Fresh Cheddar

Andrew Pierno

Jan 19, 2024 — 2 min read

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 portfolio and the flip fund, and will be hiring additional help where necessary to accommodate the growth.

Couple of deals for sale:

Sheet.best - This is as close to a passive investment as I've seen. really low support volume, almost no engineering work required regularly. It's been awesome but we are focused on consolidating our portfolio and buying bigger businesses.

https://app.acquire.com/startup/SpCHtJzlBNYs305cs9NIqwCFA4j1/rxuktkUTa269NkbeNvmT

$150k asking price MRR is $4k with 223 active subscribers

Growthbar - I believe there is still massive opportunity here, but we're tight on cash since this was our largest acquisition ever and need some cash back out for GP commits on these larger funds. Will be taking an L on this one, but it's all for the cause.

https://app.acquire.com/startup/k9Yk6PuSdEeeJH3rpauKvVhe93G3/AWnQgrWmjogzqaHFGNR8

Cold DM - a tiny one. great for someone's first acquisition:

https://app.acquire.com/startup/W5bmH4B5b2fOsHMqCb6WSXPRqri1/gt7PI5ETb4wSUcVSahuO

Looking Ahead

We do intend on doing flip fund 2 later in the year. Our current priorities are:

flip fund 1 - make sure journey is on a good growth path. We've hired an offshore dev team to accelerate growth and are cranking on new sales opportunities
Deploying fresh capital. $2M is a lot for us to deploy. We're going to do our best to deploy it quickly and efficiently. This is a very specific criteria at this price range though. We're going to be focusing a lot more on distributions and profitability
consolidating XO's portfolio. As we continue to raise more and move from an op co (which we absolutely are for flip fund 1 and the new round of capital) to more of a hold co, we're going to be selling off most of our assets to have enough cash to continue raising $ (we put in 5% to 10% each time and it adds up!)

Getting Smaller To Get Bigger

💡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,

How to 10x an acquisition

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

We 10x-ed screenshotapi.net and sold it

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

Acquisition #12 - Onsched

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