They Got Acquired - They sold... then bought it back 😲

April 14, 2023
​Read on web​

Some product demos get you a sale.

Shawn Finder’s product demo got him an acquisition offer.

Finder wasn’t looking to sell Autoklose, a sales engagement platform, when he set up his booth at an Ottawa trade show.

The bootstrapped SaaS company was using customer revenue to fund growth, and revenue had just crossed $1 million, he said.

Yet Finder describes himself as someone who is always open to listening, and that’s what he did when the CMO and CEO of VanillaSoft, which is also a sales engagement platform, walked up to his booth.

Finder gave them a demo, and that eventually led to a 7-figure sale in 2020.

Only three years earlier, Finder had launched Autoklose with two co-founders. The SaaS helps companies close sales using email automation and their built-in database for B2B contacts—and it was exactly the kind of technology VanillaSoft needed to scale.

VanillaSoft’s initial offer was for about 2x revenue, while Finder wanted 7x or 8x, he said. He held out, and VanillaSoft walked away. But a few months later, they tried again, and this time settled on 5x revenue.

We share more details in our story:

​How a 5-minute conference demo led to the sale of this bootstrapped sales platform​

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When entrepreneurs who sold buy their company back

The founders of Indie Hackers, who sold their community company to Stripe in 2017, announced recently that they've bought back their business.

Here's our story on their original sale.

And here's their podcast episode announcing the new direction. Stripe is now an investor in the business, they said.

While this isn't common, we do see it happen occasionally.

Here's another instance: the founder of Budgets Are Sexy bought it back three years after selling.

And we have a story coming soon about two women who bought back their business after the buyer didn't follow through on its promises. Keep your eyes open for that in this newsletter in the coming weeks.

See you next time,

Lexi Grant
Founder & CEO
​They Got Acquired​
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P.S. Our next report is on e-commerce deals. Wait for it...

🙌 How we can help

Here's what we offer for founders looking to sell in the next year:

- Help choosing an advisor or broker you can trust

- M&A coaching if you have a potential buyer or want to approach buyers on your own

- A sounding board (free call) if you're not sure where to start

- Reports full of case studies and data about other founders who sold

- Posts covering the basics of how to sell your business​

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