They Got Acquired - M&A trends

Oct 1, 2024
​Read on web​

In May 2015, Tom Wahlin was a New York City-based design manager for Apple. The pay was great. The benefits were great. The team was great. But he was feeling burned out.

“I put in my notice and planned to travel the world for a year or two to figure out what was next,” he said.

As he prepared for his trip, he ordered 10 of every travel product — everything from backpacks to packing cubes to toiletry bags. He tested each, settled on his favorites, sold the rest and boarded his flight.

While traveling, Wahlin published an article on Medium: Everything You Need to Travel the World in One Backpack. “This post went a little viral, and I knew I had something,” he said.

In January 2017, Wahlin launched Pack Hacker as a definitive online guide to travel gear. He’d spend the next seven years heads-down building Pack Hacker, including navigating a pandemic that shut down the travel industry and decimated Pack Hacker’s website traffic.

The company managed to pull through and reach 7 figures in revenue… and that’s when a buyer, AllGear Digital, reached out:

​A travel gear site lost 60% of traffic during the pandemic. Here’s how the company recovered​

Sponsored by

Is now a good time to sell your agency?

I attended this webinar live, and they shared ideas all marketing agency owners should know. So I asked Punctuation to make it available for you on demand, and they agreed! — Lexi, founder of TGA

Punctuation, an M&A advisory that positions and sells creative and marketing agencies, is offering a free webinar on the state of the market.

You'll gain insight into:

• What the current M&A market is like for agencies
• Trends happening right now amongst sellers and buyers
• Practical things you can do now to prepare to sell your agency for top dollar later

Here's a slide from the webinar to give you a taste of what it covers:

Punctuation specializes in valuing and bringing to market marketing firms with $1M to $10M in revenue. They've facilitated 400+ transactions over the past two decades.

Behind the business (of TGA)

One challenge of building They Got Acquired that I didn’t anticipate:

Word-of-mouth marketing is tricky when you’re talking about a sensitive topic.

Most founders I talk to who want to sell their business aren’t going to post about it on LinkedIn or forward the advice to everyone they know.

🤫 They’re not going to shout about it from the rooftops because they don’t want everyone to know they’re considering selling.

Which makes sense! That’s the smart move.

But I overlooked this when launching the brand. Many of the other content brands I’ve run were more shareable, and I didn’t think about our topic from this angle.

We get lots of one-on-one referrals to They Got Acquired — founders share it with a peer during an intimate conversation — but organic shares that send big groups of people our way aren’t as common.

Takeaways:

1. Think about shareability from this perspective before you launch a new brand.
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Will your audience be comfortable and motivated to share what you publish? Does it make them look smart or helpful or supportive? (The book Contagious is a great read for understanding what makes content shareable.)

2. If you see a way to share They Got Acquired, your share will be that much more appreciated! Dropping a link to our newsletter or website in a group of business owners or on social goes a long way. 👏

See you next time,​

​

Lexi Grant
Founder & CEO
​They Got Acquired​

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P.S. Speaking of spreading the love, Tom Wahlin of Pack Hacker, featured at the top of this newsletter, leaned on They Got Acquired as a resource for his sale. It's thrilling to see this outcome for him!