See how this founder is building his micro-SaaS portfolio

Last week I sat down to chat with the person who recently acquired a micro-startup. Bruce described his experience from starting as a full-time developer to creating his micro-SaaS portfolio.

We talked about the motivation behind acquiring micro-startups and the whole process of acquiring the recent one. The number of insights can’t count. So, I want to share with you all the way.

Intro

Hi, I’m Bruce. I have been working in tech my whole life. I started as a programmer, then moved on to tech lead and architecture roles.

For the past few years, I have been working for a fintech platform company in Amsterdam as a technical director. I manage teams of solution architects and engineers implementing our software for customers across Europe.

This year I started looking into building and acquiring a small portfolio of micro-SaaS products. The objective is to gradually grow this as a side project to my full-time role.

How did you hear about Pear?

As part of my side project, Awesome Info Products, I was actively looking for any tools that could be valuable for creators of digital info products.

Some time ago, I saw Pear mentioned on Twitter, and I just followed the maker, Goncalo.

Pear allows a simple way for creators to put a subscription paywall in front of Notion pages. It was the kind of product that would be a good fit for my project.

How did you end up buying it?

When the seller posted a tweet saying he was letting go of Pear, I contacted him via DM and asked a few basic questions.

Since I had been researching this space, the product was not something new to me. So I had a clear idea of the capabilities the product should provide. And I knew what I wanted to validate with the seller.

From the beginning, he made it clear that the product was incomplete and still needed some work.

A positive aspect was that the seller already did some basic market validation. He had discussions with a few potential users and had a beta user sign up.

What was the process?

Day 1 - LOI

Once I had the basic information, I made a ballpark offer (call this the LOI) via Twitter DM. The seller agreed, and I proposed a due diligence call for the following day.

Day 2 - Diligence & Asset Purchase Agreement

The diligence call took about an hour. We covered the following topics:

• Pricing: subscription, Tx based, lifetime
• Market: competitors, differentiation, notable/large customers, growth opportunities
• Marketing: list of users from initial validation, discounts/promotions, other leads/emails
• Tech: stack, build, deploy, hosting, integrations, code walkthrough
• Assets: domain, email, database, code, social media

Then I sent an email with a short Asset Purchase Agreement. The email specified the assets to be purchased, the agreed price, and timelines for transfer. The seller accepted.

Day 3 - Payment & Asset Transfer

We agreed that the asset transfer would begin on receipt of the funds. I transferred the funds in the morning. The seller confirmed receipt in the afternoon and started moving all the accounts to me. I validated that I had access to everything, and the transaction concluded by the evening.

What are your plans for the near future?

There are three areas I will focus on initially:

• Initiate a conversation with the beta users, and make sure they are still on board
• Complete the remaining features
• Integrate Pear’s capabilities into the community at Awesome Info Products

The plan for the next six months is to grow the product and add additional capabilities.

Advice for buyers?

If you identify an opportunity for an acquisition, you should be in a position to move fast. Be ready to make an initial offer(LOI) with limited information. Do not overcomplicate due diligence unnecessarily.

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