Startup Acquisition Stories Podcast with Wil Schroter, Founder of Startups.com

Startup Acquisition Stories Podcast with Wil Schroter, Founder of Startups.com

Author: Acquire.com February 27, 2024 Duration: 1:01:17

Most venture-backed startups fail.


It’s a well-known fact, yet many venture-backed founders choose to burn out and ride their dying startups into the ground. Few realize they have options like M&A that could salvage their business for both themselves and their investors.


Wil Schroter, founder of Startups.com knows all about failing startups. He founded nine different startups over 30 years despite one of his first businesses crashing due to lack of capital. When his business failed, Wil was perplexed. A business valued in the millions with happy customers and even profits was still able to fall apart to nothing. It defied logic and he felt the business surely should still be valuable to someone.


It caused Wil to spend years talking to people in San Francisco trying to understand exactly how to sell and buy dying VC-backed startups.


After meetings with over 100 failing VC-backed businesses, Wil created his company Startups.com by buying the assets of six burnt-out VC startups. Since then, he’s made an estimated 50 times ROI from his buys.


Tune in to an extra-special episode of Startup Acquisition Stories with Wil and Andrew as they discuss a topics rarely heard about outside of corporate boardrooms like:


► How to know it’s time to throw in the towel on your VC-backed startup ► How to break the news that you want to leave your startup to your board ► Which types of buyers will want to buy your startup ► How to restructure your startup so that it is as desirable as possible to potential buyers.


Wil’s isn’t just getting started – he’s been doing what he does for decades. Follow his journey at: Startups.com

​​https://www.linkedin.com/in/wilschroter/ ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬ Be sure to subscribe to see the newest acquisition stories every Tuesday and gain the knowledge to buy or sell your own online business → https://youtube.com/@acquiredotcom?sub_confirmation=1 Want more stories? Access the past 50+ acquisition stories here → https://blog.acquire.com/tag/startup-acquisition-stories-podcast/ Thinking about selling your own startup? The number one question is always 'how much can I sell for' and we've got the answers in our biannual valuation multiples reports here → https://blog.acquire.com/tag/acquire-coms-acquisition-multiples-report/ Thinking about buying a startup? Sign up for a free buyer account and browse all the live listings. Upgrade only when you find the right one that fits your acquisition criteria to engage. Get Started → https://acquire.com/buyers/ ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬ Follow the Guest: Wil Schroter

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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
How to Sell Your Startup for a Life-Changing Payout [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 22:23
What does it take to sell a music software startup and walk away with a life-changing payout?Emmett Cooke says it comes down to four things:1. Leveraging existing relationships to acquire your first customers2. Building…
Are You Selling an Asset or Selling a Job? [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 19:40
If Ian Fourie could give two pieces of advice to founders selling their SaaS startups, he’d say: Register your business in only one country Start pushing founder responsibilities to employees as soon as you canIan sold h…
How Gabby Rosen Flipped a Newsletter for 18x in Under a Year [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 16:12
What does it take to sell a startup for almost 20 times what you paid for it?Gabriella (Gabby) Rosen says it comes down to three things:Having an unfair advantage when you buyListing on Acquire.com for slightly less than…
Want to Build an Agency Worth Buying? Spend a Decade Saying Yes [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 29:23
While working full-time as a pharmaceutical sales rep, Bobby Dimovski noticed that medical professionals were: Always looking for new ways to grow their business. Usually 10 years behind on marketing trends. Hard to acce…
Look For This When Acquiring Startups, It Could Triple the Resale [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 12:07
After building and selling one of the first ChatGPT plagiarism checkers on the market in 2024, Tomer Tarsky decided to search Acquire.com for another project in the edtech AI space. He found a promising business, grew it…
Turning Your Weakest Skill into an Acquire’d Startup [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 16:58
Are you a developer who’s bad at email marketing? Ironically, you may be in a great position to build the next big email marketing tool. Onur Genes wanted to promote his software development agency but couldn’t write goo…