Built a Profitable Startup and Got Acquired at Just 18

Built a Profitable Startup and Got Acquired at Just 18

Author: Acquire.com June 3, 2025 Duration: 19:26

At just 18 years old, Siyabend Özdemir bootstrapped and sold Gen PPT, an AI-powered presentation generator used by students, marketers, and solopreneurs across the globe.


What started as a school-night experiment turned into a viral hit driven by indie hacker hustle, programmatic SEO, and a killer demo shared on X. Siyabend listed the business on Acquire.com and closed a smooth acquisition just days later.


In this episode, he shares how he built, scaled, and exited Gen PPT and what comes next for a founder just getting started.


You’ll learn:

► How Siyabend validated the idea using a real SEO dataset ► Why building in public on X was key to early growth

► What made Acquire.com the best fit for a solo founder exit ► How he handled burnout, due diligence, and buyer negotiation

► What to do after your first big win, including gold bars and Range Rovers


3 takeaways from Siyabend’s exit:

  1. Organize everything—docs, access, financials—for a fast handoff
  2. Structure your business and taxes early, even if you're young
  3. Use the right platform to streamline the acquisition process


Whether you’re 18 or 38, bootstrapping solo or building in public, this conversation is proof that you can build something valuable and sell it on your terms.


Listen now to hear how Siyabend pulled off his first exit and what he’s building next.


Follow Siyabend on LinkedIn



Behind every successful startup acquisition, there's a story-a complex mix of strategy, emotion, and paperwork that rarely gets discussed openly. Startup Acquisition Stories, from the team at Acquire.com, pulls back the curtain on those real-world transactions. Each episode features founders and entrepreneurs who have personally navigated the process of selling or buying a business through their platform. You'll hear them recount the nuanced decisions that don't make it into press releases: the challenging conversations around valuation, the subtle art of vetting the opposite party, and the critical, often overlooked, steps after the handshake. This podcast digs into the practicalities of due diligence, structuring terms, and managing the transfer of assets, all the way through to escrow and the crucial post-deal transition. It’s a grounded, detail-oriented look at the mechanics of a business exit or expansion, straight from the people who’ve lived it. For anyone curious about the actual path to a deal, beyond the theory, this series offers a rare archive of lived experience and hard-won advice.
Author: Language: English Episodes: 100

Startup Acquisition Stories
Podcast Episodes
From a Real Problem to a SaaS Product Buyers Wanted [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 23:20
Jacob Miller didn’t set out to build a SaaS product. He was running a home services business when a shift in how customers search started to affect lead flow in a real way.Instead of relying on agencies, he built his own…
A Profitable E-commerce Brand Built for Acquisition [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 14:17
Charles Kenny built a profitable e-commerce brand after solving a recovery problem he experienced firsthand. The product worked, customers were buying, and the business ran cleanly.Still, as the brand matured, one limit…
The Listing Fix That Led Utilize to a Successful Exit [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 20:31
Jatin Arora spent six years building Utilize and reached a point most founders recognize: the product worked, customers were happy, and growth was steady.But when he and co-founder Sameer Sanagala decided to sell, the fi…
How One Acquisition Solved a Critical Growth Bottleneck [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 20:50
Joel Graber built Modern Outbound from zero and watched the same problem show up across every client: design bottlenecks he could not solve. Building a service from scratch meant years of hiring, finding product-market f…
Bootstrapped, Profitable, and Acquired in Four Days [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 12:28
Customer support software is one of the most crowded SaaS categories out there. Intercom, Crisp, and dozens of others have been around for years. Building something new in that space and actually finding customers takes…
How Usage-Based Pricing Led to a Seven-Figure Exit [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 56:30
Jeremy Redman didn't set out to build a team. TaskMagic began as a no-code browser automation tool built to eliminate repetitive tasks. While it solved a real problem, it also revealed early limits.Rather than stopping t…
How a Simple Academic Tool Became an Acquired Startup [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 7:02
Ovi Shekh didn’t set out to build a startup. Wisdomic AI began as a practical response to an academic challenge, where literature review work demanded time, structure, and careful organization.The first version was inten…
Valuable, But Not Truly Scalable [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 21:30
Hugo Pereira didn’t build Ritmoo chasing hypergrowth. The product emerged from real operating experience inside scale-ups, where goal management often looked structured but repeatedly failed in execution.Ritmoo was desig…
How Pre-Revenue Startups Became Repeat Exits [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 15:36
Faizan Muhhamad didn’t build software to scale teams or chase traction. He built products to work, transfer cleanly, and make sense to the right buyer from day one.By treating software as a transferable asset, Faizan bui…
Why Local Habits and Simple Tech Created a Perfect Exit [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 26:03
Renata Raya didn’t chase a complex tech idea. She solved a simple problem: cart abandonment in Latin America.By building GoRecover around WhatsApp instead of email, she achieved a 20% recovery rate and created a stable,…