We sold Workclout. It was the one company in the portfolio that no longer fit with our relatively new focus on PLG companies. That's not to say we wouldn't acquire a non-plg type company in the future but it would either have to be: 1. Bigger 2. After we reach
We accidentally bought a turnaround. Now, to be clear most of the products we've purchased would fall into the distressed category. 2 have been proper distressed venture deals (former YC companies). But even the tiny ones that are half baked, I'd still consider those distressed. They are! You take them
If you've been missing my dulcet tones check out my most recent interview with Jaryd Krause from Buying Online Businesses Audio Version Buying Online Businesses Podcast: How To Start Buying & Flipping Small Saas Businesses with Andrew Pierno on Apple PodcastsShow Buying Online Businesses Podcast, Ep How To Start Buying
How to be consistently productive? This is Danny from XO Capital chiming in for this edition of Friday Notes. Productivity is something I've struggled with over the past several years. Shouldn't I have this figured out as a 33-year old? Isn't my job as a founder to be incredibly productive
What up XO fam. I've had plenty of caffeine this morning so I'm going to be firing from the hip on this one. Example: Guys (and gals). Listen. buying MRR is lovely. Here's proof (and 13 people agreed). If you haven't tried it. You should. Hey just FYI buying MRR
Staying disciplined is hard. With all the hype around "AI" or more specifically all the hype around gpt-3 enabled products, it's never been more important to stay disciplined with your investing thesis. Moments like these create fortunes. A few of the 2,000 AI writers are amazing business. Most will
Platform risk is when another company controls your destiny. This week there was a big scare with Twitter's enforcement of a policy they claim had been around for a while. Twitter’s new developer terms ban third-party clients | EngadgetTwitter has quietly updated its developer agreement to make clear that app
XO is 2.5 years old. We're starting to have some history. Recent milestones include the first ever product we have grown 10x since acquiring it. We bought Screenshot API, our very first acquisition, when it was making $500 MRR. It's now over $5k MRR. $500 MRR is obviously peanuts
When we started two years ago I naively thought I'd read enough Twitter threads to understand that basically all we needed to do to win was: 1. buy good businesses (hard) 2. accumulate excess cash (hardest) 3. redeploy that cash (harder) However, we now have two years of operating history
Hey it's Danny. Happy new year! January 1, 2022 we had 3 full-time employees at XO Capital. Myself, the operator, 1 engineer and 1 support person were operating Sheet.Best, ScreenshotAPI.net and WorkClout. In March 2022 we acquired Inlytics.io. Shortly after, we brought on 2 more full-time engineers
2022 proved XO's business model. We were able to source deals, close them, grow them, and in some cases sell them. We grew to 6 full time people (not including myself and Henry). We joined the 6 figure club and proudly bootstrapped our way to low six figures in revenue
It's hard to get anyone to pay for something once they've had it for free. Inlytics, ScreenshotAPI.net, Sheet.Best, and now, Cold DM all have one thing in common: Freemium model We believe companies with a PLG model are great acquisition targets for XO. We work to uncover the
This week we closed on a Twitter DM tool. Check It Out It's the smallest deal we've ever done. Are we going backwards? What's up? We're working on our largest deal ever. Hopefully it will close early next year, we're on a path for that one and it's looking great,
The three co-founders of XO got together last weekend in South Carolina for a weekend of golf and just hanging out. I am by far the crappiest golfer on the team... it's truly an evil sport. I think I'm also the shortest. Anyways ... We get together at least once a
Your boy was on two pods the past few weeks. Can I still talk like this at 33? The Startup Blueprint Episode 9 - Don't Build It.... Buy It? Acquiring a $1M ARR Portfolio This is a great intro from the perspective of Indie Hackers looking to buy their first
I don't know about you guys but September felt weird. Between all the rate hikes, inflation data, stock market drops, and crypto chills it was a tough month for sales. Also feels like nobody in tech is around August and September (myself included this year!). TLDR; September sucked. SaaS is