Startup Acquisition Stories with Noah Bragg, Founder of Potion.so

July 5, 2023 Tags:

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Noah Bragg is the former founder of Potion.so, a custom Notion website builder, which he sold for about $300,000.

Noah has a background in software development where lead the standard path of employment working for different tech startups earlier in his career. He’d always been a side project tinkerer but decided to test his founder mettle around 2018 with his college buddy as they tried to build the next “big startup”. Although the experience ended up not going very well, it did illuminate for him the alternative path of being a bootstrapper/indiehacker building sustainable cash-flowing SaaS businesses with a team of one. It turned out to be more his style with lesser expectations of “unicorn or fail” and it’s what led him to build Potion.so.

Here’s what else Noah shared about his experience of growth through to acquisition:

  • What fueled Potion’s growth was Noah’s idea to share the transparent journey of building the SaaS in public (on Twitter specifically). He credits the open sharing strategy for acquiring his first 75+ customers and playing a big part in quickly getting product feedback.
  • His decision to sell came from a combination of seeing growth plateau after pushing in the area to the max of his abilities and having the itch to build something new.
  • He decided to list the SaaS business on Acquire.com and would be happy to sell if a buyer matched his valuation.
  • Originally listing at $400,000, he had some interest but got the idea that it was priced too high after talking to a few buyers. Lowering the sale price to $350,000 got him to the finish line.
  • Final score: 25+ buyers signed the NDA to get more details of the business, took 6 calls, got 3 offers, and closed the deal with one within 2 months after listing.

Noah shares a lot more detail regarding how he decided to go with his buyer, tips around due diligence as it relates to his direct experience, and cautions a complicated process during the asset transfer stage that may change how a founder should structure their business from the start.

Here’s where you can go to check out more about Noah Bragg –

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Roger Tung

Roger is Head of Marketing at Acquire. He has a passion for all things related to marketing but especially in creating content, running digital ads, and sifting through marketing analytics.