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
Couple of announcements: We've got some fresh cheddar! We just got access to up to $2M to deploy. We're looking for 1-2 businesses: * b2b saas * $30k+ MRR This is about 2x what we've already deployed so far which is a big deal. We will still of course be operating our
2023 was a tough year for us. A pure grind. What worked: * The business model * Our Team * Raising $ + deploying it What didn't work: * Growth was tough * We got bit by platform risk * Too many small portfolio companies is death by a thousand cuts We have two relatively passive companies. Well
2023 was a tough year. It started out with a bang (high expectations, everything going right) and ended with a whimper for us. The zero interest rate environment really came down hard on a few products like Cold Email Studio and now that the AI craze is cooling off, we're
Nov 2023 We set an ambitious Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR) goal of $41,398.78 but concluded the month with an MRR of $36,446.85. Key highlights include the utilization of our first full month of Google Cloud Credits and team adjustments, notably the departure of a developer. Our