How to Create the Perfect Listing When Selling Your Business on Acquire.com

The first step in getting Acquire’d is creating the perfect listing. The better your listing, the easier it is to grab the right buyer’s attention. This article will walk you through each step of the listing process, with tips from our curation team and customer success managers. 

But before you can begin listing, first create a seller account on Acquire.com. Just head to the seller homepage and click Join Now. Once you’ve created an account and verified your email address, you can start completing your company’s listing. 

When you’re ready, continue below and you’ll be fielding buyer offers in no time.

Before You Start Listing

Here are a couple of things to remember before you jump in.

You Control Access to Your Private Information

Under My Listing, you’ll see two columns. Everything on the left is visible to buyers. The information on the right, however, is private. Buyers wanting to view your private details must sign a non-disclosure agreement when requesting access. 

You decide who gets access to your private information. Your account defaults to auto-approve access to buyer requests and we recommend keeping this setting enabled to field more inquiries rather than manually approve every request (which takes time). But if you want to manually review requests, disable this setting. 

Take Your Time Creating Your Listing

Now that you’re ready to list, don’t rush. I understand you want your startup to go live as soon as possible, but the more information you include (and the more accurate it is), the more buyer interest you’ll attract. It also helps you match with the right buyers, saving you time and effort when selling your business.

A Step-by-Step Guide to Creating The Perfect Listing

Step 1: Tell Us About Your Startup

Enter your startup’s name and website. 

Step 2: Connect Your Metrics 

Your metrics can answer many buyer questions. By connecting web, customer, and financial metrics, buyers can view your company’s performance in real time. And connecting all three adds a badge to your profile that can reassure buyers your numbers are accurate.

Financial Metrics

Connect your accounting software, such as QuickBooks or Sage, and we’ll automatically pull in the right data (including TTM, last month’s gross revenue, and last month’s net profit). 

Customer Metrics

Connect your payment portal such as Stripe, PayPal, Braintree, or App Store. This will allow us to pull data about your annual recurring revenue, customer subscriptions, churn, and so on. 

Web Traffic

Connect your Google Analytics account to share customer insights within your listing.

Pro Tip

Even if you don’t currently use Google Analytics, we highly recommend you sign up for it (it’s free). Once you’ve set up Google Analytics, you can link it to your listing to share traffic data. 

Once you’ve connected your company metrics, we’ll sync them to your listing and build charts of your company’s performance. 

Note: If you can’t connect your metrics, send us screenshots of your software. Our team will verify the data and manually add it to your listing. 

Need more help? Here are step-by-step guides on how to connect your financial metrics, web traffic, and customer metrics. 

Step 3: Complete Your Seller Profile

Share a little bit about yourself, including your background and interests. Give buyers a glimpse of the person behind the company. 

After you’ve added your personal information, connect your LinkedIn profile. While optional, sellers with LinkedIn profiles usually get more inquiries. Buyers must also add their LinkedIn profile, so the transparency goes both ways, adding another layer of identity verification (more on that below) to create more trust in the marketplace.

Connecting LinkedIn also pre-fills many listing fields, saving you time. Our platform pulls in your LinkedIn photo, for example, so you don’t have to upload one separately. 

Step 4: Verify Your Identity As a Seller 

We verify everyone’s identity so you can do business together safely. This also helps overcome the first hurdle in any acquisition: Verifying that the person and company are real. 

Once you’ve completed your seller profile, you’ll “Verify with Persona” to add government-issued ID that verifies your identity. This can be your passport, driver’s license, or any other government-issued identification. Persona will verify that the ID matches your name. When it’s verified from their end, our team does a final verification and you’re all set. 

(Disclaimer: We don’t store your personal or sensitive data during this process. You can read more about Persona’s security certifications and privacy policies here.)

Once you’re verified, you’ll receive a badge on your profile which shows everyone in the marketplace you’re a legitimate and trusted founder.

Pro Tip

To get verified quickly, take a photo of the government-issued ID instead of using a scanned image. Make sure you have enough lighting to take a clear photo. 

Need more help? Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to verify your identity.  

Step 5: Share General Startup Information

This is a public introduction to your startup and its growth opportunities. Start by adding the date you founded your startup, team size, startup type, and location, followed by your listing headline and description. 

Startup Type

Select your startup type from the dropdown field: SaaS, Marketplace, Mobile, eCommerce, Shopify App, Crypto, Agency, or Other. This categorization is critical because each startup type places a different upper limit on your asking price multiple (more on that in Step 6). Why this limitation? If your multiple is significantly out-of-market, buyers won’t engage with you, and worse, it can discourage buyers from using the marketplace at all, limiting your buyer pool.

Your startup type also helps attract the right buyers since they often use filters when searching for the type of business they want to buy. In other words, your startup needs to appear in the right place. For every listing, our curation team will verify that the category is correct, so you’ll have a second pair of eyes on it if you’re unsure. 

Pro Tip

Sellers often confuse the Shopify App and eCommerce categories when they use Shopify to run their business. However, a Shopify App business is an app specifically created for the Shopify marketplace and Shopify users. 

Headline

This is the “quick and dirty” description of your business. Prioritize buzzwords that make it easy for buyers to understand what you’re selling. What does your business do? How is it useful? Who is it for? The less the buyer has to infer for themselves, the less likely they’ll pass over your listing for another. Our curation team will also edit this headline to make it as attractive as possible. 

Description

While the headline (see above) is short and sweet, the description should be thorough. Explain your business and its opportunities in detail. If needed, our curation team will edit this description and optimize the rest of your listing too. 

Pro Tip

If you want to stand out as a seller, record a video where you share a little bit about yourself and your business to convey value, trust, and credibility. We don’t have the native ability to add a video to a listing yet, so you could use Loom to record and host your video or upload one to YouTube and insert the link in this section of your listing (or under Company Overview if that makes more sense). 

Step 6: Set Your Asking Price

Enter your asking price and how you arrived at that number. 

Pro Tip

A big misconception is that your asking price limits the closing price. Instead, think of your asking price as a starting point for negotiations. 

Asking Price

Your asking price should reflect current performance. How has your startup performed in the last 12 months (or fewer if your business is younger than one year)? Set your asking price too low and buyers might assume your startup is too good to be true. Too high and you might repel your ideal buyer. 

Here’s how to calculate the value of your online business using the most common valuation methods buyers use. And here’s a free valuation calculator for SaaS startups to help you determine a realistic number. 

Alongside these resources, we also issue a biannual acquisition multiples report that analyzes the multiples at which most startups got acquired on the platform (based on their revenue at the time). The report combines 100s of data points to help you determine a realistic baseline for your asking price. 

Our most recent report, released in October 2022, recommends these multiples based on the data submitted by founders who sold businesses on Acquire in the last six months:

• SaaS: 2-5x revenue or 4-7x profit
• Ecommerce: 1-2x revenue or 3-5x profit
• Marketplace: 1-3x revenue
• Agency: 1x revenue or 2-3x profit

You can use this information as a starting point, but adjust the multiple to the unique characteristics of your business. Everything from your financials to your tech stack influences your valuation and ignoring those details will make it harder to find a buyer. 

You’ll always get a second pair of eyes on your asking price. Our goal is to help you get acquired, and that means setting a realistic asking price that attracts buyer interest.

Asking Price Reasoning

You risk underselling your business by not paying enough attention to your reasoning. Include everything a buyer might need to justify the price – especially if your asking price is higher than usual. For example, maybe you have a high-value domain or your intellectual property is difficult to duplicate. This is about hard facts, not your emotional connection to your business. 

Step 7: Add Your Company Overview

Describe what makes your startup special, including your business and pricing model, competitors, and growth opportunities. 

Business Model 

Succinctly describe your company’s business and pricing model here. For example, “B2C SaaS charging a monthly recurring fee across three pricing tiers: free (basic), $50 per month (pro), and $100 per month (enterprise).”

Tech Stack

Share what tech stack your product or service is built on. For example, React, Firebase, and AWS.

Competitors

List your company’s main competitors.

Growth Opportunity

Explain how potential buyers would earn a return on their acquisition of your business. Suggest products, strategies, or people who could scale the business’s revenue and profits. Articulate every possible growth opportunity so buyers know what they need to do to earn a return.  

Key Assets

Choose what makes your business valuable. Maybe you’ve built a big Instagram following, a high-authority web domain, intellectual property, or established a strong customer base in a niche market. In short, add any assets that make your startup worth buying.  

Keywords

Add keywords that make it easy for buyers to find your company listing such as industry, technology, location, and so on. Put yourself in a buyer’s shoes and include anything you might search for in that position. Think of it as the SEO of Acquire.com. 

Step 8: Add Acquisition Details

Share any acquisition details, including why you’re selling your company and whether your business has any financing. 

Reason for Selling

Why are you selling? Tell your story, including where you’re from, why you started your business, and why you want to sell it now. Help our team understand your goals, and give buyers an insight into you as a founder. 

Financing

Disclose any funding or debt. Do you have investors? Do partners need to be repaid? Were any outside funds used to get the startup going or are you fully bootstrapped? 

Pro Tip

We’re not asking if you’ll finance the acquisition for the buyer, but if your business has taken on financing in the past that’s still outstanding. 

Step 9: Add P&L Statement (If Unable to Connect to Metrics)

If you couldn’t connect your metrics in Step 2, you can upload your profit and loss (P&L) statement manually, summarizing the revenues, costs, and business expenses for a potential buyer. Our team will also use your P&L to verify revenue before approving your listing. 

Step 10: Add Supporting Documents and Files

Upload any supplementary documentation that potential buyers might find useful under this section. For example, add a pitch deck (we can also create one for you), product demo deck, asset valuation estimates (like if you have a valuable domain or intellectual property), or customer testimonials. You can also upload charts, diagrams, or analyses related to your business. Essentially, include any documents that help convey the value of your company.

Time to Create Your Perfect Listing

Once you’ve completed your listing, our curation team will review it and respond with a decision to list or reject your startup in just one business day. If it’s a rejection, we’ll explain why and how to fix it. If it’s approved, your startup will go live right away.

Final Pro Tip

You’re welcome to edit your listing once it goes live, but any changes will go through our curation team first. Please take our one-day turnaround time into account when sprucing up your listing.

Happy listing!