💡We have another fresh round of capital to deploy into 1 business at up to $1.8M purchase price. Must be b2b SaaS, low customer concentration, 80%+ gross margins, 50k+ MRR. If you have a tip, pass it along! We're underway with xo 2.0. That means, fewer, larger* businesses.
I'm going to break down how we more than 10x-ed ScreenshotAPI and why this acquisition worked when others didn't. Not everything here is generalizable, but I'll pull out what worked well from our first interactions with the seller to the deal closing a few weeks ago. Sticky Product: Developer tools
Before we jump in, I was on a pod talking through content, acquisitions, etc: This exit is bitter sweet. Screenshot was our first ever acquisition. We 10x-ed it, and it is really the reason XO exists today. If this first acquisition hadn't gone well, I think I would have given
We've been a little quiet over here as we start rolling out XO 2.0, using outside capital instead of our own cash to acquire larger businesses. It's taken a bit of time from deal #11 to #12. We didn't buy anything for 9 months. These periods of inactivity are
As part of UCLA's MBA program, I've had the opportunity to sit in on some VC pitches. It's been a while since I've stepped back and looked at the broader startup ecosystem. My head has been in the micro saas space for a bit too long. I don't believe engineering
XO V1 concluded with 10 acquisitions and 1 "fund". The V1 "conclusion" is really a line in the sand but it feels right as we continue to offload assets to focus on larger deals using outside capital. This will transition us into v2 which we're still modeling out. Last week
I spoke with an entrepreneur recently who, after 5 years of running a successful and growing business, said "After 5 years I finally know the real business we're in.". It means they outwardly do X but on the inside the hard part is Y. As an example: Let's say you
💡We've finally rolled out a small community of folks interested in acquiring saas businesses. The first few weeks of it have been a delight. It's the highlight of my week chatting with other people interested in this space. Join us! https://notes.xo.capital/community/ We've decided to consolidate our
I've been debating / delaying this moment for 3 years. They say to build a business these days, one smart way to do it is build a community first. We do have a community. It's on discord. It's been useless for all but the past month or so. A few weeks
This week Danny jumped on a live Twitter Spaces with me. We talked about: * When to "quit" * XO community, courses, * Motivations for picking a startup idea * Decision making differences between short holds and longer holds.
💡Side note. To build our community up a bit, we're putting a cohort together to help 5 people buy their first saas company. If this one is successful and we can add some value, we'll do another one! Jump in our discord to stay informed!Reach Out On Discord We
A couple of people have asked about deal structures so here are a few we commonly use for buying micro saas companies. All Cash Pretty straight forward. You do all cash. Usually it's 100% into escrow.com and release maybe 50% before asset transfer and 50% after asset transfer complete