one is like Nova which is a project management for Notion and the other one Con Daily which is not taking out. So both of them are live and available for use. So you can just go to my Twitter and see the product there. Currently I'm working on a new product, a CMS for static site generators. So hopefully we'll be able to release that soon.

Nice. Well Fu, thanks so much for coming on the podcast. This was definitely fun to hear about. I'm rooting for your success with all these different products. I'm excited to see them. If people just want to get a hold of you, just learn more about yourself or your businesses, where's the best place to find you?

I think Twitter is the best place. I Twitter daily on Twitter @fooktm97. So p h u c t m97 on Twitter.

I'll be sure to put that in the show notes. But Phuc, thanks again for taking the time and congrats on the acquisition.

Thanks Andrew. My pleasure.

All right, see you. Take it easy.