They Got Acquired - 10x EBITDA

November 4, 2024
​Read on web​

We're hitting your inbox today (Monday) instead of our typical Tuesday because the U.S. election is this week!

The produce industry moves slowly.

It often took a year for F. Charles Waud, founder of SaaS company WaudWare, to close deals with new clients. He recalled one sale cycle that took 10 years to go from initial call to sale.

“We learned early on to be patient,” said Waud, who ran the company for decades before selling in 2022. “I’ve seen a ton of tech companies come into our industry, make a bunch of noise about being the latest and the greatest, and then leave or go out of business.”

Waud’s patience is what helped him build WaudWare into a thriving software company for the produce industry. It also helped him sell for 10x EBITDA — without a broker.

WaudWare helps produce companies with inventory management and accounting. Its flagship product is the Produce Inventory Control System (PICS), which helps produce wholesalers, distributors, brokers, farmers, packers, and storage facilities maintain accurate inventory records for traceability.

For Waud, the most challenging part of selling the business was deciding between two appealing buyers.

Here’s how he used those two offers to his advantage:

​How this founder took a DIY approach to selling and landed 10x EBITDA​

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This newsletter is an effective way to reach founders who are building businesses with the intent to sell.

In fact, it's one of the only newsletters that reaches that niche audience.

In a recent survey of founders in our audience who would like to sell in the next few years...

62% said they want help finding buyers

60% said they want support optimizing the business ahead of sale

37% said they want help selecting an advisor, banker or broker

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When a customer becomes your buyer

Long-time customers and clients know your product better than anyone else, and they have a clear need for what you’ve built.

So it makes sense that, in some cases, that customer would become the perfect buyer.

That’s how the story unfolded for Augmented Pixels, a 3D mapping software that sold in January 2022.

Their buyer, Qualcomm, had been a customer since 2014, just a year after Vitaliy Goncharuk started the business.

Here are the details for this deal:

​When a customer becomes your buyer: How it played out for this 3D mapping software company​

Behind the business (of TGA)

While everyone's moving toward AI, our moat, ironically, is doing things MANUALLY.

How crazy is that?

We use AI to speed up our workflows, of course. But what we're building at They Got Acquired is valuable because we collect our information by hand.

We get in touch with founders and ask them to share their insights, metrics, and stories with us, as a way to help other founders and lift up this ecosystem.

That's really the only way to collect intel on private, bootstrapped companies. There's no where to scrape this data from.

That's why, one of my mentors keeps reminding me, no one else has what we have. The magical part is that our M&A platform grows more robust by the day.

Sometimes the best way to get ahead is to ignore what everybody else is doing.

See you next time,

Lexi Grant
Founder & CEO
​They Got Acquired​
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