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How to go about acquiring a startup?
i'm a founder & i want to acquire a pre-seed stage company that's mission-critical for what i'm building. i'm looking for some answers on how to go about acquiring and whether i should directly call up the other company or use a middle man?
- caprock 2y agoDo some research (maybe you already have), and then just reach out to their founder/CEO directly. It can't hurt to have a conversation.
- GianFabien 2y agoSometimes synergy might work both ways. An aggressive buy-out approach, especially when using a middle person, tends to inflate the asking price and/or create an adversarial situation.
- byoung2 2y agoIf they are pre-seed, what do they have built already and how do you know about it? What stage is your company?
- talldayo 2y agoIf the other business is smart, they won't let you acquire them at all and will force you into a B2B pricing package. Obviously you demand their product and are willing to pay a high fee; sounds like a perfect time to bait you into a contract. Unless you buy them out for a ridiculously eye-watering price, I don't see how this could work well. At founder-scale you should be focusing less on mergers & acquisitions and more on building your product. A good place to start would be engineering a contingency plan if you can't acquire said company.
- localfirst 2y agothere is no fixed path, start with email and then follow up if they respond. why raise the cost by using a middle men? seems like you aren't really ready to do this from your questions.