Welcome to the April 2024 SaaS deal review!
You’re about to review some of the best SaaS listings on Acquire.com and learn why they’re great acquisition opportunities.
James Graves (general counsel at Acquire.com) and I (CEO of Acquire.com) will break down each listing, what makes it special, and what questions to ask the founder.
Watch the full webinar recording below or skip straight to the deals.
Who Are Your Presenters?
Andrew Gazdecki, founder and CEO of Acquire.com
I’m Andrew Gazdecki, founder and CEO of Acquire.com. I’ve been an entrepreneur my whole life. I bootstrapped my first business, Bizness Apps, to $10 million in annual recurring revenue, which I later sold to a private equity firm in a life-changing acquisition. Since then, I’ve sold two more businesses, bought one, and founded the world’s largest startup acquisition marketplace.
I’ve been on both sides of the M&A table, as a buyer and a seller, so I know how complex and difficult acquisitions can be. I started Acquire.com to fix the complex acquisition process and make it easier for founders to get acquired, and it’s my pleasure to share my knowledge with you today.
James Graves, General Counsel at Acquire.com
I’m James Graves, and I’ve been the general counsel at Acquire.com for about two and a half years. I’ve been practicing law since 2015, working at F5 Networks, Amazon, and a few private law firms before arriving at Acquire.com. Throughout my career, I’ve worked in defense litigation, M&A transactions, startup law, and more. The biggest transaction I’ve handled was over $170 million.
Where Will You Find These SaaS Deals?
On Acquire.com! Our goal is to build the best online marketplace to buy and sell SaaS startups.
Since 2019, we’ve helped over a thousand startups exit, closed over half a billion dollars in closed transactions, and registered over 400,000 buyers. Live internationally? No problem – we’re active in over 100 countries and in every continent except Antarctica.
What Will You Learn From This Monthly SaaS Review?
You’ll discover our top listings, why we love them, and tips on how you might earn a return on investment. We know our market better than anyone, and you can use our insights to make better choices about your next acquisition or learn how buyers judge your business.
How We Vet Your Deals
You’ll only find high-quality deals on Acquire.com. We’ve invested hundreds of thousands of dollars into a world-class curation and advisory team to publish the best listings only so you don’t waste time on dead ends or founders unwilling to sell or at a fair market price.
Strict Curation
Only around 45 percent of startups make it through our curation process. We verify the seller’s ID and business and review their goals – ensuring the business is safe to pursue. Trust is absolutely critical to a functioning marketplace, and you can rely on us to consistently provide high-quality dealflow so you spend more time on promising targets.
SaaS Specialists
We specialize in SaaS, with the biggest pool of SaaS companies and buyers in the world. I’ve built my career in SaaS and love the business model and the problems it solves. You can acquire other business types on Acquire.com, but our biggest market is SaaS.
Expert Support
On the seller side, we offer expert support in-house. Our M&A success team helps sellers with everything from perfecting listings to navigating due diligence. Why? To help sellers succeed while ensuring you get all the info you need when you start acquisition talks. For example: is there a P&L? A confidential information memorandum (CIM)? Due diligence checklist? Transition plan? And so on.
Listing Scorecard
When you evaluate a SaaS startup for acquisition, you might not know where to start. The same is true of sellers listing for the first time. To help, we’ve developed the listing scorecard – a checklist we use to ensure sellers and buyers start from the best possible foundation.
For example, we’ll check the seller has completed their profile, uploaded a P&L, and connected their metrics, and so on. Have they prepared everything you need as a buyer to evaluate that business and make an offer? Is this price within market expectations?
The listing scorecard benefits you and the seller, ensuring you’re aligned when talks begin. You want the seller to understand the acquisition process and be ready to answer your questions quickly. Likewise, the seller wants to keep you engaged to encourage a fair offer.
What Does a Typical Listing Look Like?
How the Marketplace Works
If you’ve entered your acquisition criteria, the first row is listings matching your criteria. The second row is listings receiving a lot of attention from other buyers. The final row, our top picks, are listings under our guidance – startups we’ve prepped for acquisition.
But this isn’t the only way to find startups you like. Rather than browse 1,000s of listings, use the filters at the top to really zero in on startups matching your criteria. For example, filter for revenue or profit multiple, gross revenue, net profit, and other criteria.
Just click All Listings and then you’ll see various filters at the top (see above).
If you want to see our absolute best deals – of unrivaled quality – check “Guided by experts” under the Highlights filter to see those we’re helping get Acquire’d. You can also use the highlights filter to find deals pre-qualified for financing and with connected metrics (which means real-time data updates).
To view the full listing and chat to the founder, request startup access by signing a mutual NDA. You can only do this with a paid subscription to one of our buyer plans.
Premium and Platinum buyer subscriptions give you access to closing tools such as LOI and APA builders, free escrow, and unlimited access to deals within your plan’s limits. To find out which buyer plan is right for you, check out our pricing page.
Monthly SaaS Deal Review (April 2024)
Please note that the deals we discuss below may no longer be active on the marketplace. As some of our best SaaS listings, they’re in high demand and typically go under offer within a few days.
Deal 1: Ecommerce shipping solution to streamline logistics and reduce costs
Highlights
Asking price: $600k (3.9x profit, <1x revenue)
TTM revenue: $1 million
TTM profit: $154k
Growth rate: 29 percent
Founded: 2019
Watch the breakdown
Deal 2: Scalable data API and search engine for real estate professionals
Highlights
Asking price: $600k (3.6x profit, 2.9x revenue)
TTM revenue: $204k
TTM profit: $168k
Growth rate: 11 percent
Founded: 2020
Watch the breakdown
Deal 3: User experience testing tool offering qualitative and quantitative insights
Highlights
Asking price: Open to offers
TTM revenue: $550k
TTM profit: $110k
Growth rate: 20 percent
Founded: 2010
Watch the breakdown
Deal 4: Generative AI tool on AWS-based system with no API dependency
Highlights
Asking price: Open to offers
TTM revenue: $258k
TTM profit: $110k
Growth rate: 100 percent
Founded: 2023
Watch the breakdown
Deal 5: Business management SaaS for streamlining accounting, invoicing, contracts, and HR
Highlights
Asking price: $1.8 million (8.1x profit, 1.2x revenue)
TTM revenue: $1.5 million
TTM profit: $221k
Growth rate: 27 percent
Founded: 2018
Watch the breakdown
Deal 6: Low-code SaaS for financial institutions
Highlights
Asking price: $7 million (6x profit, 3x revenue)
TTM revenue: $2.3 million
TTM profit: $1.2 million
Growth rate: 32 percent
Founded: 2016
Watch the breakdown
Deal 7: AI-powered third-party risk management platform for secure business partnerships and risk reduction
Highlights
Asking price: $1.77 million (<1x profit, 2.5x revenue)
TTM revenue: $716k
TTM profit: (-$10k)
Growth rate: 1,097 percent
Founded: 2016
Watch the breakdown
Deal 8: Cloud phone system & licensed telecom operator serving South East Asia
Highlights
Asking price: $2.93 million (6x profit, 2.6x revenue)
TTM revenue: $1.1 million
TTM profit: $490k
Growth rate: 5 percent
Founded: 2017
Watch the breakdown
Q&A
Do you list UK businesses?
Yes, we list businesses from all over the world. Acquire.com is a truly global marketplace with a presence in over 100 countries. To find UK businesses, filter the marketplace by country.
What are the benefits of the Premium and Platinum buyer plans? Do you provide extra support?
The biggest difference is the size of deal you can access. For Platinum, it’s all deal sizes, with Premium, businesses up to $250k TTM revenue. Also, with Platinum, you get more guidance. You work with someone on our team to help formalize your acquisition criteria and get deals sent to you directly.
How do you pick “Guided by Experts” deals?
Startups with the “Guided by Experts” label are large, profitable SaaS companies with realistic asking prices whose founders are prepared to sell and committed to the process. The sellers work closely with our in-house M&A team to prepare for acquisition, including building a due diligence checklist, CIM, data room, financial documents, and other evidence to help make your acquisition decision easier.
Is there a limit to how many startup access requests I can make?
You can make 20 access requests per day. After that, you need to wait 24 hours for your total to be reset.
Should we have a plan in place before talking to sellers or use a discovery call to build a plan?
Yes, absolutely. Before you get on that first call, do initial due diligence on the startup using the data available to you. For example, scrutinize the listing, CIM, financial documents, metrics, seller profile, and more so you’re confident that it’s a startup you want to pursue and can explain why. Also, note down questions you want to ask so you don’t miss anything. Not only does this create goodwill with the seller, but it also speeds up the early stages for both of you, making it easier to get to an offer.
How many startups do well after the founding team has sold?
We don’t collect data on the success of acquired startups since it’s often protected by NDA. That said, we often interview founders and buyers on our SaaS Acquisition Stories podcast and in our How I Got Acquire’d blog series.
Do you provide a normalized P&L and balance sheet for the business in your data room?
Yes, we always encourage founders to add these documents to their data rooms. If we’re working with the founder under our Guided by Acquire program, we’ll ensure you have all the financial data you need.
How many years of financials do you provide in the data room? Or does the buyer have to get that information during their diligence post LOI?
You’ll see at least three years of financial data, if available, or for however long they’ve been operating. You can usually see financial data in the anonymized public listing, but once you get access to a startup, you can ask to see financial statements like the P&L, cap table, and balance sheet.
Andrew mentioned in the first listing that there could be unnecessary expenses – wouldn’t these be adjusted out of the earnings before calculating the profit and multiple shown?
What Andrew was suggesting is that the business might not be operating efficiently if revenue is high and profit low. It could be a sign of an underperforming marketing campaign or overstaffing, for example.
Do investors in a SaaS company typically need to find or have their own tech team in place to maintain and grow the technology? Or are there ways to buy the business and also the people/development teams?
Anything is possible and it depends on the seller. If their team wants to stay on and work for you, you can make an offer using our LOI builder that includes a clause stating the employees must sign new employment agreements with you. You can also ask the founder if they want to stay on and work for you – perhaps in exchange for a salary and equity in the new entity. If neither of these options work, yes, you might need to upskill or build your own technical team to maintain and develop the SaaS product.
Are there any considerations or extra steps involved in acquiring a company located outside of the United States?
Yes, and it varies from country to country. While our LOI and APA builders were designed to support some international transactions, always consult with your attorney when acquiring companies abroad.
Why do some listings list competitors and some do not?
There are many reasons a seller might not list their competitors. Maybe they worry that it would reveal the company’s identity. Or perhaps their product is so niche or novel that few competitors exist. If you’re curious, just ask the seller.
For SaaS startups, why is the price almost the same as the TTM numbers?
You’re probably referring to the TTM revenue number. Some SaaS startups price themselves at or near 1x their TTM revenue, maybe because growth is slow, profit is low, or it’s dependent on a handful of contracts (these are just a few examples).
Can we get links to the recordings of the past webinars or a link to the recording’s library?
Yes! You can find all our deal reviews on this page of our blog.
Have you seen trends in Seller Notes terms as part of transactions leveraging SBA 7(a) loans?
Since we don’t collect data on transactions closing with SBA loans, we can’t advise here, unfortunately.
The content on this site is not intended to provide legal, financial or M&A advice. It is for information purposes only, and any links provided are for your convenience. Please seek the services of an M&A professional before entering into any M&A transaction. It is not Acquire’s intention to solicit or interfere with any established relationship you may have with any M&A professional.
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