The First Acquisition: Pixel

It's done. The first acquisition has been finalized this week!

I'm very excited to welcome Pixel (pxl.to) to the Waterglass portfolio. Pixel is a leading short link, QR code and microsite builder for marketers, based in Great Britain (UK).

The founder of Pixel will remain on board as an independent engineer who will support me in bringing the product to its full potential under Waterglass' leadership.

I will share more specifics over the course of the next few weeks, but below are a few deal insights:

• The total purchase price was slightly below $50k, including a seller financing model
• The business has over 2,000 customers who account for one-time transactions (most) as well as recurring revenue (some)
• The business processed 30 million short link visits, QR code scans, and microsite visits to date
• The product shows positive signs for product-led growth (PLG) which makes me, a product-focused builder, especially happy

What I specifically like about Pixel is that it's active within an established product category that still offers plenty of room for innovation. The microsites feature, which launched just a few months ago, has been well received by customers.

From discovery to completed acquisition in 7 weeks

I discovered the listing on Acquire and while the whole acquisition was not especially quick – sometimes businesses sell in as little as one week – I believe the overall process was very smooth.

The due diligence process was a breeze as the code quality was better than expected, all relevant documents were in place from the beginning and detailed down to the last comma. If anything was missing, it was made available within a day.

The tricky part, however, was determining a purchase price based on TTM (trailing twelve months) profits, especially since the revenue consists of a mix of one-time transactions and recurring revenue.

As you learned in the last issue, the most recent figures show that TTM profit multiples for acquisitions under $100k sit at 4.11x, but this multiple applies to recurring revenue.

Nevertheless, the founder and I got along very well from the start and we quickly realized that we share a similar work ethos, which made the entire process easy from the beginning.

We eventually settled for an Extra Income Model with cash upfront and additional, ongoing revenue for the seller.

The reason the founder wanted to sell was due to a new project he started working on into which he plans to invest more time and capital.

Why I chose Pixel as the first acquisition target

As the attentive reader that you are, you'll remember that I was specifically looking for opportunities where I can immediately improve one or more of the following areas:

• Broken distribution
• Broken business model
• Broken user experience
• Broken technology

Regarding Pixel, I see an opportunity for growth in distribution, which is currently in the process of establishing growth channels and hence offers lots of room for expansion.

Additionally, refining the pricing strategy could further enhance the business model and support revenue growth.

Besides metrics such as CAC, LTV, ARPU, MRR, ABC, Churn Rate and Gross Margin (okay... I made up one metric here – can you guess which one?) I try to ask myself the following the following high-level questions when evaluating an opportunity:

1. Does the product solve a relevant problem?
2. Do I understand the market and target audience well enough? If not, how quickly can I pick it up?
3. Are there already indicators for future growth opportunities? What is the main growth driver right now?
4. Do customers like the product? Do they see it as a vitamin or a pain killer?
5. Why decided the founder to build this product? Why did they decide to sell?
6. What is the competitive landscape?
7. Does the product have technological advantages or intellectual property?

Based on the findings above, I already drafted an outline of a product roadmap for the next 6-9 months.

Overall, the immediate actions I plan to implement over the coming months are:

• Narrowing down the product strategy, mostly based on customer feedback
• Investing in SEO, sponsorships and collaborations
• Reworking the pricing strategy
• Automation of ongoing operations (which by the way reflects a core principle of Waterglass)

Also, another small detail caught my eye.

During the due diligence process, I uncovered a small yet easy-to-implement growth hack that could easily increase sign ups with less than an one hour of work.

More about this little hack, and what's next for Pixel, in the upcoming issue.