Peter Leonard spent years building MyWorks, a SaaS business integrating eCommerce stores and bookkeeping software, into a successful and profitable enterprise. He could have kept building the business with his small team, but he also wanted to spend more time with his young family. Peter wasn’t looking to retire, but he wanted to transition away from day-to-day operations. He also wanted to find the right home for the great business he’d built. And he hadn’t ever sold a business so he didn’t know what to expect during the process or what pitfalls to avoid. When Peter decided to sell, we were introduced to him by the Acquire.com team. As with all of our clients, we spent time with him learning about his business, story, and goals. Meeting all of our clients’ goals can be challenging, but we always shape our negotiating approach through the lens of the client’s unique goals and circumstances.

With Peter’s goals in mind, we evaluated the multiple letters of intent he received. Since he wanted to remain with the business after the acquisition, this drove our evaluation. It meant that offers from financial buyers weren’t optimal even if they might offer slightly higher valuations since those buyers would either want Peter removed from the business entirely or for him to maintain the same working hours for an extended period after the transaction. During multiple meetings, we discussed the benefits and potential risks of each offer he received while addressing all of his concerns and predicting how the deal process would play out with each potential buyer. We focused specifically on describing the different payment mechanics of each offer and what each offer signaled about Peter’s future role with the business, relying on our knowledge of SaaS rollups and their reputations in making our recommendations.

He selected an offer from Saas.group, a software rollup firm based in Europe. Once he selected his buyer, we entered into negotiations around their letter of intent. It is often easier and less painful to have the hard negotiations at the beginning of the deal process, not to mention that doing so makes it more likely that the transaction closes. Then we stood by him through the transaction process, negotiating in a hard but fair way to structure each portion of the purchase price to achieve the optimal outcome for Peter, but we’ll let Peter describe this himself: