Alexis Grant’s Post

Something simple I did last week that gave me a huge morale boost... For months, I've been tracking one metric for our M&A intelligence platform: how many deals we've pushed live in the platform. That's because we need a critical mass of deals for the platform to provide insights. We've tracked thousands of deals (7,147 as of right now) over the last couple of years. These are all online businesses that have sold for 6, 7 or 8 figures. Now we're fleshing out and double-checking the metrics for each one, then publishing it in the platform. So I've been digging into AirTable daily to check the count. But last week, I found a way to make this tracking way more fun and motivating... 📊 I created a dashboard that tracks this metric automatically, shows us how many deals are live, and displays it prominently. The dashboard also shows us dozens of other stats we're interested in, like how many buyers are live in the platform, how many deals we have sale price for, how many deals we've written stories about, etc. (I'm including one of those in the image below.) But that high-level number — how many deals are live — is the most important, because it helps us measure when we're ready for users. 📈 I've always loved dashboards for sharing information with a team. But it didn't occur to me until now to create one for this project, because it's just me and our data editor tracking this. Yet now that we have a visual tracker, I can't believe I didn't do it sooner. It's super motivating to see progress in a dashboard, and it helps me remember that even amongst all the opportunities each day, making this number climb is my top priority right now. I keep the dashboard open on my second screen, so I can watch it climb every day. This alone has boosted my confidence; it reinforces the progress we're making. Our data editor finds it motivating, too. And she now has visibility into all sorts of metrics that are important for our goals. Even for a small team like ours, this is helpful for staying aligned. 🚀 Don't underestimate the power of visualizing your core metrics on a dashboard everyone can see. Even if your everyone is just a team of two. I'm curious: What metrics are you tracking for your business, and is there a way to display the most important ones more prominently? *** I'm Alexis Grant, founder of They Got Acquired. Here's more on the M&A intelligence platform we're building for founders, buyers and brokers: https://lnkd.in/eHM8Nw2K

Enjoyed this column from Elizabeth Yin & Joshua Y. Lee re: how early is too early to think about exiting? https://lnkd.in/eUCw6b7s Plus, here's our story about how Joshua sold his startup Ardius: https://lnkd.in/epzvsr6V

Dream content role if you're looking.

Every few months, I talk to a founder who's looking to sell and think to myself, I want to buy that business. We're featuring one of those companies (subscription content with $600K ARR) in the next issue of First Look on May 13. (I'm not buying it, I need to stay focused!) Get on our list to receive that lead and others: https://lnkd.in/eUkC549d

For the last few weeks, when I sit down at my desk each day, I've done the most important thing on my work list FIRST — regardless of what's on my plate or in my inbox. My most important thing right now is getting more data into our M&A intelligence platform, so we can open it up to users. As a result, emails have gone unanswered and there are a bunch of other things on my list that I wish were done by now. But the most important thing is moving along far more quickly than before... and that means I end each day feeling more content.

 I showed a broker our M&A intelligence platform this week. He wants it! And he said something near the end of our call that stuck with me... 👉 "It's just you and some contractors building this?" In other words, he was impressed with what we've built with such a lean team. That helped me remind myself... ✅ This IS a big project for a small team. ✅ It's taking a while to build because it's ambitious. ✅ If it was easy to do what we're doing, someone would have done it already. ✅ And it's OK if it feels hard some days, because it IS hard. Yet even so, look what coming together... with just me and some (mighty) contractors. 👊

Something smart you can do whenever you're building up to a launch, even if it's months away: ⭐ Create a landing page to collect emails ⭐ Two examples of how we've used this to grow They Got Acquired: 1) Ahead of our launch of the site and newsletter, I spun up a Carrd landing page. (See image below.) This was back in 2021. Over a few months, by sharing the idea on social media and in relevant communities, I managed to collect 1,000+ emails. That meant we didn't launch to crickets. We had readers from the get-go. This post explains exactly how we got those emails:  https://lnkd.in/gUWjnAwr *** 2) Now, as we head toward launching* our M&A intelligence platform, we have an email sign-up at the top of that homepage. (See image below.) It's all manual; I haven't even connected it to our email service provider. But when someone signs up to indicate they're interested, I email them back and ask WHY they want access. Sometimes that turns into a demo. Other times I just add them to our free newsletter, so they can learn more about us and hopefully learn to trust us before the platform launches. We're getting a consistent trickle of sign-ups, about 2 each week. Most of these people I've never heard from before. And because this is a high-priced product, that small volume of warm leads is meaningful. We're also not driving much traffic to the page yet. But when I mention the platform here and there, I have a place to send people if they want to learn more, and this allows us to capture interest we otherwise wouldn't even know about. By the time we launch, we should have a small pipeline of people who are ready to buy. *** It can feel strange to ask for emails *before* you're ready to share your product. It's tempting to say, let's wait until we launch. But the best time to capture that interest is when it's HIGH, at your FIRST interaction with that potential customer. As you've seen with my current setup for our data platform, it doesn't have to be fancy, and even a small number of leads can make a big difference. ⭐ My question to you: What are you building that you could start collecting emails for now, before you're "ready?" *We're actually doing an anti-launch for the platform, and slowly adding paid users instead. More on that soon. *** I'm Alexis Grant, founder of They Got Acquired. Here's the M&A intelligence platform we're building: https://lnkd.in/eHM8Nw2K

Hot take: Pitch the mansplainer who will probably turn you down and might even make you feel bad when they do it. Why? Their feedback will sting, but since they want to look smart, they'll probably offer plenty of not-watered-down feedback. It'll be harsh, but might be worth it, if you gain insight about how to improve your product. Just take it with a grain of salt and a super-thick skin, and have a plan for pumping yourself up again afterward.

I talk to lots of founders who want to sell. Every 3 weeks, I send an email featuring a few of those companies to buyers who want unique deal flow. You will not find these deal opportunities anywhere else. The founders have not yet listed with a broker or marketplace, so you'll connect with them first. Next issue goes out May 13. How to subscribe: https://lnkd.in/eUkC549d