Jake Moshel had been trying to make money online since middle school, experimenting with e-commerce, sales, and other small projects. At 14, one idea stood out from everything he had tried before: custom phone cases made specifically for mountain bikers. That idea became Apexsendco.
The niche was unusually specific, but it was also one Jake understood firsthand. That gave him a clear starting point for both the product and the audience, and the business became the first venture where he felt he had found real product-market fit.
By 16, the business was largely running on autopilot, and Jake faced a different question: keep operating something that worked, or sell and make room for software. He chose to list on Acquire.com, setting up a new challenge: finding the right buyer for such a specialized business and navigating his first exit.
Finding Product-Market Fit in a Narrow E-commerce Niche
Those early experiments brought in only a few hundred dollars, but they kept Jake testing new ideas and business models.
At 14, he moved into print-on-demand and launched Apexsendco. This time, something changed. Jake describes it as the first business that truly “clicked” and the first where he was able to find real product-market fit.
The concept was unusually specific. Apexsendco sold phone cases for mountain bikers, featuring designs of each customer’s bike and its specifications. Rather than expanding into multiple product categories, Jake kept the offer focused entirely on those cases and that audience.
The catalog, however, was anything but small. Jake built designs for more than 500 bikes and supported iPhones ranging from the SE through the current models available at the time. That gave a highly specialized product a wide range of combinations within the same niche.
There was also a direct connection between founder and customer. Jake was a mountain biker himself, so the audience Apexsendco served was already familiar to him. That familiarity gave him a practical starting point when it came time to turn the idea into actual sales.
Turning Instagram DMs Into the First Sales
Once Jake had the product, the next challenge was getting it in front of the right people. Because Apexsendco served such a specific audience, he did not need to start broad. He could focus directly on the mountain biking community he already understood.
That meant doing the work manually. Jake began reaching out to potential customers through Instagram, sending DMs to people he thought might be interested in seeing their own bike featured on a phone case. Those conversations led to Apexsendco’s first customers and gave the business an early foothold inside its niche.
There was no complex acquisition system behind those first sales. The product was specific, the audience was identifiable, and Jake had a direct way to reach them. That simplicity helped him move from an idea to a business with paying customers without having to expand beyond the market he had chosen.
Over time, Apexsendco moved well beyond those early DMs. The business reached a point where Jake says it was largely running on autopilot. By then, his challenge had changed completely: he was no longer trying to prove the business could work, but deciding whether he wanted to keep building it.
Why Sell a Business That Was Already Working?
At that point, Jake was already thinking about what he wanted to build next. He had proved that he could take a focused e-commerce idea from early outreach to real product-market fit. Keeping the business in the background, however, still meant keeping part of his attention there.
Jake wanted to move into software, where he saw a much larger opportunity. Selling Apexsendco would give him some additional capital, but he says the bigger motivation was mental space. He no longer wanted the business sitting in the back of his mind while he focused on something new.
Scale also played a role in that decision. Looking back, Jake describes Apexsendco as a business serving a relatively small market, while the software company he wanted to pursue had much greater venture-scale potential. The sale was therefore less about walking away from something that had stopped working and more about making room for the kind of company he wanted to build next.
The Search for the Right Buyer
Once Jake decided to sell, the specificity that had defined Apexsendco became an important part of the search for a buyer. This was not a business built for a broad audience. In Jake’s view, someone taking it over would need a genuine interest in mountain biking to understand the product and want to keep building within that niche.
That made buyer fit especially important. Jake spent time speaking with potential buyers, answering questions and exploring their interest in the business. Not every conversation developed into an offer, so finding someone who saw the same opportunity required patience.
After about two months on Acquire.com, Jake finally connected with a buyer who saw the opportunity in the business. Their first call lasted around 30 minutes, and by the time it ended, Jake had an offer.
From Offer to Close in About Two Weeks
That offer put the sale into motion, but Jake still had to turn a business he knew closely into information a buyer could review and verify. The biggest preparation task was compiling the business data and building out the data room. He describes that as the most time-consuming work he had to complete before the acquisition.
Fortunately, Jake was not starting from an empty folder. Product descriptions and other information already existed on the Apexsendco website, so he could pull much of that material directly. He also had a habit of keeping short briefs about his projects in his Notes app, which gave him another source of documentation when preparing the business for review.
After the offer, Jake and the buyer signed the LOI and moved into due diligence. That stage was relatively light. Rather than a lengthy investigation stretching over months, Jake recalls a small number of questions going back and forth between the two sides.
His role was largely to substantiate what had already been presented about the business. Jake sent supporting evidence for the data the buyer wanted to verify, allowing the diligence process to move forward without major complications.
The remaining steps included processing the transaction documents, setting up escrow, and transferring the Apexsendco assets to the buyer. Jake says both the documentation and escrow were straightforward. From the offer through diligence and closing, the entire acquisition took roughly a week and a half to two weeks, ending with the asset transfer and release of the funds.
Lessons From Building and Selling a Niche Business
Jake’s first exit gave him a clearer view of what matters before and during a sale. His biggest takeaways came from preparing the business, speaking with potential buyers, and looking back at the timing of his exit.
- Depth can matter more than breadth. Apexsendco stayed focused on one product and one audience while building hundreds of variations within that niche.
- Start where your customers already are. Jake found his first buyers through direct Instagram outreach instead of waiting for traffic to come to him.
- A working business can still be the right business to sell. Apexsendco was largely on autopilot, but Jake wanted the capital and mental space to pursue a bigger opportunity.
- Buyer fit matters in a specialized niche. The narrower the business, the more important it can be to find someone who understands the market and sees its potential.
- Document the business before you need to sell it. Jake’s existing briefs and business information made preparing the data room much easier.
- Give the sale enough time. Jake’s biggest takeaway was patience. Looking back, he wishes he had listed earlier and allowed more time to explore potential buyers.
For Jake, the exit was not only proof that he could build and sell a business. It also gave him a clearer sense of what to carry into whatever he builds next.
What’s Next for Jake
Jake is now building Novix AI, a B2B SaaS product designed to reduce churn by automatically fixing customer-reported bugs. At the time of the conversation, he had been working on it for about two months and was already collaborating with early design partners.
The shift has introduced Jake to a new challenge: B2B software marketing. He describes it as a completely different game from selling a physical B2C product, adding a new learning curve as he builds it.
Thinking about what comes next for your business? Meet our team of M&A advisors and see how we can help you prepare for an equally successful exit.
Apexsendco may have been Jake’s first exit, but it is clearly not the end of his founder journey. Watch the full conversation on the Acquire.com YouTube channel to hear the story in his own words, and follow Jake to see what he builds next: