The weird sh*t I had to go through when I sold my startup for 7 figures

My buddy and I met here on IH (thanks Indie Hackers). We built a startup and sold it for 7 figures less than two years later. We were acquired by a serious and professional fund and the acquisition went smoothly.

That's not the point though. There are plenty of success stories out there, and I get bored by just thinking of "sharing my lessons."

What I want to share instead is the weird sh*t "potential buyers" pulled out during the process. Our startup was very sexy within the acquirers' community — we'd get approached every week. So we talked to many, many, many people.

I'll admit that we sucked at filtering out "Disney buyers" at the beginning of the process, hence we came across weird situations we weren't prepared for. Things improved a bit when we decided to hire an M&A firm.

Buyers

Here are the most legendary Mickey Mouse buyer profiles we came across:

1. The Zero-Risk:

This guy wants to pay us with the future revenue he'll be making after he acquires us.

Ah, and we'll still be running the thing part time in the meantime.

2. The Second Chance:

He's recently bankrupted his roofing and landscaping business and wants to get into tech because "that's where the money is." He has no money, but he needs a second chance.

Again, he'll buy us with future revenue, and we'll be running the thing.

3. The Tech Apprentice:

Super interested, super keen. He's name-dropping like there's no tomorrow. He knows everybody who's powerful. And yet? He's new to the startup thing. And tech.

We realize this when he asks, "What is a Slack?"

4. The Negotiator:

He makes an offer that's 30% higher than anyone else because he's super rich. He understands tech like my grandmother understands AI, but that's fine. With all that money, you can buy operators. He signs an LOI (letter of intent) to disqualify all other bidders, then he decides to drop his offer by 50% because, presumably, our lawyer has made a political joke he didn't appreciate. He's still able to do business with people with a different political view, but at half the price, lol.

5. The Fundraising Hustler:

He signs an LOI claiming he has the money ready to go. Then we find out he's out there fundraising to make the deal happen.

Obviously, it doesn't work out. At least have some commitment if you want to pull this off in less than 30 days.

6. The Financiers:

PE (private equity) guys, probably legit and somewhat interesting. But they come up with such an overly engineered acquisition structure that it is impossible to understand how much money we'll be making out of the deal. Most of it is in the future, of course. We'll end up working for them, basically, hoping to make exit money at some point when they flip the business.

This is probably a standard practice in PE, but overly complicated for the deal size.

Etc.

I could go on forever, and I'd love it if any of you would share similar stories.

Stuff like this keeps happening even when you hire a top broker. But at least you have someone to vent with and, ideally, they should be able to decrease the amount of crap.

Needless to say, a good 40% of the buyers we talked with had no intention to buy, but they were just doing market research. Fake shopping is a very common practice in investment banking.

That's it. I have no lessons to share, except consider working with good M&A people who can handle that crap. They're not cheap, but they're worth it.

Going through an acquisition, especially if relatively small, can put your business on standby until you finalize it. So try to have someone who shields you from the noise.