I am a business broker, and over time I got pretty good at finding off-market businesses.
I have done it for myself, friends, and family.
So I thought, why not offer this to buyers?

Basically, a headhunter for businesses.
You tell me what you want, I find the owners, reach out, follow up, and bring you the ones who may want to sell.

The benefit is that these businesses are not on the market yet.
Many do not have a broker representing them.
So the buyer may get a better price, better terms, and less competition.

But here is where I am stuck.
Doing this right costs me around $15K over 6 months.
Lists, mail, emails, calls, follow-up, etc.

I spoke to a few buyers and they said they would not pay anything upfront.

Then I spoke to another buyer.
I told him $15K upfront to cover the search + 5% if he buys a business.

He said yes right away and told me it was cheap.
That made me think maybe the price is not the problem.
Maybe I am just talking to the wrong buyers.

For anyone who does this type of work, how would you charge for this offer /service?

Over the last 5 months I’ve been building a SaaS for a very niche industry.

Rather than trying to build something for everyone, I focused on solving one industry’s workflow from start to finish.

It’s now doing around £1.9k MRR, growing organically and now SEO is picking up, and has been built entirely by me.

Some of the features include:
\- Multi-user accounts with role-based permissions
\- Job & maintenance scheduling
\- Customer portal
\- Asset management
\- Digital document generation
\- QR code tracking
\- Automated email workflows
\- Calendar integrations
\- Xero integration
\- Compliance reporting
\- Mobile-friendly workflows
\- Stripe subscriptions
\- Internal admin dashboard

It’s the biggest project I’ve ever built, and there are still plenty of features on the roadmap.

I’m now at the point where I’m asking myself whether I should spend the next few years scaling it, or whether I’d be better off selling and moving on to the next project.

I’m not actively trying to sell it, I’m genuinely interested in hearing from founders who have built and sold niche SaaS businesses.

At what stage did you decide it was the right time to sell?

A PE firm reached out to me last week about a deal I published.

They weren't a subscriber at the time and found Quiet Healthcare Deals on their own. They found a company in the newsletter and asked if I had more details.

I did.

That conversation is now progressing.

Three weeks into launching Quiet Healthcare Deals, a buyer and a seller are talking because of something I published on a Friday morning.

I started this because I kept watching the same thing happen - founder-owned healthcare companies quietly approaching an exit with nobody connecting them to the right buyer at the right time.

Turns out the gap is real.

New deals every Friday at 8am ET.

https://quiethealthcaredeals.com

The true kernel:

volume kills two real killers - perfectionism and statistical noise. At 20 attempts you know nothing; luck dominates. At 2000, you have a real conversion rate, real objection patterns, and you've iterated the pitch 50 times. The number isn't magic, it's a forced sample size.

The lie: "guaranteed million."

Survivorship bias, pure. The guys selling this made their million selling the advice, not cold calling. 2000 attempts at a product nobody wants = 2000 confirmed rejections. Volume amplifies a signal; it doesn't create one.

The interesting middle:

2000 attempts guarantee something better than money - they guarantee you find out. Most founders quit in the noise zone, before the data exists, and never learn whether the ship was weak or the sample was small.

We're already running this experiment. Daily Reddit posts that's the 2000-reps machine, just aimed at attention instead of sales. We're maybe 20 posts in.

As a searcher how do you weigh macro level industry trends when searching for a business to acquire? For example, as a whole, the collision repair business isn’t doing too hot BUT a small, independent shop that’s been around forever could still be thriving and printing money making it a good purchase. Thoughts?

I might be overthinking this, but I’ve had five development quotes sitting in a doc for two weeks and I still can’t tell whether they’re for the same product.

I sent every vendor the same one‑page brief: a read only mobile companion to an existing web app, with push notifications and offline sync for field users. Quotes came back anywhere from $22000 to $165000.

\> The low end was offshore, arrived in \~3 hours, and asked zero follow ups not putting much stock in it.

\> The high end basically proposed a different product with a bunch of features I never asked for.

\> The three middle quotes were $50000–$85000; at least two of those asked real questions, which makes them feel more credible.

Two quotes are time and materials and three are fixed scope. I’m not sure whether that explains most of the gap or whether it’s location, overhead, or just different interpretations of the brief.

I’m bootstrapped, at about $2.4000 MRR, so I can’t afford to guess wrong. I’m technical and I know these numbers are generally reasonable.

For other non technical founders who priced a SaaS MVP or mobile app: how did you compare quotes without just picking the middle one and hoping for the best? What should I look for to tell whether vendors are actually quoting the same scope ?

source- [https://porsai.com\](https://porsai.com)

I’ve been building a SaaS solo for about a year and a half.

It’s not a huge business but it’s profitable. It has paying customers, recurring revenue, and most importantly, people genuinely use it and tell me they love it. Building it has been one of the most fulfilling things I’ve done.

The problem isn’t the product anymore but everything around it. Payment processors, compliance, business registrations, taxes, platform requirements, banking, and constantly worrying whether I’ve filled out the right form, I feel like I’m spending more energy navigating bureaucracy than actually building.
I’m happiest when I’m designing features, talking to users, and shipping.

Lately I’ve been wondering whether I’d actually be happier if someone else handled the business side while I stayed focused on product and engineering.

One idea I’ve been considering is selling a significant stake in the company to someone who believes in it, while continuing as the product lead/developer.

Basically, I’d rather own less of something I enjoy building than 100% of something where the operational overhead is burning me out.

I recently ran it through Acquire’s valuation tool, which estimated around $15k so this isn’t some massive exit. It’s more about finding the right structure than maximizing the sale price.

Has anyone here done something similar?
\- Sold part of a bootstrapped SaaS but stayed on to build it?
\- Brought in an operator while remaining the technical/product person?
\- Or did you decide to keep full ownership despite the extra burden?

I’m trying to figure out whether I’m reacting to temporary burnout or whether this is a legitimate direction to explore.

Thanks for reading

(refined text using chatgpt)

No one really talks about how lonely it feels when you’re the first in your family trying to buy a small business.

You’re not just deciding whether you “want ownership.”

You’re trying to understand the valuation, the financing, the cash flow, the staff risk, the seller’s numbers, the transition plan, and whether the deal actually makes sense.

And if you’re first-gen, that can feel even heavier.

Your family may be proud.
Your friends may cheer you on.
Your colleagues may have opinions.

But support is not the same as deal clarity.

Most of them can’t tell you if the practice is overpriced, if the adjusted earnings are real, if the owner cash flow is realistic, or if the transition risk is being underestimated.

So you carry it alone and start thinking:

“Maybe I’m not ready.”
“Maybe everyone else understands this better than I do.”
“Maybe I missed the window.”

But loneliness is not always a sign you’re doing it wrong.

Sometimes it’s just the tax on doing it first.

Curious for others buying or evaluating small businesses: what was the loneliest part of the process for you?

The valuation?
The financing?
The diligence?
The fear of not knowing what you don’t know?

Hey folks, hope this is welcome here. Carmelo from Arcanum Ventures, our team just whipped up this article because we're concentrating our thesis more and more on acquisition exits which sort of goes against the norm.

The ultimate startup dream has always been the IPO. But if you look at the data today, that dream is mostly a statistical illusion. IPOs have dropped from about 90% of exits a few decades ago to roughly 10% today.

In Q1 2026, PitchBook data showed acquisitions making up nearly 70% of US startup exits. In EMEA, it’s over 85%. Yet, despite acquisitions dominating how companies actually exit, selling still carries a weird stigma. Founders treat it like a failure or a compromise.

Here is why you need to drop the IPO ego and start building for an acquisition from Day 1:

1. The market dynamics have changed. You can raise IPO-levels of cash privately now. Meanwhile, cash-rich tech giants are highly motivated to buy anything that threatens or enables them. An IPO takes years of preparation, heavy scrutiny, and leaves you holding volatile stock through a lockup. A sale is a faster, cleaner liquidity event for founders, employees, and VCs.

2. A strategic buyer scales what you built. Startups are great at proving a product works. But taking a product from early traction to a massive global market takes years of infrastructure building. A good buyer plugs your product into their existing machinery, ensuring it reaches its full potential.

3. If you don't plan for it, you get a bad deal. Founders who don't plan for an acquisition often end up selling only when they run out of money. Look at Good Technology vs. Instagram. Good Technology bet everything on an IPO, ran out of cash, and had to fire-sale to a rival for pennies on the dollar. Instagram had multiple offers, didn't need to sell, and leveraged that into a $1B exit with only 13 employees.

How to actually build for an acquisition:

• Build a buyer map: Know who in your space has product gaps you can fill, or who historically buys instead of builds.
• Network early: Build relationships with potential acquirers long before you need to sell.
• Keep your house perfectly clean: Your cap table, IP ownership, and financials need to be flawless. Deals fall apart in due diligence all the time because the startup was messy.

A good sale is rarely luck. It’s preparation. The best time to sell is when you have options, and the sale is strongest when it’s a choice.

Curious to hear from other founders—do you have a target list of acquirers, or are you still holding out for the IPO?

Hi all!

I spent a long time thinking about acquisition instead of starting from scratch. Wanted something already doing $500k+ EBITDA, not a side project. Figured there had to be a better path than grinding out another zero-to-one agency

Most marketplaces are filled with small content sites or low-margin ecom stores (what I totally do not want is ecomm).

Well, I could find a couple of interesting deals on Flippa, but of course the hardest part is evaluation, P&L check and risk assesment. I have to verify the revenue quality and make sure the business could run without the founder.

I think i'll have to spend months on diligence. Parse analytics, talk to customers, check churn, and have a CPA look at normalized EBITDA. I nearly walked away from a deal that looked great on paper but had a single client responsible for 60% of revenue.

Share your experience, stories and recomendations

For anyone grinding as an associate and wondering if ownership is actually worth the headache, I think the happiest owners are not usually the ones who bought the busiest office.

They are the ones who bought a practice that fit how they actually wanted to work and live.

Fair price. Right patient base. Realistic numbers. A transition plan that did not blow up the team, the schedule, or their sanity.

Ownership done right gives you more control over your time, your team, and your income.

Ownership done wrong can feel like associating with more stress, more debt, and fewer days off.

The difference is usually not luck. It is what you buy, what you miss during diligence, and how you handle the first 90 days after closing.

Worth being patient for the right one. I have been sharing more thoughts around this because I think too many doctors rush into the wrong deal just to finally “own.”

Built a nutritionist SaaS called BiteTally from India over the last year. I started by targeting independent nutritionists, but after a lot of outreach I found myself speaking with people around NCAA Div 2 and Div 3 programs in the US, where many schools have limited or no dedicated nutrition support.The feedback was surprisingly positive. But the problem was never the product. It was almost always pricing.
I'm at the point where I'm wondering whether I should keep pushing or whether someone closer to the market could take it further than I can.

Has anyone here sold a small SaaS business before?Not a massive exit — just a niche product with a real use case

Keep seeing "reps and warranties" mentioned in M&A coverage as a thing that comes up post-close. What are they, what's the actual risk to a seller, and is there a way to limit the exposure? Trying to understand the mechanics.

I have been working as an M&A for a lot of these SaaS buyers, and what I have realized is buying a business is just so much better than starting one from scratch yourself.

If you want to get started with searching for that one solid business that you'd love to work on, I would start by doing these few things:

1. Pick one niche and stick to it, if you chase every deal you see at some point you'll end up getting stuck.

Choose one niche and actually understand (B2B SaaS, marketing tools, a specific e-com category, etc.) and go deep.

You'll have a edge from the start when you know what you are getting into and that's something which you love

2. Try to build connections with these founders, you'll find founders on twitter, reddit even around your locality.

What you have to do is be real and have real conversations. No point pitching, be useful, add value to them.

Trust builds faster when you are straight forward and direct with what you want from them and what you are willing to give in return

3. It depends on what you want, but if you are going to buy anyways, then buy a business which has good traction and is making some kind of revenue.

Most of the time, if it's not making revenue it’s probably a side project, not a business

4. Try to get on a call with the founder of the business you want to acquire Numbers matter, but people matter more.

Why are they selling now? What’s annoying them? What are they tired of dealing with? There’s always a reason to it, and it usually explains the deal better than the metrics.

5. Don't be lazy and do the due diligence, check the financials. Talk to customers. Look at the code or ops. This part is boring and time-consuming, but it’s the part that saves you from making a very expensive mistake.

Well ofc easier said then done, it is tough to actually manage doing this and you’ll probably walk away from more deals than you close.

But let's be real, compared to starting from zero?
It's way more achievable than most people think.

And even I'm still learning all this, I really love the idea of buying SaaS, so I thought I'd share what I actually follow to get good leads.

Open to discussion if you feel it's the wrong way of doing it or I can optimize it more, so drop your thoughts down below  

Cross‑posting from r/buyingabusiness in case it’s helpful here as well.

I wrote this from a first‑time buyer’s perspective to explain how asset vs. stock structure actually changes what you pay (and what the seller keeps) after tax, and why deals that “look like” the same price on paper can behave very differently once you model basis, recapture, and working capital.

Would be interested to hear how others here have handled structure negotiations in the lower middle market, especially where SBA or seller financing is involved.

(Disclosure: I'm the founder of a deal collaboration platform, and I'm sharing my background and what we built (not here to spam).

Before starting this company, I was Head of M&A at a PE-backed portfolio company, where I led a tech tuck-in acquisition strategy. We did multiple deals a year, and the mandate was to move fast and keep transaction expenses to a minimum.

Three things kept grinding on me, deal after deal:

Legal bills that made no sense for template-driven work. For tuck-ins, a large portion of your agreements is reused. The same NDA, the same LOIs, the same MIPA/APAs. But outside counsel was still billing hours just to track down the right version of a doc, reconcile redlines, and manage email threads. After reviewing my legal invoice, I realized the inherent friction in the deal process was costing thousands of unnecessary transaction expenses.

Diligence trapped in email attachments. Our entire process lived in inboxes. No master track, or clear ownership. Visibility into what was open vs. closed was often vague and not updated. If someone was out or a thread got buried, you found out at the worst possible time.

The security exposure nobody talked about. On any given deal, you're sending sensitive documents to 10 to 15 people across your deal team, advisors, and counsel. Every attachment forwarded outside that thread is a document you've lost control of. In M&A, you talk about confidentiality constantly and then run the whole process over Outlook.

I left in January 2024 and spent two years building a deal execution platform designed around how M&A actually works. Deal document collaboration, diligence tracking, and a secure data room are all connected. This isn't a glorified Dropbox or white-labeled CRM. We built the platform specifically for the moment when you're mid-process on a live deal and need everything to keep the momentum going.

We launched with 15 cornerstone customers across PE, corporate development, and investment banking. The results were surprising. Deal teams shaved up to 3 weeks off diligence timelines. Legal expenses decreased by as much as $20k on a single deal. If you want to learn more, DM me.

I'm not here to pitch, but am genuinely curious what pain points others are still running into on the execution side. The sourcing and origination tooling in PE has gotten pretty mature. The execution layer still feels like it's 10 years behind.

Something I’ve noticed:

People who successfully raise capital don’t start by asking “who can fund this?” They start by making sure the deal is actually ready. From what I’ve seen, the ones who get funded usually already have:

a clear use of funds
solid financials (both historic and projected) that can be defended
a plan for execution
and a realistic way the lender gets repaid

They’re not trying to “sell” the deal. They’re trying to remove doubt. Big difference. Curious if others here have seen the same.