Despite being on an island in the middle of Indonesia, Kamil Zowczac was far from relaxed. He’d been coding daily for months and his bank account had dwindled to pocket change. Kamil needed to cash in on his product soon or he’d risk missing rent.
“I was close to being broke,” he says. “I decided to sell the whole thing because I couldn’t even invest money in ads.”
Kamil had recently quit his job to put everything into developing an application called Copycopter. To make his savings stretch further, he moved to Bali where he could also meet other indie hackers. Everything seemed to be going well at first. He’d built his social media video-making platform in just three weeks and grew a surprisingly large user base in China.
But Kamil was burning through money and motivation like wildfire through dry brush.
“I became so stuck in my head that I couldn’t get a fresh perspective,” he says. “I stopped thinking strategically. Every day was just about coding one more thing.”
Kamil realized that if he wanted to survive, he needed to capitalize on his success through an acquisition. He first tried to sell on X.com (Twitter), but after several fruitless conversations, Kamil turned to Acquire.com where he eventually found the perfect buyer.
“The buyer had so many ideas,” Kamil says. “He had everything that I was missing.”
Now, Kamil is back to building, his financial crisis averted with the aid of Acquire’s team. He’s had a chance to reflect on his experience and shared his thoughts on our Startup Acquisition Stories Podcast. Read on to learn how Kamil balanced building and marketing his product, juggling multiple offers, and keeping his financial statements in order to close his dream sale.
Betting on Bali
In 2022, Kamil left his position as co-founder of a VC-backed startup and bet everything on building his own product on the tropical island of Bali, Indonesia.
Kamil selected Bali for two reasons: first, he wanted to give himself as much time as possible to build his product. In Bali, his expenses were lower, and he could invest more time and money into Copycopter.
Second, Kamil knew there was a community of like-minded self-starters there. If he needed help building his product, he could ask for help from the veterans around him. We’ve interviewed a couple of founders on Bootstrappers who did the same like Danny Postma.
Whether it be in Bali or San Francisco, Kamil recommends that anyone interested in building a product surround themselves with more experienced founders.
“In that environment, it’s so much easier to meet people who do the same stuff,” he says. “It’s unbelievably valuable.”
Kamil’s Building Blitz
After going all-in on Copycopter’s development for just under a year, Kamil ran out of cash. The fastest – and harshest – lesson he learned is that, regardless of the quality of your product, it won’t sell if you don’t tell anyone about it.
“I think my biggest mistake was not focusing on marketing,” Kamil says. “Instead of actually selling what I was building, I was constantly building more and more.”
Built on OpenAI and other LLM models, Copycopter allowed users to generate videos with voiceovers for social media platforms using simple text inputs. Early in the rollout phase, Kamil strategically used Copycopter as its own marketing tool, posting social media content made with Copycopter to drive more customers to the platform.
In the beginning, Kamil couldn’t imagine anyone would pay to use his little project, but after a few posts, the videos unexpectedly went viral in China. That was when Kamil knew Copycopter had market potential.
Kamil converted that small spike in popularity into paying customers by also launching Copycopter on Product Hunt. Users emphasized that they loved Copycopter’s versatile editor, which allowed them to manipulate any elements inside the videos themselves, a rarity in the market at the time.
But by committing all of his time and energy to building the Copycopter product, Kamil had little in reserves to market it. Close to breaking point, mentally and financially, Kamil had to sell up.
“When you don’t have any money, you feel a lot of pressure to make your business work.” With his runway shrinking rapidly, Kamil looked for an exit: “I couldn’t figure out how to grow the business, so I decided to sell to someone who could.”
X Didn’t Mark the Spot
In his journey to getting acquired, Kamil feels like he’s made every possible mistake. Early in the acquisition process, for instance, his haste to sell locked him into a low-ball deal, even as better offers rolled in.
Initially, Kamil thought his product was too small for Acquire.com, so he announced that Copycopter was for sale on X (Twitter). After finding a buyer on X, Kamil brought him over to Acquire.com to do the paperwork. However, he almost immediately regretted the decision after signing the LOI.
“I thought having just one offer was a win,” he says. “But in reality, the first offer is not the best offer.”
Once Kamil moved his conversations to Acquire.com, he says the quality of interested buyers immediately shot up. On X, he was often unsure whether the people who messaged him were sincerely interested in buying his product. On Acquire.com with its more extensive buyer verification process, he saw that buyers asked serious questions and wanted to move the conversation forward. He also could rest easily knowing that Acquire.com provides easy, automatic legal documents and agreements to protect the deal like NDAs and LOIs
That’s the difference between searching for buyers on a public forum and a vetted marketplace.
The problem was Kamil got locked in with his original buyer from X.com who then told him it would be three weeks before he could move forward. All of Kamil’s friends told him that if the buyer actually wanted to move forward, they wouldn’t push it off for so long and that the deal would likely fall through. Tempted by the money, Kamil stuck with the offer only for the buyer to pull out three weeks later.
“I wasn’t even surprised when he wrote to tell me it wouldn’t happen,’” Kamil says.
Kamil learned the hard way that if a buyer wants to move, they will move fast, and if they don’t want to move, they probably aren’t serious. He recommends only signing LOIs with buyers who want to close the deal quickly.
Finding a Buyer With “Everything Copycopter was Missing”
Finally, after an exhausting month of trying to find a buyer, Kamil met his match. The buyer found Copycopter on Acquire.com and contacted Kamil on all the channels he could. Kamil finally noticed his messages and appreciated that the buyer was persistent and had specific plans for Copycopter. Within 24 hours of contact, he signed a new deal, transferred assets, and sent the money over.
“This buyer had everything I was missing,” Kamil says. “His ideas were my ideas, too, but I had just been so tired, I couldn’t see how to implement them.”
Rather than feeling the emptiness many sellers describe after an exit, Kamil found himself learning valuable lessons watching his buyer scale the business successfully: “I’m just sitting on the side, watching what he did with my product like, ‘Oh, that’s how you do it!’”
Kamil’s biggest piece of advice to startups looking to get acquired is to keep their finances in order. When Kamil finally got a serious offer that he was excited about, the buyer requested financial information. Kamil sent organized, accurate numbers that reassured the buyer everything was what it seemed.
“Even if you don’t sell the startup, it makes things easier for you if you know your metrics,” Kamil says. “Track everything, know your numbers; don’t live in chaos.”
If you’re in this same situation, you should check out our article on how to prepare for financial due diligence.
Kamil also advises founders to compare multiple offers. The first offer rarely represents the best opportunity, and Kamil regrets not having been more patient before signing an LOI.
Since selling, Kamil feels confident that his product is being driven to levels he couldn’t have reached on his own, and feels happy knowing Copycopter is in good hands.
“At the end of the day,” he says, “I’m super happy that that buyer specifically bought Copycopter because I know it’s in good hands.”