Turning Founder Journeys into Success Stories with MicroAcquire

Startups get the party. Startups get the party started. Startups get the party. Startups get the party started. You want tech and tacos? Tacos in tech you know we got tacos and tech is on smash border green guacamole keeper captains counting beans Contador quentan frijoles found us trying to raise some queso la vida San Diego school of rappy rapping fire tortillas round jalapenos in these modern times a crappy my coding yoga posse fold the body origami we be surfing coronado eating tacos el gordo the tacos standing puesto lucha libre and sombrero Got a shout out to cost angels by the ocean watch the sunset la Jolla shores Entrepreneurs trying to get funded When San Diego Startup Week is popping in the summer Oceanside, the Tijuana esti be full of hustlers from couch surfing to penthouses right on the beach Tech leaders believe stars are within reach we interview and founders who be shooting for the moon Hashtag SD tecos with your host, Neil Bloom. Startups get the party Startups get the party started.

Welcome to the Tacos and Tech Podcast. I'm your host, Neil Bloom, and I am thrilled to have you here on the Tacos and Tech Podcast. We interview builders of technologies, of companies, of communities, and we do it weekly, so thanks for tuning in. Every Tuesday, a new interview, and on Fridays, we talk about what's new in the San Diego tech ecosystem from a news perspective. So make sure you join us there as well too. We also have a tech newsletter that comes out every other week@freshbrewedtech.com you can subscribe to listen to it without further ado. Enjoy this episode. I am thrilled to have Andrew Gazdecki, founder and CEO of Microacquire. Hey, Andrew, thanks for being on the pod.

Neil, thanks so much for having me. Super excited to be chatting with you, man.

Yeah, man, it's been fun. We've. We've been at it for quite a few years together since I think you moved to San Diego. What was that, 2014? 15?

2016. I think. 2016 when we met. Yeah.

Yep.

It's been a. It's been a minute, man. I'm no longer in San Diego, unfortunately, so I'm super jealous of your location.

Oh, you know, you're always welcome here. I remember back in the day, we met because you had moved here and you were giving a talk at a press conference with the mayor and like this software study that we were putting out about, you know, software talent In San Diego. It's kind of a good, like coming out for you. I feel like you're new to town.

That experience, that was wild.

Yeah.

So for listeners, I moved my first company, Business Apps. It was a do it yourself mobile app builder. And we bootstrapped it to a little over 10 million in revenue and then sold it in San Diego. We moved it to basically retool the company and focus on profitability, lower operational costs. But when we moved it. So we moved out of San Francisco and I wrote this piece that was a guest post in TechCrunch titled why I moved my startup out of San Francisco to San Diego. And it like timed perfectly with because San Diego seemed to be doing a push towards bringing tech. So I was on like three news stations and the mayor like did a office open, like a red ribbon ceremony. And then we did that press conference and then every lawyer, realtor, everyone was like trying to get a hold of me. I was like, what is going on? So that was my 15 minutes of fame. And now life has been downhill ever since.

You've moved it all to Twitter, where now everyone is trying to reach out to you and try to get hats and socks. So, you know, same thing. But now you're building Microacquire. You want to give us a quick 1 minute overview what Microacquire is?

Yeah. So Microacquire is the. And this kind of shocks me to say, but the largest startup acquisition marketplace in the world. We focus mostly on profitable software Companies ranging from SaaS businesses, E Commerce businesses. Started it really just scratching my own itch. And since launch, We've helped over 500 startups get acquired and have helped facilitate over 200 million in closed acquisition volume. And then we even released a directory where you can hire investment bankers, M and A advisors, attorneys. We released a startup valuation calculator based on real data from our marketplace. So yeah, long story short, it's a place for you to sell your company entirely free. And we focus on really high quality companies and we're really trying to essentially be the Zillow for M and A.

That's amazing. The largest. You guys are the largest. That it's so cool to already hear for where you guys are at in your startup journey because it's not necessarily very long compared to how long you were building business apps, that's for sure.

So congrats. I mean, we're definitely benefiting from some tailwinds, I'd say in the market. There's a lot of new buyers entering the market. You know, entrepreneurship through acquisition is becoming more of a trend. So kind of made a bet when I started the business, I had no idea it'd grow this quickly. And it's been, it's so cool to talk to the buyers and the sellers and I see the most interesting businesses all day. It feels like I made like my dream job. It's, it's pretty cool. And then when someone sells their business, you know, it's like a life changing moment and you know, they, you freak out, send like the nicest email. So it's, it's, it's a business that definitely gives you some, you know, moments where you're like, we really like help that person out. So yeah, we're going to dive into that.

We're going to talk about that a bit. But I got to say up front, Interlock Capital, my investment group's super thrilled to be a part of it. I want to make sure everyone knows that. Be transparent about that. We are investors and I'm proud of you for what you've been able to do and that you've let a whole bunch of San Diego entrepreneurs and operators get involved and be along for the journey too. So thank you.

Yeah. And that feeling is definitely mutual. Huge shout out to you and all the Interlock investors appreciate each and every one of you.

Absolutely. Well, we know how you got to San Diego. How did you get into tech? Like, where was your, did you grow up in a community, a family of tech and entrepreneurs, or how did you find your way here?

No, so I, so I grew up in San Clemente. Do you know where that is? San Clemente?

Yeah. Yeah, that's like north county or that's like Northern California compared to San Diego.

Yeah, it's like an hour away. But I grew up in, I was originally born in Detroit and then my parents moved to San Clemente when I was 5 or something like that. And it's a very nice beach area I had. I was surrounded by like friends with mansions and like beachfront homes. And you know, candidly, I didn't grow up with, you know, most means. And so from a very early age I just kind of naturally fell into entrepreneurship as I did all the cliche stuff, like selling stuff on ebay. My most embarrassing venture that I like to share is I had like a World of Warcraft affiliate website that would sell gold shields and axes. You know, it was very profitable. Like I, I was an affiliate to a company and this is, people would really do this, like a currency exchange. They would spend like $10,000 on this, on My website and I didn't have to do anything. And then so the order would go to the parent company and yeah, some person and like some wizard would come up to you in the game and give you the gold you paid for so you can buy some sword or whatever. But I would get 20% off of that $10,000. And so that business was just killing it. And I learned, you know, Google pay per click. I learned like design. Other businesses I started was like I had like a job board for mobile app developers and businesses which you know, kind of gave me a unique insight to business apps. So yeah, there's kind of been. And then there's probably like 10 other businesses that just failed or just never went anywhere that I can't, I remember. But yeah, just kind of always been, you know, kind of, you know, fell, I fell in love with, you know, building stuff early and you know, I think it came from just, you know, needing to just make, you know, a little bit of money. Like that was my initial motivation. So yeah, just fell into it naturally and been kind of addicted ever since.

It's awesome. Enterprising. Andrew, as always. I'm sure you sold like the caramel apple lollipops in school at some point. We all seem to have done that part.

Pokemon, Pokemon cards, yo yos, if you remember those being inside. Yeah, I was the one like selling stuff at a very early age.

Very cool. So business apps was not necessarily like your first company but your first real business that you built, scaled and grew from scratch into a whole company and you did the full life cycle, right? Started it, grew it and sold it.

Yeah. So that business was an idea from a prior business, the job board that I just mentioned. And I'm a huge believer that you need to have some sort of unique insight into a market. And so I didn't know it at the time but I did. And the unique insight was a lot of businesses wanted to create mobile apps for their customers but were paying huge sums of money for custom made apps, like 50 to $100,000. And so I had a job board that just simply connected developers with businesses. And I kept seeing the same posting over and over. I got my high end restaurant, I want a loyalty program, push notifications, just simple stuff like that. And so I thought, you know, there's these do it yourself website builders. What if there is a do it yourself mobile app builder? And this was before like Android came out, this was super early. So can't, if I'm being honest, that business was a right place, right time could just got lucky. I don't, I don't know. God was just like, hey, let's give this kid a business that is going to be really hard to mess up. Um, and yeah, it was a pretty wild ride because we, we only raised a hundred thousand. We grew to well over 10 million. Not well over, but around there. And then developed more mobile apps than any other company in the world. Like literally at one point we were developing about, we powered 5% of all the apps in the Apple iOS app store. So yeah, and I had no experience, I had no idea what I was doing. I don't have a technical background. So it's, it's a, it's a story. The business story is just, you know, me just kind of doing whatever it took to make it work and somehow made it.

I remember coming, I think I remember coming to your La Jolla office right in the Village. Right. Is that where you guys were just like. Yeah, yeah. And you had a good sized team, I feel like. So, you know, a lot of you actually grew it headcount wise, pretty large.

Yeah, we were, we were about a hundred people but a lot of them were out office so or remote. So we, that's how we were able to move. So if you're wondering how do you move a company, we had basically our entire engineering team in China, like Russia, Ukraine. Why China? Literally I found my like basically the CTO of the company on upwork and then I just, again I don't have a technical background so I just said do you have any friends that are really good and we could bring them in. And then he did. His name was Ray. Still friends with them today. So we were able to move the company and then essentially restaff we had support, sales, operations, marketing and then VP of engineering, like VP of product DevOps in house. And then we had this giant, you know, remote team for support. We had 247 support as well. So we employed people in like France. Yeah, it was, it was a good size operation and I ran it for eight years. So it was. And that's like a hundred years in startup land. So I probably took a year off my life. But I always like to say I didn't build the biggest company but I would put money. I may have built the funnest company. We had so much fun building that business. So. Yeah.

Did you always have in mind that you would sell or how did you even come to think about exit?

I would say yeah, from like day one. I think that's, you know, if you take on any Sort of investor capital that's kind of, you know, you have a fiduciary duty to return that capital. So I couldn't. And then I had so much respect for the two investors that I had, which were. One was, his name is Christian Friedland. He built this company called build.com. i gotta like extra pronounce that because there's like build.comb I L. His company was Build B U I D. It's like Home Depot online. He never raised any money and he built it to like a couple billion in gmb. So he was my mentor. And I, you know, we definitely exchanged emails probably like every other day if that. So, yeah, it was definitely a business where I saw an opportunity to help a lot of small businesses, you know, compete with larger brands. Both of my parents were small business owners, so I really kind of connected with that mission. And yeah, so we had, you know, a couple of attempts to sell the well in San Francisco. I wrote a whole book on this too, actually, and then kept going, had gas in the tank. And then, yeah, moved it down to San Diego. And then when we moved, the specific goal of moving to San Diego was to position the business to sell.

Was it the thought like you were a little bit bigger fish in a, in a smaller pond in that regard?

Kind of, yeah. I mean, and I talk about it, I wrote about it in more detail online if anyone wants to check it out. But the short story was in San Francisco we were bootstrapped. So when we would go to hire a VP or something like that, the first question was like, who's backing this? Like, how are you making money? And we went from like 0 to 5 million in like three years. And this is. So add that up. I'm like 24. Like I should be like a junior AE or something like that. So it was just an odd experience of, of me being so young and so naive. And it was just really hard to attract, you know, high level talent. And so moving to San Diego, I hired a Chief Success officer. She kind of just picked her title, but I kind of circled her around, you know, Chief Revenue Officer Rose Romaine. If anyone knows her, she is amazing. And then we also hired VP of Design. We hired a bunch of people. I can't name them all off the top of my head, but yeah, it was to expand the executive team, lower operational costs, focus on profitability. And then, yeah, did all those things and then get a better office too. The office that we had in San Francisco was nice and big, but it was like a first floor Office with, like, no windows. It was kind of like a cave. And then you saw my La Jolla office, and we had some. Some nice views there.

Yeah, definitely. So what was so jarring about the experience of selling that just put this chip on your shoulder to build a microacquire just from.

That's a really good question. Just end to end, like you have. Entrepreneurs are not taught how to sell or, you know, get acquired. We're taught how to fundraise, we're taught how to market. You know, we're taught how. There's books on all those topics. But when it comes to actually the most important part of the founder's journey, which is the exit, you know, the first thing that happened to me after the acquisition closed and it was announced was I literally had probably like, 10 founders reach out to me, like, how'd you get acquired? Like, what. Who'd you work with? Like, how did it happen? And so it kind of opened my eyes, you know, to this market of, you know, there's just such a lack of education in terms of how entrepreneurs, like, should be positioning their businesses to be acquired. And then I looked even deeper at the market, and I saw a lot of businesses being sold through brokers at really high price commissions. And then just really, just the whole process from end to end, I felt could be streamlined by just putting all the buyers and all the sellers in one place and then really streamlining some of the tough processes like due diligence or, you know, just even just simple things like financials. You know, being able to, like, connect your metrics through Microacquire and display those. So all those, like, little pain points that we had to do manually, we're trying to streamline. So that's. That's kind of what kicked it off for Microacquire.

Got it. Microacquire wasn't the immediate thing you did. Didn't you do something in crypto for a little bit?

Yeah, I did, and that was acquired too. And that was another scenario where I really wish there was a marketplace for that business, because what we did was we were trying to speed up times on the Ethereum blockchain. There's a company called Altcoin. And we weren't successful because sending Ethereum is still slow. But we were using this. Yeah, we were using this, like, layer two sidechain solution called plasma. We made a little bit of progress, and then the SEC came out with some, like, heavy regulation. And so we kind of made a decision as a team that to make to commercialize the technology. That we had developed, we'd have to raise, you know, more money. We'd have to get like a money transmitter license. We basically thought we were building a tech company and then realized we're actually in like the regulatory compliance business. So we sold that company to B and K, to the future, and basically like an asset sale, which was a nice single and nice way to kind of wrap that business up. But again, if there was a marketplace where I could just list the business and say, hey, we're looking to exit the business and move on. Here is basically what we do. Having it all private so, you know, investors aren't ticked off or customers or employees. So yeah, that was my second acquisition and then Microquire is my third official company, I guess you could say.

Kind of wish Altcoin like was around for your World of Warcraft asset trade days, huh?

Yeah, I mean, it like all. It all kind of comes like full circle. But the one thing I'll note about all the businesses that I start is like, they're all kind of different. Like Micro or Business Apps was a pure SaaS business, super heavy on tech. We had like an iOS team, Android team, a CMS team. And then I went and started a crypto company. Entirely different. So I didn't do like another thing for small businesses. I went in a completely different direction. And I learned a lot from that experience, specifically around like founder market fit. And what I mean by that is I'm not very technical. And the project was so technical that it just, it wasn't enjoyable for me. Cause I couldn't, you know, really propel the business forward. It wasn't the business for me, but yeah, I mean, it was. And then Microacquire is a marketplace, which is another completely different business model. But yeah, Business Apps and Altcoin both could go on Microacquire potentially. So, you know, it all comes or. Or the World of Warcraft website, maybe.

You'Ll see them there from your acquirers down the road, you know, be pretty fun to see. So starting a marketplace by yourself is tough, right? Throttling supply and demand. Like, how'd you actually do it? What was the beginning phase to get to get it off the ground?

Yeah, that's the only way. I've been asked that question so many times, and I don't have like a silver bullet answer. It was kind of just brute force into the. I just thought this marketplace needed to exist so badly for founders that. And I enjoyed running it so much. And that's another key lesson is just the founders that go the distance really just they'll do it for free, you know. And so, and I did, I. I ran the business entirely for free for about a year and a half, doing all customer support, literally, like working some crazy hours, some days like 4am to like midnight and then family duties on top of that because my dad two years ago. So like literally just willed it into exist. I just felt it needed to exist that badly and I wanted it that badly. And sometimes that's what it takes with startups is you just have to put in the time. I don't work those hours now and I do not recommend it. But it wasn't work. It was fun. Literally. It was like my video game where I'd wake up and I'd be like, I want to go play my game. But now obviously I have a team and we've scaled the business a little bit so I don't have to do that. But initially it was talking a lot with customers. I would take every single phone call with potential buyers, potential sellers. I probably went on like more podcasts than I can count. I cold emailed. I had like a giant cold email campaign that I was running. Just social media, you know, just sharing kind of the story, building in public. I'm a big believer in brand and just, you know, getting customers to, you know, basically root for you as you're building it. You know, it's like, hey, I'm trying to make this work. Here's what I'm doing. So I, I, you know, was very transparent with how I was building it and why I was building. I think that just really resonated with the market. And I think other people in just the startup ecosystem just agreed like, yeah, like there's all these businesses. It's never been easier to create a startup. Today a lot of them aren't going to go public or get acquired by Google. And so it'd be great if there was a marketplace to, you know, drive liquidity for these businesses. And so I think, you know, it was also some market timing that we benefited from for sure. But yeah, in the beginning it was, it was just me kind of willing it into existence and doing whatever. And it took a while too. It took probably like a year until like the flywheel really started picking up.

Talk a little bit more about building in public because, you know, that's a big dedication of time commitment. But obviously it's paid off for you. Like, how did you know that that something you want to dedicate while also building your video game?

So there's a Whole sort of, you know, building in public trend. There's groups around it. I didn't really know I was doing that at the time. Like, you know, that like it was a thing. I just was openly sharing what was happening with Micro Choir, how we were building it. When acquisitions would close, I would kind, you know, because all deals on microcquire private so I'd tease sort of like what the deal was. And then when we layered on our first, you know, business model which was, it's called Microacquire Premium which just gives you access to contact sellers. On microacquire, I just was sharing just our revenue, just showing the progress looped in Russ Hanneman from Silicon Valley a few times. So just doing things like that just you know, really captured people's attention I think. So I was marketing the business with really just low cost marketing strategies that you can do for free. And I think that just created momentum that you know, it became something that people wanted to talk about and learn more about which is kind of a double edged sword where you know, you definitely get a lot of attention when you build in public. So if you know, you're not comfortable with, you know, sharing stuff, you know, once you commit to it, you got to kind of stick with it. So you know, I, I can't recommend it enough though. I mean it led me to, you know, my current investors gives you so much feedback like you're able to just share like product ideas just in a tweet or something like that and you get a bunch of good feedback from really experienced people. So yeah, I think there's just unlimited upside in doing it. Just helps you stand out. And I always say, you know, your biggest competitor to your startup isn't who you think it is. It's not the 1, 2, 3 companies doing something similar. It's the 10,000 other startups competing for customers attention. So it's just a great way to earn customers attention and then just kind of build a company that people want to root for. Like they see you growing it, they see you pushing it forward and you know, it's small and then it gets a little bigger and a little bigger and then people feel like, you know, they've kind of watched you, you know, started from nothing and it's working. And so I, if anything I just, I, I thought it was fun. I think, you know, just seeing people get excited about the business motivated me, especially as a solo founder. Yeah, I mean that's kind of how I felt one day I remember I just kind of tweeted up a. Just a graph of our revenue. And that's kind of when I started, you know, really sharing a lot about the business, like how it works on the insides. But, yeah, there wasn't like a. All right, this is the strategy where it was just kind of like a one day, like, I don't know. Here we go.

It's really worked. You're right. Like, you've built a huge fan base, right, of people supporting you on top of Russ, who is like the mascot of the company, it feels like now. And you even. Didn't you even. You get so many questions on how. What. What software do you use to share your revenue? Didn't Russ even answer that question for you once, too?

Yeah, so I. I use Chart Mogul for tracking just our annual recurring revenue month, recurring revenue churn, all that stuff. And people would always ask, he'd be like, what is that? And then I asked, his name's Chris if he could do a video on, like, it's charmogul, like, stop asking. And did that as a joke and that. That was really funny. So also, just like, another thing about marketing is just making people laugh and that this kind of goes back to, like, one of my principles is just having fun. Like, it made me laugh a lot. So I. I was just having so much fun building the business. I think people enjoyed watching that. So.

Yeah, totally. I mean, I loved seeing Chris, AKA, you know, chief cheerleader of Micro choir in mo in red notice, right. And I see him in there and I'm like, hey, Microacquire got a movie spot. You know, because he is so synonymous now, I feel like, with microquoire. But take us through a bit more of the building of Microacquire. Like, has there been pivots? I'm sure there have been. Like, from what you drew out from the initial design to today, where have you, you know, had little course corrects.

Honestly, there have not been like, like, crazy enough. We never. Or I never ab. Tested the landing page for like a year because it was converting at such a high rate. It was converting at like 60% visitor to user. Like a crazy high rate. Maybe it was 40% or something like that, but I think I just kind of nailed the messaging from the start and just kept telling kind of that story over and over. You know, it's the first marketplace where it's completely free to sell your business. There's no middlemen. You can spe buyers directly. You're able to have control over who you give access to. Obviously, we've Built, you know, more functionality as the company has grown. But in terms of pivots, there hasn't been any major ones. I would just probably go back to just being surprised at how big this market opportunity is. Much bigger than just, you know, I never thought I'd see, you know, a multimillion dollar company acquired through marketplace that I just made. And that's life changing money. And that's happened dozens of times, more times than I can count. And so I'd say it's just been, you know, basically a business that I started with kind of humble beginnings where it was just, I think this is something that needs to exist so it's entirely free. And as I continued to build it, it just continued to grow at a pace I just did not expect. And so yeah, no pivots.

Amazing. Some of the questions we got from our syndicate group as we worked to invest in this was how much is really recurring or are people really going to buy more than one business from here? I'm curious, what trends have you seen both on the buyer and seller side that you weren't expecting to come through besides the multimillion dollar acquisitions?

I'll start with the buyer side. So on the buyer side we see a quality of buyers that like CEOs of public companies I've seen like sign up for Microquire and that. And I'm kind of a startup nerd. So when that happens I freak out. I'm like, whoa, no way this person's in. There's corp dev teams from, you know, large venture backed businesses. There's you know, roll up plays like all the ones you can probably think of, tons of private equity groups and a lot of just, you know, I'd say the biggest surprise would be in terms of the buyer profile because in the beginning I reached out to a lot of private equity groups, a lot of people that were already actively buying businesses. And I think the biggest trend that I've seen is there's kind of like a renaissance going on I mentioned earlier. But you know, entrepreneurship through acquisition, where people are realizing you don't have to have a startup idea to get involved in startups, you can just buy one, you can buy one that has a couple hundred thousand revenue, you know, maybe it's like a hundred thousand in profit. So that kind of, you know, you're essentially buying a job, but it's your startup and maybe that you can grow that into, you know, multimillion dollar startup and then keep it, resell it, whatever you may, may want to do with it. So I would say that would be the biggest one is just, you know, lots of, you know, second time entrepreneurs or just people building small portfolios, like micro PE is kind of a thing. And then on the sell side I would say just the types of business I've seen, and this is the funnest part of the job is just seeing a deal flow come in and you know, we vet every listing and so we'll look at the business, we'll look at the financials, we'll send questions to the founder, we'll verify ownership. But like, yeah, we see everything from like some of my favorites are like there's one SaaS business doing, I think it was like a million in revenue and all it did was this really SEO focused image remover. Like for example, if I took a picture of you right now, it would remove the background so it just showed your face and it was making like a million bucks and the owner said he would spend like 10 hours like a month on it or something like that.

Wow.

Yeah, if you typed in like make image transparent or something, it would be number one. And there was an e commerce company that basically would sell like Simpson esque pictures or drawings or something like that that was doing like 2 to 3 million in revenue. So I'd say like the biggest eye opening thing in the world that I see that others don't is you know, again there's so many startups being created but all we hear about is, you know, the big ones raising money and like, you know, the ones that you know, really going for like the billion dollar outcomes. But there are a lot of very interesting businesses across SaaS. E commerce. We also list, you know, communities, newsletters, crypto companies. You know, we started with SaaS and then we've expanded Nashville over time. But yeah, I would say just like the sheer amount of creativity and just like the opportunity within just building small tech companies is just enormous. And when these people sell their businesses, you know, they sell it for 100,000, 500,000, a couple million and that's life changing. And all they did was make like a really niche business and worked on over three years and kind of makes me think a lot more people should be doing that. So that's what we kind of, you know, try to promote other entrepreneurs just as an alternative path when thinking about building a.

So related to that, when you're thinking about building a startup, like you said, you have to be thinking about the exit. Any advice you can give to entrepreneurs even right now, like how can they set themselves up for success Even if they're not ready to sell, what should they be doing now to think about that?

That's a good question. I would say just having things in order, like having all your documentation. That's usually the number one thing where I think a lot of founders like slip up on is not being ready. Like if a buyer approaches you and you don't have like just the goodwill of a good P L, the confidence it can bring with the buyer is massive. So just basics like that and then also just understanding like what is due diligence, like what are the legal steps that you take to sell your business? You know, what's a fair valuation for your business? Who are the potential buyers you should be speaking to? Like if you, if you're running a venture backed business and you want to sell to a strategic. Another thing is just understanding the difference between a strategic buyer and a financial buyer. Financial buyer is like a private equity group. Strategic would be like Google or Apple. They usually pay the huge multiples. That's where you get the crazy like slack, sort of like 40, 50 times revenue acquisitions. I think it was higher than that. But yeah, just understanding like you know, what goes into an acquisition and just how much time and effort and then just put preparing for that in advance. We did that at Altcoin is we had a full data room like available at all times. And that was very useful when we made the decision to sell the business. So I would say just you know, knowing like what is a data room, how do you set it up, what do you put in it? What, what do buyers want to see? Mapping out the buyers in your space and just getting on the map, seeing if you can have a conversation because there might be a time where you just, you do want to sell your business and if you're able to, you know, bring multiple buyers to the table, interested, you'll probably have a decent chance of selling it. Potentially.

Awesome. Great advice. You mentioned you've invested a lot in brand including Even you created bootstrappers.com take us through a little bit about that. You know, like even creating a whole new side brand to go alongside the business. And then probably I also want to touch upon your book as well too.

Yeah, so. So bootstrappers.com is just a publication that we started because we noticed in the press all you hear about is, you know, fundraise this, fundraise that. And at Microacquire all day we're just seeing these, you know, awesome, profitable, fully owned businesses. But they're not getting any media coverage. Anywhere. And so we kind of just said, all right, we'll cover these businesses because they're awesome and we want to encourage and inspire entrepreneurs that are going down that path and give them an outlet and really just tell like the, you know, company building stories, like the tr. The ups and the downs and not just, hey, they raised money from these people. Here's a quote from the guy who invested or the girl that invested. And that's article. You know, we really dive in. Like, how'd you get started? Like, what was the hardest part? You know, those were the articles that like, I really loved reading when I was building business apps. And you just don't see that too much anymore in the press today. And so basically just built the publication that I felt, you know, people building, you know, these profitable businesses needed.

And so alongside that, your book, how did you, how and when did you decide to write a book? That's gotta be a whole, whole exercise. Hard one.

Yeah, I actually wrote that before I launched Microquire. So it kind of, it was going to be part of my like, launch strategy, like initially, like, hey, I'm gonna write like my story. So it brings a little bit of credibility. And this really kind of ties into, you know, founder market fit where, you know, I, I felt Microacquire needed to have a high level of trust within the market. And so a part of that is, you know, who is the person behind it. So I felt telling my personal story would help with credibility, but then also inspire other entrepreneurs to maybe start a business or maybe give them some tips on how to grow their existing business a little bit faster or how to position it for an acquisition. But yeah, I wrote basically from, from idea all the way to exit for business apps. Like literally when I got the idea in Chico to moving to San Francisco, moving to San Diego. It's, it's not a book about like, here's how to do it and you can do it too. And I know everything. It just, it's more of a book of like, here, here's what happens when, you know, a 21 year old starts a company and just, it catches lightning in a bottle. Right place, right time, and all the mistakes I made. And so it's just, it's just my personal story. It's just what I did. I felt it was, I wanted to get it out before I kind of forgot it because it was, it was such a, it's an experience that I'm so grateful for and I again, I had so much fun building that business. I wanted to just get it on paper before I kind of lost all the. The details of the story. And that comes out January 11th. So I'm assuming by the time this, it'll be on Amazon. It's called Getting Acquired.

Awesome. Yeah, we'll make sure we promote it for sure. Super cool. Where do you see micro acquiring? One year. I know people always talk like five to 10, just one year from now. Where do you think? Beginning in 2023, one year from now?

I would say our goal is to really reshape how people think about acquisitions. We want to basically standardize, you know, how people buy and sell businesses. And so that would basically the best analogy I can kind of give is, you know, why Combinator came out with this document called the safe, which is, you know, simple Agreement for Future Equity. I believe. I believe I got that acronym right. You know, there's no standardized process that, you know, walks people through an acquisition from like start to finish. So microcquire has done a really good job at connecting buyers and sellers to transact off platform. And so within a year, we want to have all the transactions on platform by adding so much value to the acquisitions that we just make it so easy to acquire a company, whether you have, you know, a lot of experience in acquisitions or absolutely none. And we have tools that, you know, accelerate the process, streamline the process, make it easier. All within microquire. So all the things that people are doing right now to acquire businesses outside of microcquare, we want to bring that in. So we got some really interesting product plans. But my, my favorite quote, I, I had a conversation with Justin Kahn, the founder of Twitch, and he, he gave me one piece of advice. He said, you know, the top, the best software companies build something that allows people to do something they've never been able to do before with software. And so we want to enable people that, again, have never acquired a company and they know how to do it confidently. And I guess an analogy I can give on that would be similar to how Angellist made it just so easy to invest in companies. We want to do the same for acquisitions. All within microacquire.

Awesome. It's a dream of mine to sell my agency, Ryzen's Eye Partners, on microacquire, which I had actually bought from a friend four years ago and now would love to pass it off to the next person too. I think that's just something super cool. So that is a personal goal of mine over the next few years too.

I think we have like over 100 agencies listed on Microware oh, sweet.

We can go price it out right now.

You could.

Seriously?

Good.

Then who would be running this podcast? I'm just kidding. No, we're super. We're super excited for what you built. Excited that you've got a piece of San Diego in you and obviously know you always will. Including the next time you're down in town where we will go get tacos together. Where's that going to be? Where's your favorite taco spot?

My favorite taco spot. And I. I knew this question was coming, so I looked it up. It is Puesto and La Jolla. So that's my. That was like the. The place we'd go as a team all the time. But my. My favorite one and. And some people might judge me for this is Florida Express and Pacific Beach. No judgment.

There's no. There is no judgment whatsoever, yo. Yeah, for sure.

It was right in my backyard. So, like, anytime I needed food, literally, probably like the time it take me to walk, you know, upstairs is like the time it take to get to Florida Express. So I ate there way more times than I can count. So I. I'm throwing. Throwing Florida Express in there.

Yeah. We'll add it to the taco database, which we do have. There's no wrong answer here.

It's like a grimy, like, 247 place, but it's good.

It's like the opposite of puesto, for sure. And there's the right taco for the right for every time of day. You know, you need your.

It's like pesto is, you know, La Jolla, you think La Jolla. Nice. And then Blart Express, you think Pacific beach, if you know. Absolutely.

Yeah, for sure.

Polar opposites. Yeah.

Or late night or, you know. Yeah, for sure. It's exactly what you see. Well, Andrew, thanks so much for. For sharing your story and building something that is going to impact so many people. So we very much appreciate that. Thanks for letting us be along on the ride with you. And cheers to 2022. A big one for you.

Yeah, same to you. Thanks so much for just all your support, anyone in San Diego. Appreciate each and every one of you and. Yeah, appreciate it.

Absolutely. Thanks, Andrew. Cheers.

Cheers. Thanks for having me.

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