Startup Acquisition Stories with Jake Prins, Founder of TeamSmart AI

All right. I am with Jake, who recently had a startup acquired. Jake, how you doing today?

Thanks, I'm doing very well. How are you?

Good, thanks for those. Maybe that don't know you. Do you want to give a brief introduction of yourself?

Yeah, sure. So I'm working as a front end engineer at API Deck. I've been working as a developer for I think well over eight years. Prior to that I had a very different background. I played basketball professionally in the Netherlands. And yeah, after college I was thinking about what I should do next and I had a bunch of ideas for building online platforms, but I didn't have the technical skills required for that. I also didn't have the money to hire developers, so I decided to teach myself how to code and I found out that I actually liked running code and I went to a coding bootcamp and after that I landed my first job as a developer and I've been working as a developer ever since. And I've always been working on side projects during evenings, weekends, and that eventually led to me Building Serverless SaaS, which is a project I started around two or three years ago and I got acquired. Yeah, two months ago.

That's awesome. So you're a professional. Wait, we got to back up on that. You're a professional basketball in the Netherlands?

Well, I didn't play for a very long time professor me, but I went through like the youth education programs and I've been basically practicing every single day. And so yeah, it's kind of switched to become a. Become a programmer.

That's awesome. I've always wanted to. Can you duck?

I can, yeah, I can still do. Requires a little bit more effort nowadays though.

But yeah, I'm. I'm 5 10. So that's. If I ever, if I ever get three wishes. That's one of them. Let's, let's move over to serverless SaaS. So you know, you built this, this awesome product and you listed it on acquire. What made you want to sell the business in the first place?

Well, I've been running the project for almost a couple of years. Especially in the beginning I was spending a lot of time on it improving, keep continuing to improve in the product and over time that became a bit less, but people were still buying it. So it still requires some time to maintain the project. But meanwhile I start. I joined the startup API deck, which required a lot of time. I got two kids now and also started another side project. So it just became a bit too much to keep maintaining it. Also just the mental space of having to maintain multiple projects at a time. So, yeah, I figured that especially for new customers and people are still buying the product, that it would be better if there was someone behind it that actually still still has some ideas and continue to improve it and, yeah, take things to the next level. So that's why I decided to put it up for sale.

Nice. Yeah, I love those types of acquisitions where, you know, you. You build something and then you sell it to someone who can ideally bring more energy and more life into it. How did. How did you get your first customers? I can ask.

Yeah. So it was, I think, somewhere in 2019 when I already built a bunch of side projects, and I was listening to the Rework podcast based on. On the Book of Rework, and they were talking about byproducts, and each startup or each project is always, yeah, also having some byproducts. In the podcast, they describe a couple of examples, like the podcast itself, which is a byproduct from the book Rework. Rework was a byproduct from a bunch of blog articles. They also describe how Ruby on Rails, the programming framework, was initially a byproduct from them building Basecamp. So when I was listening to that, I thinking, like, did I maybe also build some byproducts? I didn't have a lot of projects that got a lot of traction, but I still build a bunch of side projects. And that's how I initially got to the idea, like, maybe I was using this boilerplate code that I was using to bootstrap each new project. And so that got me thinking, like, maybe this is something that someone else is willing to pay for. And that led to a project I then called Pre Egg Milkshake, which was like just a very plain boilerplate with not a lot of features. And I put it up on Product Hunt and I got a bunch of sales. So to me, that was like some confirmation that there is something here, there's something of value here. People can save some time with this boilerplate. And that got me to the idea of eventually building a SaaS starter kit with a whole bunch of features like authentication, stripe integration, all the things that you need to build a software as a service application. And yeah, I launched that in product hand and then I got my first. First couple of customers.

Nice. I love how you. It sounds like you solved like your own problem. You know, all the items that you needed to kind of build a SaaS product. You package it up into something that other people could use. Is that. Would you say that's right?

Yeah, indeed. Well, it kind of evolved. It was just an iteration of something that I started because I had this boilerplate before and I was only using it for myself. And when I got the validation that other people might be interested in this as well, I started to iter and thinking maybe we should add some more features and yeah, expand it to something that can be used to build a software as a service application. And so it was really an iterative process that eventually led to the, to the product.

I love that. That's, I mean that's how businesses are built. You know, it's iterative, learn you get something right, you get something wrong and you just do that for years and then you eventually get, get some customers. All right, let's go through the timeline. So you, you first list on acquire.com what happened? What, what was your expectations going in and what was like the first, you know, couple weeks in terms of buyers reaching out?

Well, I had no idea what to expect initially. I wasn't sure if it was a right project, a project put up for sale. I mean it needed to be someone who is, has some technical expertise or at least is working together with a developer because it's really a developer focused product. And I was actually surprised by the amount of people that were reaching out after I posted a listing. Especially at the beginning I was just manually answering all types of questions and providing details and at some point I was just setting up a template like this whole document that I could share with everybody that was reaching out because there was so one, so much more to talk about the details of the business. So I was happily surprised by the amount of people reaching out. So yeah, that was really great.

That's awesome. How many buyers reach out in total?

I guess I don't know actually how much in total. But eventually we got to like four or five people that had some serious interest and got on a call. A lot of people were reaching out. Some people didn't completely understand how the business work because it has the word SaaS in it. Some people already assumed that there was also the type of business that it is. But it is actually I'm selling a code base or access to a code base which is a one time purchase and the people who are buying the product, those are the ones that are building the SaaS has. So there has to. Yeah, there was some explain explanation to do about how the whole process, I automated the whole process of buying and getting access and getting access to documentation. So yeah, there was a lot of back and forth with some, with some buyers and Eventually a couple of people that really fitted the project. Yeah, those are the ones that ended up for, you know, with conversations.

Let's, let's talk about those. So, you know, a lot of buyers, you know, reach out and you started to see someone's. That this could be a good fit for, for an acquisition. How did you narrow it down to the final buyer that acquired this business?

Well, there were quite some. There were multiple potential buyers that had the idea of me still staying on in the business either to maintain the project or to help build out some new ideas that they had. And because I was kind of lacking time and really wanted to fully close it. Yeah, those were just not an opt option for me and I went with the buyer that, yeah, I was really going to take the whole project over.

Nice. So in terms of, okay, you get, you listed on acquired account, a lot of buyers reach out. You narrowed it down to one individual. How did due diligence and you know, transferring all the assets over to them go? Assuming you got to an agreed price? I'm guessing that.

Yeah, indeed.

Yeah.

So yeah, it was a really smooth transition at the beginning. There was like all the transferring of the accounts like the Firebase, Google Analytics. Those were all very smoothly because they all allow adding new users to your account and then you can update their role to basically make them owner or give them the rights. The last account that I needed to transfer was from Gumroad. Gumroad was being used as the payment processor handling tax and invoices and it works really great. But when you're transferring that account, it wasn't really an option for that. So we, we. That was like the part that took the longest time because I was just giving them access to the account and then they could change. Yeah. All the information. But that in the end it wasn't possible to change the bank account that was attached to it. So that's kind of a problem. So then we needed to set up a new account and that took a little bit longer than I expected. So yeah, for people who are using Gumroad and doing this. An acquisition. Yeah. Make sure to, to look into how you do that. It's better to just create newest accounts, but other than that, it went all pretty smoothly actually.

Nice. That's great to hear. Yeah. One, one big hurdle that I hear from a lot of founders when they sell their startup is they'll have the product in, let's say AWS instance with a bunch of other products and they have to pull it out and they have to. Or one stripe account with multiple different products in it. So just having all of that in one single environment just makes a transfer so, so much easier because you can just essentially hand over the accounts rather than, you know, making new accounts, moving stuff around.

Yeah, that's stuff that you usually don't think about when you're setting things up. But yeah, that could be a hassle.

Yeah, we've written a guide on, on transferring assets, but it's, it's definitely something that, that we need to outline a bit more because there's so many different edge cases, especially with servers and different payment processors. But glad, glad it all worked out smoothly for you. So I guess my next question would be, given that you've gone and had a. You built a successful startup, you got customers, and then it got acquired. You know, for other founders that might be looking to, you know, sell their business or get acquired, what are maybe like three tips or learnings that you picked up on during the process?

Well, some advice that I would give is if you're, if you're like me and you're working full time and you're working on projects next to your job or in evenings or on weekends. Yeah, just be patient and keep going. Just making a little bit of progress every day could really make a significant impact over a very period, a longer period of time. You just need to have a bit more patience. I mean, if you would spend only one hour next to you work on a project at the end of the year, that's 365 hours and you can build a lot of things in those hours. So that's just for like, if you're doing something next to your job, just be consistent and have a consistent habit of doing something every day that could be really helpful. And yeah, in terms of acquisition, I don't know, it really depends on like the situation. For me, it worked out great because I had a time where I was really growing the business and had a lot of interactions with customers, which was really great. And now my attention shifted to some other projects. So the timing for me was. Well, was. Was good, but I think that acquire.com is really a great platform to. To see if there is actually, yeah. Potential for an acqu. And I was surprised about the amount of people that reached out and I would have never known if I just, you know, give it a try and, and put it up. So if you feel like it's the. It's the right time for it, I should say just, just give it a try.

I love that. Yeah. Thanks for the quiet. Com plug. Appreciate that, Jake, I guess, you know, now I'm kind of wondering if you had, you know, any critical feedback for acquire.com maybe, like, one thing that we could have done better or, you know, there was one hiccup that we could have helped with. What would that be? So we can help other founders avoid that.

Maybe you should have the. The ad acquire handle on Twitter. That's really missing right now.

Oh, man, I'm enjoying it.

Yeah, I've seen you trying. No, I don't really know. I actually found it very. I was. Yeah. Surprisingly. Well, the platform was really intuitive and it guided you through the whole process. So, yeah, I'm just really happy with how things went. So I cannot think of something at the. At the spot.

That's awesome. Well, Jake, congrats on. On the acquisition. And if people want to learn more about, you know, your story or just follow you online, where can they find you?

Yeah. So on Twitter is Jake underscore Prince. And you can also go to jakeprins.com I don't write very often, but I do post some blogs from time to time. And there's actually also a story about my acquisition. It's called From Zero to Acquired the second score story on the. On the page. So if you want to read more, you can check out that story.

I'll put those in the show notes. Well, Jake, I'm running for you, man. Congrats on the success.

Thanks, man. We appreciate it. Thank you for having me on.

Yeah, my pleasure.

Cheers. Cheers.

I'll put those in the show notes. Well, Jake, I'm running for you, man. Congrats on success.

Thanks, man. I really appreciate it. Thank you for having me on.

Yeah, my pleasure.

Cheers. Cheers.