Filed under: acquisition
14 storiesThe archive, indexed. Every story carries its tags at the foot of the page.
Two $1.3bn exits in five weeks, both priced under 3x ARR
Bending Spoons has agreed to buy Miro at a $1.355bn enterprise value, five weeks after announcing Airtable at $1.285bn. About a third of the combined price was money the two companies already had in the bank.
Miro sells for $1.36bn, 92% below its 2021 price
Bending Spoons is buying the whiteboard company in cash. The 2021 mark was $17.5bn, and it is the second such deal in a month.
When hiring fails, some founders buy the firm instead
One founder could not recruit the skills her business needed, so she acquired a company that already had them. The case for treating a small acquisition as a hiring decision.
94 search funds launched in a year as MBAs buy their way to CEO
Business school graduates in the US are borrowing to buy established small firms and appoint themselves boss. One doubled her company in two years. Another closed his and filed for personal bankruptcy.
Startup outbids Google's $10m offer for Spirit Airlines data
Google valued the bankrupt airline's operational records at $10 million. A startup went higher. The number is the story.
Inc: 65% of small firms carry a books problem that kills sales
Accounts built to satisfy a tax return are not accounts built to satisfy a buyer. A US report puts the share of small businesses with that gap at 65 per cent.
Mailchimp added everything, then Intuit stopped counting it
A product that won by doing one job now has its numbers stripped out of its parent's growth rate. The roadmap decision that got it there was made in 2019.
Product Hunt from a 20-minute email list to a 60 per cent cut
Ryan Hoover built the first version in about twenty minutes with a borrowed link-sharing tool. Twelve years, a $20 million sale and one round of deep cuts later, only about one launch in ten reaches the homepage.
Swansea vodka brand sold to Sazerac in reported £500m deal
Charlie Morgan and Jackson Quinn started Au Vodka in their home city in 2015. Eleven years on, the American owner of Southern Comfort has agreed to buy it.
Founder rebuilt her sale process after four deals collapsed
Christine Slocumb says one buyer walked a week before closing. She rewrote how she screened the next one.
Atlassian starts billing Loom's watchers, and deletes the growth loop
Loom's free viewer seats inside paying accounts are being converted to full paid seats automatically. Four acquirers have run the same free-tier cut inside two years, and the defaults tell you who understood their funnel.
Airtable sells for $1.28bn, having raised $1.4bn
Bending Spoons is buying the spreadsheet-database company for cash, four and a half years after a private valuation above $11bn. The sale price is less than the money investors put in.
Mailchimp sold for $12bn without raising a round
Ben Chestnut and Dan Kurzius built an email tool as a side project inside their web design agency. Twenty years later Intuit bought it for about $12 billion.
Airtable sells at 2.7x ARR, a ninth of its 2021 mark
Bending Spoons is buying Airtable at a $1.285bn enterprise value on roughly $480m of recurring revenue. The company was worth $11.7bn in December 2021 and raised $1.4bn along the way.