In this episode, Eric Afriyie, the Founder and CEO of Aim Digital Group, shared his secrets on how to sell SaaS businesses. Aim Digital Group is a brokerage boutique specializing in deal flow, negotiations, and acquisitions with online web businesses. He also acquires websites and online businesses and helps the companies’ founders exit.
How it all started
Eric was a two times startup founder, his first project in 2014 for BMW drivers and then another one for creators to upload their artwork. When he sold his second business, someone emailed him for some help selling their company, and that’s when he realized this could be his next business.
Selling a Busines
To sell a business, one needs to do three things:
- valuation,
- approved history,
- removing the founder from the company.
Delegating and Outsourcing
While the founder can do many things himself, he can’t do everything. Even if he is a workaholic who can get in 12 hours a day of productive working, anything beyond that wouldn’t be effective, and he’d burn out, not even mention the consequences on his personal life. So one of the most important things founders have to learn is how to delegate and outsource.
The difference between selling Ecommerce, Agency or Saas?
A lot of (small) eCommerce businesses are using strategies like dropshipping. They are not working on a brand, and the quality of products and are therefore very hard to sell.
When selling SaaS, a lot depends on a founder. If the founder has managed to “remove” himself from the operations, then the business is easy to sell. If not, that is a huge issue. SaaS is very standardized, so business metrics are crucial.
When selling Agencies, it all comes down to versification. If the Agency has a lot of clients and long-term contracts, it is easy to sell them.
To recap
In conclusion, in this episode, Franci and Eric talked about Eric’s entrepreneurial story, the essentials of selling a business, how to run a successful business, and the difference between selling a business. Click the link below and listen to the whole episode.
- 0:00 Intro
- 1:11 – Introductions
- 1:58 – First startup
- 3:37 – Why he sold
- 4:41 – When to buy a company
- 6:22 – Second startup
- 7:08 – Founding of aim digital group
- 8:01 – Reasons to sell a business
- 9:04 – Thing you must do to sell
- 11:58 – First step – valuation
- 15:59 – The second step – approved history
- 20:10 – Third step – removing yourself from the business
- 22:53 – Taking your company to the next level
- 24:07 – Time management/Work-life balance
- 26:15 – Outsourcing
- 28:15 – Outsourcing system
- 30:15 – Differences in selling businesses
- 31:15 – The importance of having a brand
- 32:10 – E-commerce
- 33:57 – First issues when selling SaaS
- 35:13 – Second issue when selling SaaS
- 36:16 – Issues with selling agencies
- 38:00 – Outro
Thank you for taking the time to read our blog. If you want to learn more about this topic, feel free to check the whole podcast on Spotify and our Facebook page Goodish Agency. We hope you learned something from this episode, and we will see you in the next one.
The Goodish Team
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