How do you get rid of unwanted business?
When I interviewed one founder, he mentioned a few sites where you can sell your business, such as:
Acquire
BizBuySell
Flippa
GetAcquired
Reddit (yeah, this one too)
Do you know more sites?
The question also is: Do you always sell your unwanted biz?
(I could see many people abandon it, sell it to a friend or pass it to a family member.)
Replies
Twitter is a useful platform for finding founders of businesses that acquire other companies.
Example:
https://www.tiny.com/
https://x.com/_Sparling_
https://x.com/awilkinson
minimalist phone: creating folders
@viriava To be honest, I didn't know about Tiny and its co-founders :) Thank you for sharing this info :)
@busmark_w_nika I believe there are many similar companies; just search for Mergers and Acquisitions businesses online.
minimalist phone: creating folders
@viriava I am still old-fashioned and use Google for this purpose, maybe I should try more prompts in AI LLMS :)
Depends on size. If you're in the millions of revenue, you can hire investment bankers who will shop the deal for you.
But the best thing you can do (which is what bankers do anyways) is research what companies are out there who could benefit from acquiring you, then reach out.
Contact CEO, CFO, Founder, "Strategy", or "Corporate Development" people to speak to the right people who can make decisions.
You can DM them on LinkedIn or use websites to find their email addresses. Then just shoot them an email to discuss a "strategic partnership". They'll know what it means.
minimalist phone: creating folders
@moonlite_money Interesting POV. I didn't think about that this way. How can one know that another company wants to acquire a company of yours? I think that they will not announce it publicly, or will they?
@busmark_w_nika if you're running a company, you know who your competitors are and where the market is. You probably intuitively know who the best acquirers are. They're usually the best partners.
One way to visually illustrate what strategics would be good acquirers is to build a market map. You essentially think about all the categories you do / could fit in or add value to, then pull logos from all known companies in those spaces.
Think about what companies would benefit the most from your functionality, has an overlapping userbase, or is a competitor who wants less competition and more market share.
It can be helpful to arrange them by category then largest to smallest. If you're small, then you probably won't be interesting to a big player. If you're too big, then smaller guys probably don't have the resources to acquire you.
You can usually find data on what acquisitions public companies have made and the size of the acquisition. If a company raised money, especially from private equity, then they'll probably be more open to an acquisition.
Then reach out. For private, unbacked companies, contact the founder, CEO, CFO. If they raised PE money, you can contact the exec team and the people who worked on the deal at the PE fund. If they're a public company, contact execs + "Corp Dev" people and "Strategy" people.
Then, they'll just tell you if they're interested or not and usually give a reason for passing if they do.
minimalist phone: creating folders
@moonlite_money Cool. ATM, I do not make private calls because it wouldn't be sustainable for me. 😅
minimalist phone: creating folders
@moonlite_money From my own experience, when you are visible, they will write you on your own as prospering company receives a huge attention. In that mood, u usually do not want to sell – but when you are in low numbers and even low mood, your mindset changes and you want to sell off the company... but at that time almost nobody cares.
Apart from the ones you mentioned, I've seen a few folks using Empire Flippers and IndieMaker. But honestly, not every business goes through a proper exit. Some just quietly fade out if there’s no energy left to scale or maintain.
I’ve seen this happen a lot, especially in early-stage or solo founder spaces.
minimalist phone: creating folders
@priyanka_gosai1 Probably there are 90% ending like that. To sell unstable or not-prospering business is not easy too.
Milestone Content Studio
minimalist phone: creating folders
@siddharthpereiras Do you mean when exiting/acquiring the company?