They Got Acquired

Something I'm hesitant to admit:

I built our M&A platform myself.

I'm reluctant to share this because I'm afraid it makes us look small. The tool couldn't possibly be amazing if a non-developer founder built it, right?

I shared the story on LinkedIn today:

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/alexisgrant_something-im-hesitant-to-admit-i-built-activity-7253102398087299072-_GE2?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop

Today we're closing a revenue-generating product so we can put ALL our resources and energy behind They Got Acquired Data, our M&A platform.

This is a scary move because sales from the platform aren't covering our expenses yet. But I know we'll never get there if we don't turn all our attention to it.

I made this decision in part because I've been so squeezed for work time over the last three months of summer. Tomorrow the kids start back at school, and I should have relatively regular work hours again (9 to 3 daily, plus any other hours I can find here and there).

Let's see where this takes us through the fall!

Something simple I did last week that gave me a huge morale boost...

For months, I've been tracking one metric for our M&A intelligence platform: how many deals we've pushed live in the platform.

That's because we need a critical mass of deals for the platform to provide insights.

We've tracked thousands of deals (7,147 as of right now) over the last couple of years. These are all online businesses that have sold for 6, 7 or 8 figures. Now we're fleshing out and double-checking the metrics for each one, then publishing it in the platform.

So I've been digging into AirTable daily to check the count. But last week, I found a way to make this tracking way more fun and motivating...

📊 I created a dashboard that tracks this metric automatically, shows us how many deals are live, and displays it prominently.

The dashboard also shows us dozens of other stats we're interested in, like how many buyers are live in the platform, how many deals we have sale price for, how many deals we've written stories about, etc. (I'm including one of those in the image below.)

But that high-level number — how many deals are live — is the most important, because it helps us measure when we're ready for users.

📈 I've always loved dashboards for sharing information with a team. But it didn't occur to me until now to create one for this project, because it's just me and our data editor tracking this.

Yet now that we have a visual tracker, I can't believe I didn't do it sooner.

It's super motivating to see progress in a dashboard, and it helps me remember that even amongst all the opportunities each day, making this number climb is my top priority right now.

I keep the dashboard open on my second screen, so I can watch it climb every day. This alone has boosted my confidence; it reinforces the progress we're making.

Our data editor finds it motivating, too. And she now has visibility into all sorts of metrics that are important for our goals. Even for a small team like ours, this is helpful for staying aligned.

🚀 Don't underestimate the power of visualizing your core metrics on a dashboard everyone can see. Even if your everyone is just a team of two.

We're not launching our M&A data platform.

We're doing this instead 👇

For months now we've been building an M&A intelligence platform focused on online businesses that have sold for 6, 7 and 8 figures. The goal is to help founders, buyers and brokers pull insights on potential buyers and comps for relevant deals.

We've already had some early successes! Including a founder who used the platform to identify good-fit buyers, find their contact info and book calls. She just sold her business 🎉

Now, we're at a big milestone: we're adding early users to the platform.

But you won't see a big, splash launch from us.

Here are 3 approaches we're taking to adding early users that go against conventional wisdom:

👉 1. We're skipping the initial loud launch.

Instead, we're slowly adding users one-by-one, ensuring the platform delivers value, and collecting feedback and testimonials.

Splashy launches create unrealistic expectations. They suggest the flood gates will open, which rarely happens. Even if you've built an audience ahead of time, a consistent trickle of sales is more likely.

And in our case, we'd prefer the constant trickle. We want to see how customers use our product and learn how to support them before adding hundreds of users.

Melissa Kwan took this approach, and shares how it went in her ProfitLed podcast. I'll link to that in the comments.

👉 2. We're not launching an MVP.

MVPs aren't good enough anymore. Instead, we're releasing a product our customers will get huge value from on day one.

I like how Jason Cohen reframes this; he says you should release an SLC instead. That stands for Simple, Loveable and Complete.

His post on this topic shaped how I thought about making our product ready for users. I'll link to that in the comments.

👉 3. We're not adding early users for free.

Many founders offer free accounts for their first users so they can get feedback.

But the biggest thing we're testing right now is whether brokers, buyers and founders will pay for access to insights that will help them maximize their deals. Giving the platform away wouldn't help us answer that question.

We need to know asap whether this is going to work. At the same time, we need revenue to keep building.

💸 So here's what we're doing instead of freebies: offering discounts for our first users.

Not to convince you to use the platform, but as a way of saying THANK YOU — for trusting us enough to use our product first.

Thank you for betting on us, for believing that we can provide insights that will give you a significant edge in lower-to-middle market M&A.

And thank you for being open and honest about what you need, so we can learn how to serve you better.

I've never considered myself an indie hacker.

But I've embraced that mentality over the last year as we've built our M&A platform — and I've really enjoyed it!

It's insane that we can build a platform of this scope with no-code tools.

And yet, I also find it kind of crazy that despite how many great tools we have available now, pulling this off still requires a labyrinth of software that's all interconnected.

🛠️ Our tool stack for the M&A platform includes...

• AirTable (houses the data)

• Softr (powers the platform)

• Make (runs our automations)

• Stripe (for payments)

• ConvertKit (onboarding via email)

• ClickUp (team task management)

We also use some Zapier (legacy automations), WordPress (stories that live on our website), Google Forms (for Q&As), Loom (for onboarding), ProBackup (backing up AirTable), Feedly (to track deals) and more.

(Shout out to Cole, who coached me through the Softr build. None of this would be possible without his brain.)

Now that we're starting to add our first users and see the fruits of our labor, I'm realizing:

🤔 Working on this project has made me rethink what I want from my business.

I've always considered myself more of an operator; I'm good at arranging all the people and pieces so everyone can do their best work. I prefer to delegate most of the work to a team, so we can move faster together.

But getting deep into the weeds on this build has been so much fun. As a bonus, I'm intimately familiar with how the platform works and what's possible, which is helpful for our future roadmap, fixing bugs and more.

💡 Conventional advice says that as you grow as an entrepreneur, you should work more on the business rather than in it.

But what if getting your hands dirty brings satisfaction and joy?

---

I'm Alexis Grant, founder of They Got Acquired.

Our M&A platform helps founders, brokers and buyers pull comps for relevant businesses and identify good-fit buyers. It's the first tool of its kind for the "everyday" founder who expects to sell for 6, 7 or 8 figures. More details here:  https://data.TheyGotAcquired.com

We got our first testimonial! And it's a strong one, from a founder who used our platform to identify potential buyers, grab their contact info and book calls.

She sold her business!

Wish I could attach a screenshot, but here's her message:

“Browsing past deals gave me a sense of what was possible for my business, and seeing the contact information all in one place also saved me a lot of time. I was able to book several meetings in a short timeframe and move quickly.”
-Nathalie Lussier, Founder who exited AccessAlly in 2024

We've got 1,000 deals in the live database!

And our process is going more smoothly now... it's taking me far less time personally to approve the deals because of the hard work of our data editor and researchers.

I'm aiming for 1,200+ deals before we put more paid users in. (Already have a few in there with specific needs that we could meet!)