Within 4 years, Andrew Gazdecki's product changed the M&A industry. Here's how he built Acquire.com.

Andrew Gazdecki had three successful exits before building his latest product, Acquire.com — maybe you've heard of it.

Since launching on Product Hunt in 2020, they've closed over $500M in deals. And they have big plans for the future.

Here's Andrew on how he did it and where he's going. 👇

Life-long entrepreneur

I’m a lifelong entrepreneur who grew up poor in San Clemente. Seeing my parents and stepdad working for other people and never quite earning enough to make ends meet is why I'm a founder today.

We always had food on the table, but there was this sense of living month to month, paycheck to paycheck, always under pressure from bosses or clients and never getting much in return.

They're proud and diligent people. I wanted to follow in their footsteps in many ways, but I also wanted to create something of my own. I wanted to be able to take care of my parents — and now my wife and children.

Where I grew up, rich kids would run riot while I developed business ideas to help my family.

I’ve done everything from selling gold in World of Warcraft to breaking technology milestones in alternative finance. My biggest success was a mobile app building platform called Bizness Apps that I bootstrapped to $10M in ARR, then sold to a private equity firm in 2017.

I got a good deal, but if I’d known then what I know now, I might’ve spoken to a few more buyers. I probably would’ve spent longer getting prepared for acquisition so I was more comfortable during negotiations. Maybe I’d still have taken the offer I took, but at least with the right help, I wouldn’t have been left with so many “what if” questions.

Finding a problem you want to solve

I came up with Acquire.com not long after my third exit.

The press was reporting all the time about these giant acquisitions, leading many people — including myself — to believe that once you’d made it, that’s how every acquisition went down. Some big company comes along, maybe a titan of your industry or an investment company, hands you a check and boom! You get acquired.

But the reality was that most acquisitions were laborious, time-consuming, and suffered poor success rates. 

Beyond that, during those three acquisitions, I’d spotted a pretty serious problem with the acquisition process: An uneven balance of power between buyers, sellers, and intermediaries. Most founders went into the process blind and unprepared. And buyers lacked high-quality deal flow. I wanted to fix that.

It occurred to me that if I could bring founders and buyers together with technology and M&A guidance, without the need for an expensive intermediary like an investment bank, the acquisition process would be easier and more democratic.

Validating an M&A marketplace

Acquire.com is a startup acquisition marketplace that combines technology and M&A advisory support to help founders get acquired. We’ve helped 1000+ startups get acquired and facilitated over $500m in closed deals.

We operate a hybrid business model. Acquirers pay an annual subscription fee to contact founders and view private listings. Sellers pay a nominal monthly listing fee (getting their skin in the game) plus a one-off closing fee of 6-8 percent paid only if they sell their business. 

I validated the idea by speaking to hundreds of founders in my professional network, and then by building a marketplace MVP and spreading the word on Product Hunt. People signed up in droves. 

I never like to throw money at a problem, but I’m also not a technical founder. Acquire.com started with a simple marketplace I paid for out of my own pocket and iterated as it became more successful.

At first, sellers could only create a basic listing and chat with buyers. That was enough to start conversations. Later, as it became clear I was solving a real problem, I raised funding to invest in developing new features and services to streamline the acquisition process.

Solving the chicken and the egg

All marketplaces suffer from a chick-and-egg problem. You need sellers to get buyers and you need buyers to get sellers.

We tackled this mainly with cold emails, hitting up a ton of startups to get things rolling.

Once we had a solid base of sellers, attracting buyers became easier. It’s all about building momentum. Start by getting quality sellers on the platform, and the buyers will follow.

Growing Acquire.com

I love marketing and sales. I know most people hate that stuff, but nothing thrills me more than developing a story that resonates with people and excites them.

You can’t do that by simply hawking a product or service. You need to know the problem, have lived through it, and know how to explain your solution using customers’ language. Once you believe in the mission and can articulate it well, everything else follows.  

Word of mouth

Word-of-mouth growth is powerful. It starts with building a product and service that people actually love. But beyond that, we do some fun stuff. We give away swag to founders who get acquired, help them with images to share on socials, invite them onto our podcast, put their names on billboards... anything to celebrate their big moment.

The goal is to make them feel proud of their exit and want to share it with the world.

SEO, content, and network effects

Once we had initial momentum, I built network effects and credibility through brand storytelling and customer testimonials. At one point, we were producing so much content, we were more like a media company than a marketplace.

Personal network

I’ve always been active in the startup community and knew many people – investors, founders, PE firms – who advised me in Acquire.com’s early days, and helped shape it and grow it into what it is today. 

Ads

We played around a bit with social media advertising, and although profitable, it wasn’t our biggest growth lever.

Social media

I’ve also been active on Twitter, and have amplified our mission in every way possible. 

Provide real value

Our most effective growth tactics involved identifying our ideal customers – those to whom we provided the most value – and using our technology, services, and content to solve their problems. We never give up on a business we know will sell.

Build what the customer wants

More recently, I realized that many founders — especially those with multimillion-dollar businesses — prefer one-to-one, end-to-end support when getting acquired. The do-it-yourself model we’d championed in the early days worked great for smaller acquisitions. Other founders were too involved in their businesses or they were too large and complex to sell alone.

Honestly, it took a while for that lesson to sink in, and it’s only after investing in a stellar M&A advisory team that we’re bringing that support to the table. And that's opening us up to bigger buyers and sellers.

Put in the work

Here's my advice:

Don’t invest everything into your first business. Instead, sell up when it’s making money and use it as a springboard to a bigger, better business, using your early entrepreneurship experience to test and learn from different ideas.

Don’t try to be perfect, but good enough.

Keep costs low. Stay solo for as long as possible, or find a cofounder whose skills complement yours.

Focus on solving problems over funding or growth.

Be fearless. 

And remember: There are no shortcuts in entrepreneurship. You’ve got to put the work in to be successful.

Sometimes that means missing out on fun times with friends and family and pursuing hobbies.

I’ve been there at two in the morning answering support tickets. I’ve taken verbal beatings from irate customers when our technology crashed. I even deferred marriage and children until I’d established the financial security I wanted for my family.

To succeed, be prepared to sacrifice.

But if you're lucky, like me, it won't feel like work.

Common pitfalls when selling a business

For anyone selling their business, here are the common mistakes I see sellers making.

• A lot of founders make the mistake of not prepping enough before selling. Get your financials and documents in order early!

• They often don't know the terms and lingo, like earnouts or equity. And they don't understand how they impact you long term.

• They overvalue their companies.

• They think that any buyer will do. But fit matters!

• Or they skimp on legal or financial advice. Bad advice can cost you.

Avoid these mistakes!

Becoming the Zillow of M&A

I’ve always said Acquire.com is the company I want to spend the next ten years of my life on, and that hasn’t changed. My biggest goals are scaling the business to become the Zillow of M&A and making it the first place founders think of when they want to sell their SaaS businesses.

We plan to do this by continuing to develop the marketplace, introducing new features that make acquisitions easy, and expanding our M&A team to help customers achieve their goals.

You can follow me or Acquire on X. And if you're interested in buying or selling your business, check out Acquire.com.