Why Dunder Mifflin Should Be a Real Company & A Look Inside MicroAcquire | My First Million #203

Shaan Puri

I used to go to an ATM machine, put my card in, and say "Print balance." I would just look at it. He's like, "I would just do that every day."

Sam Parr

So we have an interview with MicroAcquire. We'll talk all about it then, and it's with Andrew. He sells startups basically on Micro[Acquire]. It's a marketplace for selling startups. But first, we're going to talk about some ideas and catch up. I've hired someone, Jake McDonald, to do research. I just sent you [the information].

Shaan Puri

You, of course, hired a guy who looks like a football player, and yet he's your business researcher guy. Well, you guys are jacked!

Sam Parr

So here's the secret: Sean has had a little bit of help with research for a very long time, and his name is Ben. We've talked about Ben before; Ben's amazing. I got jealous and I said, "I want a Ben." So I went and hired a Ben, and his name is Jake. I had Jake call Ben to get all of his research tips, and Ben did a really good job. I just sent to you, Sean, my Notion doc with all Jake's stuff. It's good, right? You see how he organized it?

Shaan Puri

very thorough

Sam Parr

Yeah, he's wonderful. So, no, we're going to be a little bit more well-researched. Although he doesn't technically start until next week, we're still getting used to things.

Shaan Puri

Trainer wheels... yeah, alright, cool. So basically, we're going to discuss a couple of ideas now, and then Andrew is going to join us. Andrew is the founder of MicroAcquire, which is like Zillow for buying and selling companies. So, we bought one company on there. I bought a business with Andrew for this kid who's a college senior. We bought him a business to run just as an experiment. That was kind of the first time I used it, and I think it's pretty cool. He's going to tell us about his previous company, which he sold for tens of millions. He'll explain how that deal came about, how he structured it, and what he did with the money. We were like, "Alright, if you're going to come on, you gotta tell us what you did with the money." So, he tells us about what he bought, how he invests his money, and his kind of very boring investment strategy—what it is and why he chooses to do that. Yeah, we're going to talk about that with Andrew, but first, a couple of ideas. Alright, so I want to talk about this tweet I saw, and it's a tweet from Doug Ludlow. You know who that is?

Sam Parr

yeah main street

Shaan Puri

Yeah, CEO of Main Street, founder of Main Street. He tweeted this thing out. He goes, "Isn't it crazy that Bubba Gump Shrimp, the restaurant chain, does like $200 to $300 million a year in revenue when *Forrest Gump*, the movie that the brand is based on, did like $700 million lifetime box office?" So he's like, the restaurant...

Sam Parr

way is that real

Shaan Puri

The restaurant has produced more money than *Forrest Gump* ever did. I was like, "That's interesting." He asked, "Why aren't there more of these?" So, I kind of liked this idea, which is basically you take intellectual property (IP) from TV or movies and you license it. They did this for the Bubba Gump Shrimp Company. I went and looked up the backstory of this, and it's pretty simple. The movie happens, and Paramount is actually the one who did this. I thought that some entrepreneur went to them and got the brand, but it was actually the opposite. From what I could read, Paramount Pictures approached a restaurant group called Rusty Pelican and said, "Hey, we want you to create a brand based on the brand of the movie," because it's a key plot point in the movie. Some crazy things about this: first, they do that, and it generates over $200 million a year. It got bought by the Fertitta family, I think, and their restaurant group. But this is also where you know the actor Chris Pratt...

Sam Parr

of course

Shaan Puri

He was a waiter at Bubba Gump Shrimp Company, and this is how he got discovered. He was waiting on a table for a producer, this director-producer lady. He said, "Oh, I love that thing you made," and she replied, "Oh, it's great," blah blah blah. They were talking, and she asked, "You know what? Do you want to be an actor?" He said, "Yeah, that's what I'm doing. I'm just waiting tables, but I want to be an actor." And that's how he got his break in the movie industry.

Sam Parr

how did you learn about this

Andrew Gazdecki

just a hell of a lot

Shaan Puri

Of Googling my friend, we don't all have buff researchers like Jake. Some of us gotta get our hands dirty and go do some Google.

Sam Parr

So, let me tell you something real quick. Do you know the Fertittas? You meant you were referring to the Fertitta brothers, right? There are two brothers.

Shaan Puri

tilman fertitta is the cousin

Sam Parr

Yeah, so I think he's like a distant cousin. I was going to correct you, but you know the story. So, there's this guy named Tilman Fertitta. A lot of people probably don't know this, but if you live in Houston or Texas, you certainly know who this guy is. He's a pretty polarizing figure. I think a lot of people who know him think he's a huge asshole. He probably is an asshole; I mean, he's pretty cutthroat. He owns this thing called Landry's. I've never even been to one. I think that's its own restaurant.

Shaan Puri

yeah it's like a steak house I think

Sam Parr

But then he also owns Bubba Gump Shrimp. He owns, I believe, like Jay Alexander's, Ruth's Chris Steakhouse, and a ton of other places—like 30 to $50 a head dinner places. So, not particularly fancy, but really upscale franchises. He owns about 600 of them. Here's a fun fact: I am pretty positive that Landry's is the largest company in America that is owned by one person. Tillman Fertitta owns 100% of the business; he owns literally every single share. Right around the beginning of COVID, they were doing something like $5 billion in revenue and around $1.5 billion to $2 billion in EBITDA.

Shaan Puri

That's nuts! And by the way, he owns the Houston Rockets now. So that's how he got a lot more famous. When he bought the Rockets, people wanted to know who the heck this guy is. So that's kind of crazy. Okay, so back to this idea real quick. A licensing IP... Doug was basically saying, "Why don't more people do this?" He asked, "Why isn't there a paper company that's like the Dunder Mifflin paper company?" There are a couple of these, so I went through and came up with a list of brands that I think could translate. Here's my list, and then you tell me what you would do if you were approaching this. Or if you think this is a bad idea, you can tell me.

Sam Parr

I don't think it's a bad idea that's for sure

Shaan Puri

Here are my top five brands that I think you could license for a credit company: 1. **Dunder Mifflin** from *The Office*. Yes, *The Office* is one of the most popular shows of all time. It has crazy reruns on Netflix, and there are no signature paper companies. I'm like, what is another paper company? I have no idea, so I think you'd stand out. 2. **Duff Beer** from *The Simpsons*. I think Duff Beer could be a real beer; maybe it is a real beer somewhere. But I think Duff Beer is a potential one.

Sam Parr

you don't have too many more you don't have another decade or 2 left with that one though

Shaan Puri

Yeah, that one's sort of aging out—Wonka Bars. So anything with Willy Wonka, I think you could... I think Willy Wonka painted this picture of wonderment around the factory and this innovative stuff. So, I think you could take that brand and create cool, novel chocolates and candies out of it. Another idea is, if you're an ad agency, could you go and actually franchise or license the Mad Men brand for that? So basically, Sterling Cooper Draper or whatever it is—Draper Price is the name of their agency. You know, why not use that if you're going to start an ad agency versus anything else? Then I started thinking about, alright, where else would I go for this? I think the opportunity here is, depending on what age bracket you go for, the '90s had a bunch of brands that were famous for our age group. If you're basically 30 or 40 right now, there are a bunch of brands that have zero equity value anymore, but the brand names you grew up with still mean something to you. We've talked about brands like Warheads, JNCO Jeans, or No Fear—yeah, a bunch of these brands. I think one interesting play here would be that you don't actually have to create the product. So, another idea is to create a nostalgia licensing company. All it does is go and buy options on these brands, and then it sells them to existing makers of products. It just says, "Hey, why don't you use... we have this portfolio of nostalgic brands. You could choose one of these that fits your product category or whatever." You could just be the middleman, basically. You buy cheap options on these brands and then sell them at a retail price if you can. Even if you get one or two hits, I think the business could be quite profitable. So, that's my random licensing idea.

Sam Parr

I went to Urban Outfitters the other day because there's one near my house. They had... you know, Urban Outfitters is pretty shabby, but they have tons of old t-shirts. It's like their whole genre of t-shirts was things that 30-year-olds saw their dads wear. They had t-shirts with the old Coors Light logo, the old Budweiser logo... I forget some of the other logos, but I remember Blind Skateboards, World Industries Skateboards, or Independent Skateboards. It kind of transcended popular culture, I thought. But anyway, I'm on board. That's amazing that Bubba Gump does that much revenue. Who... and it's still owned by Landry's, I guess. But dude, it's a horrible restaurant! I'm amazed at that. It's like an Applebee's.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, well, dude. One of my first investors in any business I ever had was this guy who owned 12 Applebee's. This guy was like, "You know, I went to college at Duke in Durham," which is a pretty small city. He was one of the wealthiest guys in Durham and owned like 10 to 20 Applebee's. I was like, "Oh, you could just do that?" And he's like, "Yeah, here's how it works." I was like, "Don't even tell me. I don't want to be more successful than you, but I don't care if I'm less successful than you." What I mean is, I just don't want to own 20 Applebee's. That can't be the end game here.

Sam Parr

I had a friend who worked at an ad agency, and his agency won the Applebee's account. They gave him $1,000 to spend at Applebee's and told him to bring a friend and order just a ton of stuff so he could understand it. We ordered everything, and I'm a slob; I eat anything and I'll eat a ton of food, you know?

Shaan Puri

6 months of food at applebee's

Sam Parr

I'm an animal, and he ordered... we ordered so much stuff. I eat everything and anything. I got it in front of my plate, and I was like, "You guys just microwaved the steak." You know, like, this is microwaved. It was *fucking awful*.

Andrew Gazdecki

it's a

Shaan Puri

alright what what else

Sam Parr

so you wanna talk about the spaceship

Shaan Puri

Yeah, what do you want to talk about? I just had one cool thing, which was, I don't know if you saw, I tweeted this out yesterday. But there's a video of Jeff Bezos. So, I thought, this billionaire going to space... It's like Elon is doing it, and then, you know, Jeff Bezos starts Blue Origin, and Richard Branson has Virgin Galactic. It's sort of like, "Oh, okay, cool." This is, you know, golf for old white billionaires, basically. It's like this is some game that they're playing.

Sam Parr

it's just a dick measuring contest is what it is yeah

Shaan Puri

It's a thing... swinging thing. So, I was like, "Alright, well..." and I kind of wrote it off. I was like, "You know, I think Elon was in it, you know, sort of first and genuinely for a bunch of reasons that seemed real to me." But, you know, definitely there's an ego component to it. What was cool was I found this interview with Jeff Bezos from the year 2000—so, 21 years ago. At that time, Amazon was like 6 years old. It was definitely a thing, but it wasn't Amazon like today. It was a public company, but it wasn't a juggernaut like it is now. I think they probably only had a couple of categories at that point. There wasn't Prime, or doing video, or all this other stuff. He's sitting down, and they're like, "So, you know, what would you want to do? What would you do if you could do anything?" He's like, "If I could do anything..." and they're like, "Yeah?" He says, "You know, I would love to explore space." They're like, "Whoa, maybe you could do it someday. Yeah, you're a smart guy, but if you put your mind to it." He's like, "Well, it's hard. It's really hard." I'm like, "But I think you could do it." And he's like, "Yeah, you know, it's harder than you think. We haven't made much progress in space in the last 20 years." He says, "Maybe 20 years from now the technology will be there. Maybe we could do it." Then, 21 years, sort of to the day, he's in a spaceship, going in his own rocket company, going into outer space. I thought that was pretty cool. It gave me a different level of respect for it because it's more like somebody having a vision and a dream 20 years ago when it wasn't cool to talk about it or say it, and then actualizing it—not just sort of like copycatting Elon.

Sam Parr

Yeah, so look, I think that it is like a measuring contest... a pissing match. But I'm all in. At first, you're like, "Well, that's lame. These guys are so rich, why don't they do something good?" But in my opinion, this is good. It's just so long-term thinking that it's actually hard to see. I do think that we're going to get good out of this. When rich people want to give money and they want things named after them, like a building or a hospital wing, or they want to go to space and make a big deal out of it, then maybe in 10 years we can capture some of that value. A lot of people are like, "Well, that's bullshit. You know, fuck these guys." But I'm like, "Who gives a fuck? That's the most fair trade on earth. We name this building after you, and you give us all this money."

Shaan Puri

hey I wrote your name on this yeah great thanks for the 100 mil

Sam Parr

Yes, it's like, "Dude, let them have that. Who cares if they have an ego? You get the money." So, in my opinion, we should accept it as good. Although, for sure, Bezos said something kind of stupid the other day. I do like that he said it because it was kind of funny. But at the same time, I'm like, "Oh, you are asking for it." So, Adam...

Shaan Puri

not not a great move

Sam Parr

So, Bezos flew up to space with his brother, an older woman [I forget her name], and a young kid. I believe there was supposed to be another person on there, but he had a scheduling conflict. I swear to God.

Shaan Puri

don't be that guy

Sam Parr

He had... there was supposed to be someone else, but there was a scheduling conflict, so the guy couldn't make it. They go to space, and they're up there throwing Skittles at each other's faces. Did you see that? They're doing flips. Bezos is like, "Hey guys, I brought Skittles!" He breaks out a packet of Skittles and throws one at a person. The guy catches it in his mouth, and Jeff goes, "Let me try!" Jeff hands the kid the bag of Skittles and says, "Throw one in my mouth." I thought that was kind of funny.

Shaan Puri

amazing for skittles I'm surprised he's not like hey I I have amazon sugar circles

Sam Parr

yes

Shaan Puri

you know I'm throwing at at each other you know like our own house brand

Sam Parr

So, I thought that was kind of cute and funny. He lands and he says, "I just want to thank all of you workers at Amazon, as well as all you customers, because you paid for this." He said that, and I was like, "That's not the best way to phrase that." Then this morning, I shared this with you. I saw a Business Insider article, which I kind of love, but at the same time, I can't stand some of the things they write. Jeff Bezos was actually an early investor in Business Insider, and the article was written in such a way that it was complaining about it. It said Bezos' flight to space was too cramped and far too short.

Shaan Puri

and oh my god

Sam Parr

and and I was like oh my god you're complaining like

Shaan Puri

So, okay, a couple of thoughts on what you just said. That was amazing! First of all, I hate the haters. Okay, Dan just looked it up. The person who had the scheduling conflict paid **$28,000,000** for their seat. That's kind of insane! I think their dad paid for their seat or something. Look up this story, Dan. Tell me what I'm missing here because, wow! You know how if you're going to hate someone, don't hate the billionaire who built Amazon and then reinvested his money into exploring outer space. Hate the trust fund kid who paid **$28,000,000** for his ticket and then no-showed because he was doing a TikTok dance or something. I don't know the story behind this, but that's kind of ridiculous. I'm so tired of people just hating billionaires randomly. I'm team billionaire, is what I'm trying to say. You know, people are so dumb. They're like, "Why are you wasting money on this?" Do you know when they do this? When you pay for... when you fund a space company, you're paying. You know that money doesn't just go into space and vanish.

Sam Parr

yeah I think blue origin has like 3,000 employees I think

Shaan Puri

Yeah, when he spends the money, it's going into people's pockets. It's funding jobs, export technology development, and a lot of great technology we have came because of what NASA did for the space program. One of the silliest things is thinking that the money just somehow gets vacuumed into outer space. The second thing is just don't be that guy. It's not even that I'm team billionaire; I'm team not the guy who's hating on billionaires all the time. This happened actually a second ago. Clubhouse tweeted out, "Oh, like we are open for everybody now. There's no waitlist or something like that. We got a new logo and all this stuff." And you know, I'm obviously not the Clubhouse cheerleader, right? So don't get me wrong. But the very first comment, the top comment, is: "Open for everybody, but you don't even have captions on the live audio, so it's not open for deaf people." And I'm like, okay, fair. It doesn't have full accessibility, but that's the top comment? That's the first comment? Like, this company has to provide you live audio text captioning; otherwise, "fuck them." I guess it's just that hater culture is so annoying to me. It's so weak and spineless to be just like, you know, the top comment is just like, "Oh yeah, you did this great thing, but you know..." I know that's gonna sound hypocritical because I wrote kind of like a giant thread hating on Clubhouse.

Sam Parr

well it wasn't exactly hating

Shaan Puri

But that's going to be the easy criticism. I wasn't trying to hate; I was basically saying what I think some of the reasons are why I think it's not going to work out the way they think. Some of the strategic product problems, I just wrapped it in a funny way.

Sam Parr

but you you explicitly said I hope none of this comes true

Shaan Puri

Yeah, I wanted to win. I think it's cool when things win, but... you know, I think people are missing the boat. Anyway, I guess I'm just over hater culture. The easiest way to find it is to go read any response to anything that Elon [Musk] or Jeff Bezos or these people [say]... People who are doing great things in the world and have won the game, you know, the money game. They attract this really annoying class of haters.

Sam Parr

And I actually think you should rephrase it. I'm not on Team Billionaire. What I'm on is Team People who set audacious goals and get after it.

Shaan Puri

I'm on team "do your thing." If that's your thing, do your thing, and let me let you do your thing. I'm gonna do my thing. Why do I need to worry about your thing?

Sam Parr

Yeah, I have respect for someone who says they're going to write a book this year and then actually writes a book. Or for someone who says they're going to lose £50 and then loses £50.

Shaan Puri

right team's on their shot

Sam Parr

Yeah, I'm on team "you set what you're gonna do and you actually achieve it." It just so happens that one of the big outputs of business is money, and that's a great way to measure it. When I look at someone like Sean Parker, before he got involved with Facebook and before he actually became wealthy, I see a different story. Sean Parker started Napster. A lot of people think it was unethical, and he did not succeed financially because of it. I've always admired that because he was an 18-year-old who revolutionized something, totally caused a shitstorm, and got in the thick of it to make something interesting. So, I'm in favor of people who do that. Oftentimes, those are the people who build a 100,000-person company called Amazon. But yeah, I would actually say if you are a billionaire hater out there, I think you should actually rephrase it. I mean, there are billionaires that I think are awful people, and I don't want them to exist. But I enjoy seeing people who put their stamp on the world, and I think that's what we should celebrate—not just defaulting to hate the way some people do.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, or, you know, it is just in general how somebody else spends their money. That's their business, right? Like, I think Elon right now is living in like a 50 square foot pop-up house or something. You've seen this? He's living in a shipping container or something. He sold his house, he sold his cars, and he's living in a goddamn 50 square foot shipping container. He put all his money into it. He poured it all in and went into debt to try to make Tesla and SpaceX happen. And like, when they win, you know, he gets rewarded for it. But even if he decided to do nothing and never work again, and just wanted mansions and butlers, cool! That's his money. Do your thing. Criticizing other people for how they spend their money really all that says is, "I wouldn't spend my money that way." I think that's a fair thing to say. But I think in most cases, the people who are doing this would spend their money, you know, in the same ways or worse.

Sam Parr

And for the record, if I could trade spots with Elon Musk—if someone said, "You could trade spots automatically, and by the way, you'll still be the same age that you are"—I wouldn't do it.

Shaan Puri

yeah I would

Sam Parr

not in a 1000000 years would I trade spots with that guy but I

Shaan Puri

think it's awesome what he's doing for him good do your thing alright here's something at the opposite end of the spectrum have you ever heard of bill's lemonade no alright so go to this website just type in bill's lemonade this is a little fascinating business a friend kinda tipped me off to this and I can't say their names because I don't know if they want their names said but basically this is this is a bill didn't tell me this is a like a business in a box and this business does about 5,000,000 a year roughly and what they do is they just sell you a kind of like a course and the materials to start your own lemonade stand not for kids but for like adults like you could start this outside of a of a concert venue or a ballgame or like at your like local like neighborhood square or whatever and what they do is they basically say hey you can you can here's a business in a box if you have the ability to grab this bottle and shake it you can become a lemonade stand owner and you can make this much money here's how it works then you could download their like little brochure which shows the unit economics it's like every lemonade costs a dollar 20 to make that's your cost and you're gonna sell that for you know $4 $5 $6 depending on your location so you're gonna have you know 70% margins on this thing and if you could sell x many per day you're gonna make this much money and they basically just sell you this business in a box it's a very simple business and bills lemonade on the other side they don't take any royalties or franchise fees they say you're gonna get our brand we're gonna send sell we're gonna send you the machine the frozen you know lemonade machine the the shakers the the cups the everything and all you do is you pay for the materials and the like information the course on how to do it and I just thought this was kind of a fascinating idea and I feel like you could do this for a whole bunch of other a whole bunch of other like industries as well like whether it's you know snow cones or ice cream trucks or pest control or something like that like I just feel like there's a whole bunch of business out of boxes you could make and if you did that maybe you could even roll these up into one thing which is like hey you don't want a job you want your own business it's gonna get you a $100,000 a year and you'll be able to kinda control the hours you work and you're gonna work for yourself are are there people out there who want that trade as a franchisee yes and then basically you just say great would you like the lemonade 1 would you like to drive an ice cream truck would you like to do this or that and we own all these brands it's sort of like what 1800 got junk has where they have the the trucks you can drive the franchise you could buy to be a junk hauler or the house painter or the I forgot they have like 3 or 4 of them but I feel like you could create a a mini version of what a hunter got junk with this

Sam Parr

Dude, this is awesome! I'm looking at this and I'm trying to find... there was a guy when I started my hot dog stand. There was a guy in Tennessee who was doing this exact same thing for hot dog stands. So you'd give him $5 and he would send you everything you needed along with the state rules and things like that. He did it for hot dog stands. Bill's Lemonade is better because you could spend... I don't even know what the price is, like a couple hundred dollars on here. I'm looking at it now, and this is pretty badass! You and these guys have been doing this forever, by the way. I'm looking at their website.

Shaan Puri

I've seen this brand a long time ago yeah

Sam Parr

This is badass! They just have, like, you can buy all your supplies from there. I recognize these cups too, by the way.

Shaan Puri

Right, I've seen this thing in baseball games or something. But yeah, I think this is kind of interesting. Another version of this, I think you could do, is in the services industry. So, here's another example: let's say corporate headshots. I once saw Facebook ads for this. The profile picture I have for this podcast is kind of like where I'm trying to make this ominous look. It's because I saw a Facebook ad of a really high-quality headshot, a striking headshot, and it was like, "I can take a photo of you that will look like this. You can level up your brand—your LinkedIn, your website, whatever it is." You know, it's $300, and it's like, "I shoot in the Bay Area, and I'll come do a shoot for you. You get to pick your photos." I just remember thinking, "Oh, that's really smart." I've never seen Facebook ads like this. I've never seen a photographer doing Facebook ads for this. But I feel like you could do the same thing here, where you could basically sell somebody a business in a box that says, "Hey, maybe photo is a little too high skill, but you could say any kind of service." You could say, "Great, you're going to be the service provider in your local area, and I'm going to run the Facebook ads countrywide. Whenever there's a lead for your area, I'm just going to dispatch it to you, and you just go fulfill it." It's a business out of a box that way.

Sam Parr

great

Shaan Puri

You wear our uniform, you know? You could do Geek Squad this way, like tech help or something like that. You could do it for the thing we talked about with setting up home offices and home video studios.

Sam Parr

What I would do is... I would do it for take. So, when I rented out my place, I took pictures and put them online. I didn't get that much love. Then, I went online and found a photographer to come and take pictures for me. I paid her $200, and I got way more traction. My wife works at Airbnb, and I think she told me—though I don't remember who told me—that the number one difference between a winning Airbnb and a losing Airbnb is the pictures. Yeah, I definitely think you could have AirbnbPhotos.com or whatever it is, and you could take $25 for every lead that you send to a photographer. You could totally crush it that way.

Shaan Puri

Right, so I like these little "business in a box" ideas. This is like, you know, the opposite of the billionaire space race. This is Bill's lemonade, making $5,000,000 selling lemonade kits to people, which I think is cool.

Sam Parr

There is this company called **iCracked**. iCracked was started by a friend of mine, **AJ Forsyth**. It either went out of business or was acquired, but I don't think they even kept the brand anymore. What they did was raise about **$20 million to $30 million** from **Andreessen Horowitz**. iCracked focused on **iPhone repair**. I guess to switch an iPhone screen on your phone, it takes only a few hours of training. Anyone could figure it out if I just showed you how to do it. What they would do is send you leads and take a small cut of the charge. For example, they would charge around **$150** to fix your phone, and maybe they would take **$20**. In order to get leads from them, you had to buy iPhone parts from them. They would sell you iPhone parts, and they were doing something like **$30 million a year** in e-commerce sales. I don't know how much service revenue they're making, but just from selling screens, they're doing around **$20 million to $30 million** in sales for the service.

Shaan Puri

yeah that's crazy what what do you think went wrong with the biz

Sam Parr

I think they raised too much money and probably spent way too much on ads. I'm not sure if it was quite venture scale. They got to like $20 or $30 million in sales, and I don't know if they could figure out how to get bigger than that. They tried to launch more stuff and probably lost focus.

Shaan Puri

gotcha

Sam Parr

But there are other services out there that are just like them that do like $30-40 million a year in revenue. Also, AJ, my friend who's the founder, he's a wild man. I think he had crazy aspirations of like having a drone come and drop off stuff... things like that. I don't know if that industry is cut out for that, but I do think you could have a nice company that makes $30-40 million in sales.

Shaan Puri

On this episode, a visionary's gone wrong. He had a healthy business and wanted to change to having drones drop off your iPhone.

Sam Parr

yeah

Shaan Puri

he was also the one who like paddleboards to work every day or something right like doesn't he do something crazy like that

Sam Parr

Yeah, he had a small little dinghy boat, like a tiny boat. I forget what they called it, but it was super small—like the size of a little baby desk. It had an engine on it, and he would ride that from where the Oracle office is, about 20 minutes away. I forget where in California, but he would ride it down the bay to his office at South Park in SOMA.

Shaan Puri

yeah I think that's awesome sounds like a super interesting guy I love it

Sam Parr

yeah he's crazy alright so do are we gonna get to the episode or the yeah

Shaan Puri

let's do the interview now

Sam Parr

alright so you're gonna hear andrew and let us know what you think andrew

Andrew Gazdecki

So, how do you pronounce your last name? Gazdeki? Call me Gaz.

Sam Parr

gaz alright go ahead sean sorry

Shaan Puri

I never had a cool nickname or friends for that matter, but alright... So, you did your micro-acquire funding announcement thing yesterday. I'm curious, does that do anything? You know, we're seeing this a lot more where it's like all the famous people on Twitter and tech did something, they also are promoting something. Me and Sam have been a part of a few of these. What's the result? Is that like meaningful, or is it just like a feel-good moment, or does it do anything for you?

Andrew Gazdecki

Yeah, so your question... I would say both. I mean, really, the goal of that fundraise was, "I want to build MicroAcquire with a starter community." So, just having everyone involved in that for feedback and really letting everybody know that this is kind of, you know, something to watch. So, good brand value added. And then, yeah, we saw like 2,500,000 impressions on Twitter.

Sam Parr

So, for those listening, MicroAcquire... Andrew, you've had a couple of companies. You sold one recently, or like a couple of years ago, which sounds like a home run for you. But MicroAcquire, although you guys have some really big aspirations right now, if we had to kind of dumb it down, it's a newsletter that people pay to get access to. That content features interesting startups that you have vetted and are now for sale. That's like the current iteration, right?

Shaan Puri

Well, it's not just a newsletter, right? Like, I go to the website. I don't even look at the newsletter. It's a marketplace. It's like if you want to buy a house, you go to Zillow and see a bunch of houses for sale.

Sam Parr

I only read the newsletter

Shaan Puri

oh okay who's who's who's the normal user is it sam or me

Andrew Gazdecki

It sounds like you, Sean. So, it's a marketplace. You can sign up, create a profile, and list your startup in, you know, literally minutes. Then, I have a team on the back end that basically creates like a SIM completely free. We have a streamlined process that does that, and then once you go...

Shaan Puri

live for people who don't know

Andrew Gazdecki

It's basically a document that outlines basic details that buyers would want to know, like revenue, how much time you are spending on customer support, what the tech stack is, who your competitors are, why you are selling, the asking price, and the market opportunity. It's just basically a pitch deck, but more geared towards selling a business. After you go live on MicroAcquire, you...

Sam Parr

$1,000 worth of subscribers. They pay like $299 a year, right?

Andrew Gazdecki

yeah 290 we're at like 675,000

Sam Parr

Okay, and so, I mean, you have this grand vision here. But in doing this, I mean, there's a... what did you describe it? Did you say "Zillow for startups"? Is that how you described it once?

Andrew Gazdecki

Zillow for M&A. Basically, what we want to build is a global and modern M&A marketplace. Right now, the whole M&A marketplace is fragmented, and we're looking to consolidate it. We want to bring in everyone who's involved in M&A transactions. On the larger side, you have investment bankers and M&A advisors. On the lower end, you have business brokers, as well as people for due diligence, accounting, or potential wealth management if you're successful in your acquisition. So, we're going to be building a community of advisors that startups can hire. On top of that, we're going to build tools to make acquisitions super easy.

Shaan Puri

We bought a business for somebody on here. We did what we call a micro SPAC, which is basically your idea, Andrew. You tweeted it at me or something like that, and I thought, "This is a great idea." What we did was say, "Hey, let's put up $5 into a holding of blank shell companies." So we gave $5 to an entrepreneur, and then we found them a business to buy on MicroAcquire. We went and vetted 50 deals, 100 deals, and we found a business for them to buy. We went and bought a micro business. Other people thought that was such a cool idea that someone said, "Oh, I'm in for $5," and then another person said, "I'm in for $5," and all of a sudden we had $100. I think the total amount was like $85 to $100 that we ended up raising from random people on Twitter to help this entrepreneur, Daniel, buy his first business. He was going to go get a job, and then it was like, "Okay, instead, you can buy this Shopify app that's producing revenue and is profitable today." So that's what we ended up doing, which I think is pretty cool. That experiment is still running. The transaction closed, and he's figuring out ways to grow it. He's sending his little investor updates; it's awesome. I called it at the time, saying, "This is like when you go to buy cake mix, and it's like just add water." This is like, "Just add hustle." Here's a business; the code's already written, the business is already running, the revenue's already there, and all you need to do is grow it. You just need to add that hustle in to grow this thing.

Sam Parr

The and we did... we actually did one with The Hustle. We gave an... we did the same thing. I don't remember who came first, but we did the same thing. The guy who won it is a dentist here in New York, and he's offering to give me free braces as a thank you.

Shaan Puri

do you need braces your team team's a little good

Sam Parr

I'm actually I'm still I'm actually I'm still I I

Andrew Gazdecki

I'm still working with him on finding a business. He's being pretty picky, but we'll get something good. That's good.

Shaan Puri

it's good to be picky

Sam Parr

he was like wanna come in for a teeth cleaning retainer braces let me know I would I would love to thank

Andrew Gazdecki

He's awesome! We've been chatting almost weekly, just going over businesses he's interested in. I give my opinion, and most of them are like, "No, that one's too complex" or something like that. But Sean, I want to talk about that deal that we did. You have no idea how much work that was! I literally had to get it notarized.

Shaan Puri

well I saw all like 50 emails come through

Andrew Gazdecki

Dude, we did it! Legit. Like, you know, we formed a new Inc. (corporation) to purchase and transfer the assets into. We created stock agreements for 20+ investors. This was harder than the fundraise that I just did by a mile, and it took like 3 weeks. The legal bill for me was like $15,000, and I spent like 60 hours on it. It was totally worth it. Dan is amazing! I meet with Danny.

Shaan Puri

sounds sounds like it might not be worth it

Andrew Gazdecki

Well, well, well, here's the thing: it opened my eyes to a new opportunity for MicroAcquire as well. There are all these amazing operators that don't have capital. But again, there are so many businesses on MicroAcquire that are built by builders. They aren't looking to scale a business and they're not familiar with sales and marketing. So, we see an opportunity to potentially allow them to raise capital from other investors, just like we did with Dan. It's like a micro SPAC. SPACs have kind of gotten a bad name, so we might need to rebrand that. But yeah, if you own an agency and you see a product for $2,000,000, and you have tens of thousands of customers you can easily sell this product to, we allow you to basically present that to other investors inside MicroAcquire. This is just like a napkin idea; this isn't a guaranteed thing. But streamlining that whole process that we went through, Sean, I think could be a really, really interesting opportunity, and we're thinking about that a little bit.

Shaan Puri

By the way, the thing you're describing is basically what AngelList did. AngelList was like, "Great, we're a marketplace to connect startups and investors." They started by doing that, and then they were like, "Okay, cool, what else can we do?" Well, startups need employees, so we'll create a jobs division. Then they thought, "Well, some of these entrepreneurs want to be investors, but they're not investors. They don't have the ability to raise capital. You know, it's very hard to raise a fund." Okay, we'll create rolling funds, and we'll create SPVs (Special Purpose Vehicles). We'll create one-click ways for you to invest instead of just being an entrepreneur. So they created what's called a **market network**. People have heard of a network; a network is just a bunch of, let's say, 10 dots on a screen connected by little lines. That's a network. All the dots do their own thing. A market network is where there are 10 dots on a screen, and there are lines connecting all of them, but there are money signs going in between each. For example, on Facebook, you transfer likes to each other, you transfer comments to each other, messages. But on AngelList, when you hire someone for a job, you give them money. When you invest in somebody, you give them money. When you raise money for your rolling fund, somebody's giving you money. So every transaction, instead of just being a message, is money. If you've never heard this concept before, it's a pretty important one in terms of business. Go research market networks. James Currier and the NFX team write a lot about this. They're kind of the only ones I see writing about this, but I think it's a pretty important idea. Once you know there's such a thing as a market network, when you see a business structured as a market network, you know it's a good opportunity either to start it or to invest in it. That's why I invested in MicroAcquire, because I was like, "Oh, this is a market network. Great! I've been looking for market networks to invest in. This is a good one." Yeah, so I just wanted to kind of throw that little theory in if nobody knows that term.

Sam Parr

And one of the reasons why we wanted you to come on, Andrew, was that I want to hear about the MicroAcquire story. But I want to hear particularly two things in this order. The first is I want you to go through some of the coolest startups that you have sold or are selling on the platform, along with some of the insights that you've gotten from them and things like that. Then, what we should talk about at the end is that you sold your last company for like $20, maybe $30, or $40 million. I forget the exact amount, but it was a pretty significant and life-changing amount. You told me some crazy stuff that you do with the money, and I definitely want to talk about that. But can we start?

Shaan Puri

With that one, I want to hear that one. So, yeah, before Microcar, you start a company, you sell it for... ballpark-ish, give me a range that rhymes with $30,000,000. How do you describe this?

Andrew Gazdecki

Let's just assume I have, you know, low 8 figures. I candidly don't like to specifically say how much I sold my company for; I think it's a weird flex, and it's hard to do without feeling like you're bragging. So let's just peg it at low 8 figures. But yeah, the story there is I started a company in college when I was 21. It was a no-code app builder, so it was a SaaS company. I only raised $100,000 for that business. I ran it for about 8 years and grew it to over $10 million in annual recurring revenue. The number of employees was over 100. There were a lot of moving parts to that business, and we never paid a lot.

Shaan Puri

people overseas because

Andrew Gazdecki

yeah so do you

Shaan Puri

have a 100 employees

Sam Parr

that that or you weren't making a lot of profit and you're underpaying people

Andrew Gazdecki

Yeah, so it was a mixture of both—not underpaying people, but we probably had the team in-house. Our entire engineering team was probably overseas. The way it started was, again, I'm not a technical founder at all. I don't know how to write code. When I tell people that, they're kind of like, "Wait, what?" But I was in Chico, and there are no engineers in Chico. So, I just went on Upwork. I previously had a job board before that, which I also sold, and that was seed money for business apps. I randomly found an engineer in China; his name is Raymond Chester. I'm still friends with him today. He was just a badass—he could have been a CTO at a Silicon Valley company. I paid him well and treated him well. I consider him like a brother. Considering I didn't know how to hire other engineers or spot good engineers, I knew how to manage. That's one tip for people who aren't technical: I always recommend not learning how to code, but learning how to manage engineers properly. So, I ended up just hiring all our friends. We ended up having a house for them, and we had like 20 engineers in China. We also had engineers in Russia, and we had a QA team in Ukraine.

Sam Parr

so you're you're a big big communist fan

Andrew Gazdecki

I guess you could say so. I mean, not by design, but you know, we did not discriminate.

Sam Parr

was your customer service based out of cuba or what

Andrew Gazdecki

No, no. Customer service was in-house, but we did have 24/7 customer service. We had some customer support representatives in Brazil, France, and some other areas.

Shaan Puri

Alright, let's fast forward to the good bits. So, you build the business and it's good—$10,000,000 in recurring revenue. You decide to sell it. Why did you decide to sell it, and then how did you sell it?

Andrew Gazdecki

so I was so initially I I tried selling it when I was 26 I hired an investment bank and this kind of leads into micro hire as well we did you know full roadshow ended up getting an offer for 30,000,000 ended up turn turning down that offer we also had an offer from a strategic company one of the you know big do yourself website companies you could probably guess it I was young I felt I still had gas in the tank and so I wanted to push for you know a larger exit after we went through that process just kept running the business kept growing the business kept staying focused on executing which is the number one way to really sell a business is have a good business so went back to you know executing with my team and then just started getting tired that's the short answer just you know managing that many people monday comes around it's like hey can we talk it's like I get it like you wanna switch jobs like please just you can just email me like I'll write your reference like I love you like like please I don't need to hear like you know we're good or like I'm sick you know it it just became so much management and I love you know building businesses and the ideation stage the way the transaction went down was the private equity firm eastw capital had previously reached out to us I think it was like 5 years ago or something like that like prior to the investment bank and I know this because during due diligence we had to share all the ndas that we had signed and I found him from usw capital I was like oh we met before nice to meet you again you know let's let's see if we can make this happen they gave me fantastic terms it was an all cash transaction we did a a stock purchase so I benefited from qsbs which if you're looking to sell a business look up qsbs you pay 0 federal taxes on up to the first 10,000,000 so I saved I don't know what I saved I gotta ask my accountant but I actually didn't even know about qsbs until

Sam Parr

If you have QSBS and you're in California, it's about 15%. So, 15% on $10,000,000 means you save $1,500,000. It might be even a little bit more, but around $1.5 million in savings.

Andrew Gazdecki

no it's actually 20 I think

Shaan Puri

it's more than 20 so

Andrew Gazdecki

so I so I saved like 2,000,000 on taxes and I paid 13 state

Sam Parr

well yeah my bad I I'm an idiot I totally I picked the wrong the wrong one

Andrew Gazdecki

I forgive you sean I I'm calling you the wrong name on purpose man

Sam Parr

because you butchered my name

Shaan Puri

there's levels my name there was levels to that joke

Andrew Gazdecki

Got you back, got you back. But anyways, we structured a really favorable deal for me. We had $2,000,000 cash on hand, which we added onto the purchase price. So we had an agreed purchase price, and I said I wanted a stock deal—no earn-out. I'd love for you to buy the cash. The reason for buying the cash is that they buy it, basically, they just put a one times multiple onto the purchase price. Typically, if you are acquired, you have $2,000,000 cash in the bank account that is dividend back out to shareholders, and you're taxed at 40%. So we got Qualified Small Business Stock (QSBS) on that $2,000,000 cash. Quick transition in terms of me leaving the business: I was out of the business in 90 days.

Shaan Puri

That's great! And what did you do? You said you bought a house. What's the mindset? So, you go from basically before that, how much money did you have? Because you were just paying yourself a salary out of the business, right? It's not like you were at Sears selling TVs, so it's not like you had a bunch of money before that. You were running the business, and you probably were paying yourself some salary, but probably nothing fancy. Then, all of a sudden, you come into a bunch of money. So, describe that transition and what you did with it.

Andrew Gazdecki

Yeah, so I was okay before the acquisition. I was buying Ethereum at like $20. I remember the day Ethereum came on Coinbase and the ETF was coming out—approval or denial. I thought, "Bitcoin's going down, let's just move it into this new thing called Ethereum." So, I bought a bunch of Ethereum. Let's just call it like, you know, high six figures. I wasn't paying off debt, you know, as soon as we got acquired. But right when you go through an acquisition, you have a closing date. We had a circular closing date, and then all of a sudden, this gigantic amount of money just hits your bank account. You're like, "What the fuck did I just do?" I was actually kind of scared. I was like, "Is this legal? Did I just sell drugs?" Some people think you just celebrate and say, "I made it!" But I was the opposite. Candidly, I was chain smoking a Juul, thinking, "Oh, holy shit, this is insane." You know, I grew up poor. My dad died when I was six. I grew up in Detroit and moved to San Clemente when I was five. I knew what it was like to really struggle for money. So, going from that to an exorbitant amount where, you know, I'm not flying private or anything like that—I'm not balling like some of the other people you guys talk to—but I'm comfortable. I was set. I could literally buy a house in cash. I could put money into something really boring and just watch it grow over time. It was a life-changing moment, but my reaction was, "Holy shit, this is insane," and I hope they don't come back and say, "Hey, we found something wrong."

Sam Parr

in your doing this

Andrew Gazdecki

yeah and the business is still up

Shaan Puri

and when

Sam Parr

I did my deal. When we did my deal, I remember I called the bank ahead of time and let them know. I said, "There's going to be a big deposit, and I don't want you to think that I'm doing something illegal. Is there like a check mark you need to put next to this? I called you, I told you this is normal." They were like, "No, it's fine." Then they asked, "How much do you expect to come in?" I remember being on the phone and I whispered it. I didn't want anyone to hear. I said, "It's around this number." They replied, "I can't hear you." I whispered it again, and it was uncomfortable. I thought, "This is kind of weird saying this." They said, "Yeah, that shouldn't be a problem at all." I responded, "Well, you don't sound impressed."

Shaan Puri

sir sir that ain't shit we're we're helping

Andrew Gazdecki

Sam, I did this thing for a minute. The first thing I did was hire a wealth manager to move all the money out of my bank account. He just bought bonds. I knew nothing about bonds, and then all of a sudden, I'm like, "Why is there more money?" And they're like, "Yeah, that's how bonds used to work, at least." When I went in to wire the money, my office was in La Jolla, in San Diego. It's kind of like the Beverly Hills of San Diego. The guy was like, "This is the biggest wire I have ever done. Can we triple, triple, triple, quadruple check this?" I was like, "Really? La Jolla? There are like $10,000,000 houses everywhere." He's like, "Yeah, this is the biggest one. I'm nervous." And so we wired that over.

Sam Parr

it's a lot of money

Andrew Gazdecki

but what I used to do before

Sam Parr

I I was

Andrew Gazdecki

I was just going to say one other funny thing I do. I would go in, and this is kind of like a lame mood, but I used to go into the bank a few times before that wire. I'd pull out like a $20 bill and say, "Hey, can I get like $20 out?" Just so they could see my account. I'd say, "Yeah, I just need $20." Then they'd look, and I'd come in looking like this. I'm like 29.

Shaan Puri

because

Andrew Gazdecki

I was 29 when I sold the business. So, you know, I'm going to do some immature stuff. I'm not going to be a professional. At that time, I hadn't been married and I didn't have a kid, so it was party time at that moment. Yeah, I'd go into the bank and be like, "Hey, can you..."

Shaan Puri

I was gonna say, similarly, we had this guy James Hong, who created Hot or Not, on the podcast. He said the same thing. He goes: > "I used to go to an ATM machine and just put my card in and then say 'print balance' and just look at it. I would just do that like every day for like the first week that it happened." And he just wanted to print out the balance on his little paper, rip it up, and then go about his day. It just made him happy.

Sam Parr

So, on this podcast, we've had a lot of really successful people. We've had some who have sold things for over $1,000,000,000. We've had people who sold things for hundreds of millions of dollars. We've had people who have raised hundreds of millions of dollars. This is all a huge amount of money. But I have found myself, when we talk to these incredibly successful individuals... We just had Darmesh on the podcast, and I was like, "Darmesh, isn't it crazy? I could see your HubSpot shares. You know, right now you're worth like $900,000,000. That's wild!" So, you kind of get in this bubble of like, "Oh yeah, it's like $20,000,000, whatever, $30,000,000." Those numbers seem like a nice start. But then, when you think about one person having that amount of money, particularly when they're young—when they're 29—that's a big deal. I ran the math today. I had a friend who sold his company, and he's 32 now. He has over $50,000,000 liquid. I was like, "Dude, this is crazy that you have this!" We did some research and found out that there are like 600 Americans who have that much money or more, who are also around that same age. It's like, "Dude, that's crazy! You're like one of the almost top 500 richest young people in America." That's an astounding amount of money, and that's kind of like what you had, Andrew. It's an astounding thing. You talk about, "Well, I can't fly private." You can't fly private? But it's like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, you can." You really can! I mean, you're incredibly wealthy if you have that amount of money at such a young age. The age factor is a really big deal here.

Andrew Gazdecki

I agree because, I mean, so moving in... Do you guys want to hear what I bought? I totally...

Shaan Puri

would share it

Andrew Gazdecki

So, the first thing, my friends call me kind of like a white rapper guy. I love hip hop, fast cars, and big houses. Yeah, Detroit, man! If it wasn't Eminem, it'd be me. I bought a big house, cash, for $2,500,000 in San Mateo, right on the golf course. I see literally deer running around in my backyard. I recommended that to you, Sam, because it's like, you work so hard. When you come from nothing, I wanted something that I could just be proud of. Like, you come over and you're like, "Damn, you don't get this with a regular job." And I'm like, "Yeah, you don't. You need to start a business." I'm happy to talk to you about that because that's like all I talk about—startups and stuff like that. Also, for my wife, just for supporting me through the years, we wanted to start a family, so we bought a beautiful home. Then, I bought a C63 AMG, like you, Sam, but I bought an older one for the naturally aspirated engine. It was my second one. I wanted just a newer one with less miles. That's pretty much it. I just put the rest into really boring index funds like Vanguard and Dimensional. I barely use AngelList, I mean, so...

Sam Parr

I did the exact I do the same thing

Shaan Puri

you and sam are the same you you guys dude I did the

Sam Parr

exact same

Shaan Puri

thing white

Sam Parr

person thing

Shaan Puri

to do when you get rich

Sam Parr

Yes, I got a black Mercedes, a black AMG Mercedes. I think technically mine is faster than yours, just saying.

Andrew Gazdecki

but I looked I looked it up oh my god

Sam Parr

But they're both cool. They're both cool. I got a house; I didn't get nearly as fancy, but a nice house. Then, I also put almost every single thing into a Vanguard Total Market Index Fund. Sean and a few other people just mercilessly kind of mock me. If they don't mock me, Sean kind of rolls his eyes and says, "Why aren't you taking risks?" I'm like, "I don't know, this seems pretty risky." So you and I are the same type of thing. I don't know why Sean and all these guys we hang out with like to buy stocks all the time. I'm like, "What are you doing, dude? I don't even know how to... what do you mean, you dude?"

Shaan Puri

it's fun it's the real world casino you know like whatever you gotta have some fun with it

Sam Parr

I've never sold a stock, and I don't... These guys are doing it like every day, sharing their screenshots, and I'm like, "You're nuts." I think that's nutty.

Andrew Gazdecki

I guess my view is like, what more money do you need? The way I see it, if you do the math—10% market returns compounded for 40 years—when you're 70, you're set. You're going to be balling; you're going to be rich. You're going to die with that money. For me, I don't like checking the stock market. I don't care to; I don't want to understand it. I no longer own any Bitcoin or Ethereum. I have the most boring investment strategy. So, people listening to this who are into real estate or stocks are probably thinking, "This kid's an idiot." But I like waking up without any money problems. I don't have a mortgage, and I don't care if my stock portfolio goes down. It's just there until I'm 70. It's a set plan, and I'm not deviating from it. For me, money buys peace of mind. I have no worries. Tying in the micro acquirer, I'm comfortable taking big swings because I have a win under my belt. I'm comfortable with everything I have. I have no material wants outside of the Lamborghini Urus. I'd take that if I could afford it or actually get it approved by my wife, who's very cost-conscious and Italian. Other than that, I just love building businesses, and that's all I focus on. I think that's the key, Sam. When you go boring, it allows you to focus on what you're really, really good at rather than trying to manage stocks, invest in startups, or keep up with crypto. What's it doing today? Who's this new... I don't know, whatever.

Shaan Puri

It's like Zuckerberg wearing the same gray shirt every day. He just removed one whole thing he needs to think about, which is fashion—how he looks, what he's going to wear, or how he's going to dress that day. This allows his brain to focus on the one thing he wants it to focus on that day. So, I wanted to ask you... I want to wrap this up because we're going to basically use this as like kind of half the episode, then half the episode's going to be a different riff. But I wanted to ask you, because you're seeing a bunch of businesses on Microfire every day, what... you know, this is the podcast of business ideas. What ideas or niches or spaces are you seeing interesting things in? Give us 2 or 3 ideas that people should be looking at or spaces that people could be building in that you see opportunity in—what you would do if you were kind of like, you know, 22 again or whatever.

Andrew Gazdecki

yeah definitely well first I'm gonna take the cop out answer and I would start with something you're passionate in I think that's huge like if you're not passionate about it there's someone who is and they're gonna just beat you but I think what's really opened my eyes about microacquire every day I wake up and I get to see the most interesting startups I was telling someone earlier today like there is a a rabbit breeding company for farmers to track like when they make other rabbits or something like that make like a million a year or something like that like super niche and profitable and I'm like and it's a saas business it's legit probably not like the I would not recommend buying that business it's not for me but it just is an example of just how broad I think the future of of the small business economy is gonna be online digital and profitable people who used to want to start like a restaurant or like a plumbing business or something like that those young entrepreneurs are gonna be looking to start a niche saas company or a niche ecommerce company like categories that we see a lot of activity in are obviously shopify saas applications lots of communities even newsletters like kind of everything online and like it goes as deep as like we sold this company that was a marketing automation platform for just specific types of dentists and they were making an absorbent amount of profit sold within like a couple weeks but that's kind of where I think things are going is we're gonna have a few really really large companies you know venture is going in to you know tons of tons of different companies and we're gonna see just probably a handful of winners is my guess and then we're gonna see a long tail and the calculating the someone put this out where you know you have a 2.5% chance of becoming a unicorn when you raise venture capital so those are my odds I'd probably increase it to 20 just with my my my luck my friends call me gaslak that's a nickname I have but for the other 97.5% there's micro acquire you know if you go to business and you know you wanna sell for you know a small but life changing amount you're not getting a tech crunch you can do that but yeah trends just very very niche very very focused I think is the key and those are the businesses I get most excited about and then if you're looking to buy a business there's a ton that just are built by really really talented engineers great for acquirers I'm seeing tons of those and then also for people that are experienced in sales and marketing you wanna just like we did with dan sean where we just let's hustle on this and try to grow it that's also a huge opportunity

Sam Parr

Let's name a few specific ones. You have this one started by a guy named Arsen Nirmagomedov. I know how to say that last name because of Khabib... Khabib Nirmagomedov. I didn't realize that was a common last name. So, this is a B2B software company focused on corporate gifting. I don't even know what that is. They have $20,000,000 in ARR and $3,000,000 in profit. It looks like, right? Am I reading this right? Yep.

Shaan Puri

yep

Andrew Gazdecki

Yeah, so all those are private, so I can't name the names. The one that you're viewing at the top is a podcast that I did. So, Arson sold Respac for half a million on Micro Acquire in about a month. I believe it was like a developer API tool. There are over 1,000 startups on Micro Acquire right now. So, I don't... my memory is not that good, but keep going.

Sam Parr

Yeah, no, I... I'm looking at one of the ones you had listed here on this idea sheet. I guess that one wasn't one that you sold. So, I just want to hear about a specific one... a few specific ones that you've sold, as well as maybe a few specific ones where you saw this and you're like, "Oh my gosh, I could've... I should've started this company!" Or like, "This is amazing!" If people knew that these types of things existed, they would totally be starting things like that.

Andrew Gazdecki

Okay, so I'll talk about the ones that I know I have permission to discuss. One was a company called Push Engage. It was sold to an individual named Syed. He runs a firm called Automotive, and he is basically doing a WordPress-type roll-up. He looks for...

Sam Parr

yeah well we we've talked about we've talked about wpbeginner on here a bunch

Andrew Gazdecki

So, I said, "Awesome guy." That acquisition was in the **seven figures**. That one closed in like... I said it moved fast. That one closed in like **two weeks** or something like that. I don't know the exact details, but the founder was happy, Ced was happy. Another one would be **Median**, which sold for a quarter of a million—$300,000. I don't know the exact amount off the top of my head, but it's basically like a live chat video tool. So, if you log on to a website, instead of going to something like Crisp Chat, like this Intercom button I'm seeing right here, you can just click it, and then my video pops up. You're like, "Hey!" and then I can take control of your screen. This was probably my favorite business because you can add it for sales teams, support teams, and anytime someone has any questions. They had really, really large enterprise agreements with some big names that I can't say because they're under NDA, but public companies that you would recognize. That one was interesting. Another one was a marketing automation platform for dentists. That one sold really fast. I did another one with a company called **Exmark Clock**, which is like a time management solution for construction workers. The guy was based in Europe, and he sold for over **$500,000**—again, in less than **30 days**. It was an all-cash transaction. I'm just trying to think of the podcasts that I've done. I mean, there are so many examples.

Shaan Puri

To me, I think what people should do is, if you end up going on MicroAcquire—I've done this on a couple of different platforms—basically, you can learn a lot just by checking out the different businesses. So even if you're not ready to buy, get the premium subscription or whatever so you can read the actual details about the businesses. That's like a, you know, a $300 MBA that you can give yourself because you're going to discover all these different niches. The patterns you'll see will show which businesses sell for more and which businesses sell quickly. It will really shape your thinking. So that's kind of my recommendation. Whether you're buying—obviously, you know it's a no-brainer—but even if you're not buying, I think this is a great way to learn. I've done this; I've looked at probably 200 online businesses for sale just with the only intention of learning. Yeah, me too. And that's how my brain just sort of collects a bunch of data. So I would recommend doing that. But we should wrap it here because we're going to have to do one more segment after this. But Andrew, thanks for coming on, man. Best of luck with MicroAcquire! I'm excited to be on board with this thing. And yeah, thanks for sharing the story. I think people are going to dig it.

Andrew Gazdecki

I appreciate you guys having me on. And, yeah, for M&A coming up, I appreciate you guys supporting it.

Shaan Puri

sweet

Sam Parr

thank you