Jason Calacanis: Hey everybody, happy Monday. We hope you are enjoying MLK Day here in the US. We have a great show for you today. We have an accidental conversation about equality. We're talking about Tim Cook setting an example potentially for the rest of the big tech world by taking a 40% pay cut. That, as you might imagine, leads to an in-depth discussion over whether these CEOs deserve their massive comp packages and whether in the age of austerity, CEOs are going to have to signal their commitment to austerity by cutting their own pay. Then a great conversation between Jason and the founder of Acquire.com, Andrew Gazdecki. Overall, it's going to be a fantastic

SPEAKER_02: show. Stick with us. This Week in Startups is brought to you by LinkedIn Marketing. To redeem a free $100 LinkedIn ad credit and launch your first campaign, go to linkedin.com slash This Week in Startups. Notion. Notion is the one place for notes, docs, projects, and everyday work that goes way beyond a wiki. Get started for free at notion.com slash Jason. And Formulate. Formulate matches you to a personal chemist to customize your products and solve your hair, scalp, and skincare goals like thinning, itchiness, and flakes. See how they use robots to custom mix each bottle and get 25% off by visiting formulae.co slash twist. All right. It's Monday. It's Monday. Happy MLK day,

SPEAKER_10: everybody. Yeah. I hope you're out volunteering, everybody. Yeah. We're off today, but we pre-taped this. Uh, so we have a little content for you. Uh, and in case you're thinking, I saw that outfit on

Jason Calacanis: Friday. Yes. You're like, wait a second. Wait a second. My cute rent the runway dress. Anyway. Yes.

SPEAKER_15: We got some news for you though. We're still here. Well, right off the top, uh, Tim Cook's, uh,

Jason Calacanis: austerity measures are kicking in. Yeah. At the top. What a concept. There you go. You have actually been predicting that some of these austerity measures could result in pay cuts. And it had not occurred to me to say, I wish it had, um, clearly I still got to work on my populist cred. I wish I had thought to say you should start with CEO pay. Absolutely. Oh, that's definitely where I was going to start. Tim Cook has just shined the spotlight. I mean, he is so clever how he does this, right? Because it's like, he's still going to make $50 million, but he has just set an example for all of the rest of the industry by taking a 40% pay cut in 2023. He takes his total compensation from about $99 million overall, $83 million of that is in stock awards, uh, 12 million in incentives and 3 million in salary down to a total package of $49 million cut that in half. We did the math and determined that Apple at $150,000 head could save about 333 jobs with that 50 mil. Interesting.

SPEAKER_10: Uh, so for people who don't know, the way this happens is on a public company, you have what's

SPEAKER_29: called a comp committee, compensation committee, and they will theoretically, uh, act as a, uh, judge and jury on how much executives top executives should get paid. Um, but the inside line is those folks tend to not be shareholders of the company or the largest shareholders of the company. They tend to be appointed by management and they're in a dance with management, uh, to get everybody paid. Uh, there are some companies that had boards where the boards owned, no shares in the company had never put a dollar and bought any shares in the company. Uh, and they served only, uh, to, you know, line their own pockets. And when an investor buys a large chunk of shares, they are called activists, which is very weird. I think the way this, these companies should work is some large percentage of the board members, certainly the comp committee should be by the percentage ownership in the company.

Jason Calacanis: I agree. I, everything about corporate boards, I think is so fascinating. If anybody has the exact perfect book that I need to read about corporate boards in America, please tell me because it's such a fascinating and like arguably quite corrupt part of governance. Yes. Um, but it is very interesting. The compensation committee at Apple, uh, which is comprised of Art Levinson, Al Gore, and Andrea Young, J-U-N-G said it reached out to institutional shareholders actually to ask how they felt about Cook's pay. And in 2021, what they call it, they call it a say on pay vote. 64% of shareholders approved of his compensation. And that was down from the 95% that approved it for Apple's 2020 fiscal year. Yeah. And they said, based on these important conversations, we've made changes to the size and structure of Tim's 2023 compensation. Um, what I also think is interesting is that his compensation compared to some of his peers is not wildly high. So, uh, Sundar Pichai at Google is 2021 total comp was $6 million, but his 2019 total comp was 280 million. Okay. And that was based on some stock awards. I'm sure stock awards. Yeah. I mean, it's sort of like all over the place based on stock. Zuckerberg seems pretty consistent at, you know, 2019 was 23 million total, 25 million total. And then 2021 was 26 million in total comp. Yeah. Um, Andy Jassy in 2019. I mean, this guy, this is where, this is where Amazon's going to have a hard time credibly selling many more riffs unless they take

SPEAKER_27: a look at Jassy's compensation because quarter 2019 it was 348,000, 2021 it was 212 million. Quarter bill. Quarter bill. Quarter bill. Yeah. I mean, right there, these are non founders in,

SPEAKER_42: I think three of the four cases, right? Uh, Zuckerberg is the only founder. And so it's not like, they're Zuckerberg sitting on 25, 50, a hundred billion in equity, right? Right. So they do, there is a competition for these executives, um, and, you know, losing Satya Nadell or losing Andy Jassy,

SPEAKER_30: losing Tim cook to another company, which is a possibility. Uh, you know, if an Airbnb or an Uber wanted Andy Jassy picking, you know, like if, uh, uh, a random company, uh, Uber door dash, you know, if either of those companies, you know, needed a new CEO at some point, let's just say those, uh, CEOs decided to move on voluntarily. I'm not, I'm not saying they should be removed just to be

SPEAKER_29: clear here. Yeah. Uh, and you wanted Andy Jassy. Well, how do you get them to work at a 50 to a hundred billion dollar startup? Yeah. You give them a quarter billion dollars in equity comp, you know, and, and Amazon doesn't want to lose them. So small price to pay, uh, overall, but optics

Jason Calacanis: is when this has an issue. Right. And so Amazon just laid off 18, 28,000 employees total. 18,000 white collar. They laid off 10 and then another 18. No, 10 and eight. I think,

SPEAKER_30: I think the 18 number is the total. I think it was 10 and then they added eight.

SPEAKER_12: It's for a total of 18. We'll check. We'll check. I'm 99% sure about this. If he took a, yeah, you know, 50% compensation cut, they could keep a thousand.

Jason Calacanis: An interesting way to look at it, which is, I mean, look, and they may not need to keep those employees at all, but if you are talking your book on austerity and your total pay comp was $212 million. And to be clear, Nadella at Microsoft, 2020, 44 million, 2021, 49 million. 2022, 54 million. Like this guy is the goat of all CEO goats. And he's making a quarter.

SPEAKER_56: What Jesse's making. Yeah. Seems cheap. 18,000 total.

SPEAKER_29: Seems underpaid. I mean, I know it's obnoxious to say $50 million a year seems underpaid. You have to understand if you take one of these jobs, it is all encompassing. It's basically the end of your life. Like you cannot do anything else. The amount of pressure you are under the tenure of these CEOs, you know, maybe five to 10 years. I would argue there are people who do that at

SPEAKER_61: launch for $50,000 a year. So like, I mean, you know, people work hard. I'm saying people work hard at lots of different salaries. Like CEO comp is a company launch or launching a company.

SPEAKER_66: Yeah. There are people who consider this job all encompassing for like a lot less money. I mean, a lot. No, I know, but you don't have to be responsible for a million people.

SPEAKER_67: I really do understand the level of people. Yeah. I'm just saying when you're talking about

SPEAKER_16: salaries that are like a thousand, a hundred thousand times, 10,000 times, a hundred thousand

Jason Calacanis: times that of your lowest paid employee. Like, I don't know that the workload is a hundred thousand

SPEAKER_29: times harder. I, you know, the, I, I, I can take the counter of this. Like you,

SPEAKER_42: these jobs are so hard to reach this level of accomplishment to be able to run one of these companies and then you are under so much pressure. You, if you're, but an employee at Amazon,

SPEAKER_70: I'll take lunch out of this, but, uh, because yeah, it's hard to work for me a thousand times,

SPEAKER_72: I guess not. Uh, but, uh, Mike, if you are an employee at Microsoft, yeah, you can just F off

SPEAKER_73: anytime you want. You can take two weeks off. You could take a leave of absence. It's just,

SPEAKER_75: yeah, you're, you're under whatever you're putting yourself under,

Jason Calacanis: I'm not trying to come super hard at CEO pay, but you do have to acknowledge this is a conversation that is occurring and there have been ongoing questions for years because CEO pay has increased drum, you know, like many, many times faster than for example, wages, which have been stagnant for 40 years, right? Like that's not an area where wages are stagnant. And I don't think that you would argue

SPEAKER_27: that the job got that much harder over the last decade. Um, yeah, I mean, these big numbers,

SPEAKER_42: uh, it's a marketplace is the way I would say it. And the marketplace was paying tech workers

SPEAKER_84: in Silicon Valley at the same companies, two 50, 500. Okay. Yeah. CEO pay, CEO pay has increased

Jason Calacanis: 1,322% since 1978. CEOs were paid 351 times as much as the typical worker in 2020. So CEO pay is up 1300%. That kind of makes sense to me. The average American wages have been flat for 40 years, have been in that same period, effectively flat that. So I'm just saying from a math perspective, that is the conversation around CEA CEO pay, like you can't pretend that conversation is not happening. Yeah.

SPEAKER_42: What I'd say is the value of these individuals, 1300% harder. I would say the value of these individuals is about value, the value of these individuals, these elite executives provide is even more valuable than the percentage more they're getting paid. The average employee at Amazon versus Andy, if he gets paid 350 times, would they get paid or even a thousand times, I'd say he's 10,000 times more important than the average employee, his ability to do that. Just

SPEAKER_30: like Steph Curry is, you know, a thousand times more. I mean, you know, I believe in the power law

Jason Calacanis: when it comes to talent, I believe there is a talent power law. Yeah. A hundred percent. I really do believe that. I also think. It's a nuanced conversation. Right. And it should be a nuanced conversation. Like talent is real and a lot of people want to pretend that it's not and want to pretend that it shouldn't be compensated accordingly. I am not one of those people. Yeah. There are definitely people who are more talented than others and they should be paid accordingly.

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Jason Calacanis: terms and conditions do apply. I think where, where this, where CEO pay and Tim Cook has quite cleverly made it an issue where it's going to become an issue is in this, the thing that we've been talking about, right? Where you have this like managerial class being like, you're all entitled and spoiled and there are too many of you. Yeah. And you have workers doing this kind of revolt, like you've been treating us like crap forever, and you won't let me bring my politics to work, which, right? Like, everybody's, everybody's side is debatable. And into that Wade's Tim Cook being

SPEAKER_16: like, I'm gonna take a $50 million pay cut. And all of a sudden, Andy Jassy's gonna be like you bastard.

SPEAKER_109: I mean, here's the truth. Here's the truth. Uncomfortable truths. Yep. It is a marketplace.

SPEAKER_10: If you are worth more, then go prove it. And here's what Andy Jassy or Tim Cook could prove immediately to Amazon shareholders and to Apple shareholders. Mm hmm. They could prove immediately that they're underpaid by simply going to Uber or Airbnb. Again, in this hypothetical, I'm just picking a company worth five or 10% of what the trillion dollar companies are worth. If you put that executive on that team, the shareholders of that company would give you 10% ownership in that team, 5% ownership in that team to land that person. Because they're Michael Jordan, Steph Curry level talents, Serena Williams level talent, you you can if you can get the number

SPEAKER_29: one executive, you would literally give them a billion dollars in shares. If I was as an Uber

SPEAKER_10: shareholder, uh, as a Amazon shareholder, as a Disney shareholder, I would give $1 billion to Tim

SPEAKER_30: Cup to come to Uber. And that's that no, no dick to Dara. I think Dara would be like, we can get Tim Cook. That'd be like, Clay Thompson saying we can get Steph Curry, right? This would be like, Scotty Pippen or whoever, you know, Shaq saying we can get Kobe, right? Like, they're, they're all

SPEAKER_29: all stars, but some all stars are, you know, better than other all stars. Yeah. That's the market proof and the market proof for the rank and file at Google replaceable, instantly replaceable.

SPEAKER_70: And that's where this discussion is uncomfortable. Right? Maybe not every, every, I mean, everybody,

Jason Calacanis: the thing is almost all it's uncomfortable. And also I was sitting here trying to figure out with the highest paid women CEOs, it is uncomfortable. And also the assumption of eliteness is itself sometimes flawed. And I certainly do not mean to suggest that Satya Nadella is not elite. That's it. I mean, Sundar Pichai seems like he might be elite. Tim Cook is definitely elite, right? Like Andy Jassy seems very elite. Like Sundar Pichai is obviously a genius who else could do what I always come back to who else could do that job and who else would get paid that much. And the fact is like, we don't know. And we have some structures that mean that some people will never get that shot.

SPEAKER_125: The power law is not evenly distributed, which is a separate part of this conversation. Female CEO in the world is a really interesting question.

SPEAKER_50: I know. And you can't find it like the, all the stories that I found are like from 2015 or whatever.

David Friedberg: The CEO. Like there's, yeah. Yeah. I mean, why don't we know that? Highest pay. I'm literally like to ask chat GPT, who is the highest paid Lisa T. Sue 29.5

SPEAKER_03: 29 and a half million dollars. What company she's Intel. Is that right? Uh huh. No, wait,

SPEAKER_73: not, not Intel. She's AMC AMD AMD. I knew it was chip and it was chip. I mean, that's a legit salary for AMD. Yeah. I don't know what AMD's micro. I mean, what you could also do here is very simple.

SPEAKER_42: Um, I, and I bet you this is very similar, um, to compensation for males and female leads and superhero films. Uh, I bet you they're taking the box office, IE market cap, and they're looking at box office, which equals market cap in this. And AMD has a market cap of 113 billion. She gets 29. She has 30 million. Uh, Airbnb is market cap is a hundred billion or so, right? Like, so you just look at those and just say, where do, where does the, and the market cap for Tim cook, if he's getting 50 million a year and he was getting a hundred, that's a $2 trillion company. So, uh, he should be getting on the market cap size. It's a 20 times larger company.

SPEAKER_73: Interesting. And in terms of profitability,

Jason Calacanis: it's massively more profitable than a motor is way smaller market cap. I think, right? Mary, Mary bear is at 29 million. Uh, Adina Friedman at NASDAQ is worth 20 million. Interesting. Yeah.

SPEAKER_10: Yeah. It's a $50 billion company. So one might argue they are, uh, overpaid, or maybe there's a

SPEAKER_29: floor for CEO pay. Yeah. But I, I think the boards are acutely aware of this in 2023 and they would probably err on the side of, I don't wanna say overcompensating a female CEO, but making sure it

SPEAKER_30: was fair. Just like, I think Disney wanted to make sure it was fair. I would hope. Yeah. Like,

SPEAKER_29: what did captain Marvel get, uh, Brie Larson? I wonder if, and then in comparison, because didn't,

SPEAKER_152: I think more, um, captain Marvel did really well at the box office. I think so. She talked about,

Jason Calacanis: she talked about pay disparities. I think though. Anyway, it's, you know, I don't mean to, I'm not trying to like, I'm not trying to insert this into every conversation. I just think like we make a, we make a baseline assumption about who is elite that excludes a lot of people because we're just like, well, you can't possibly be, I mean, like I'm, you know, I sit here and chafe constantly about like, I said that thing that Friedberg said like two months ago, or I said saturation before sex tweeted about it. Right. But like who gets credit for that? They do. There's sort of like a, there's like a, there's baseline stuff that you cannot sit here and tell

SPEAKER_72: me of all people, this doesn't happen. Well, I think in the, in the, in our business of like

SPEAKER_29: opinions and hot takes, you know, it's just very hard to figure out who had the hot take first. A

Jason Calacanis: lot of times I'll hear our contemporaries. I'm using that as but one example of a large societal issue that you cannot pretend does not, you cannot pedant your way out of assuming that this larger societal issue does not happen. The women are not taking it seriously. The people of color are not taking that seriously, that they're not given the same opportunities. Yeah. So you're literally making a face as though you have never heard this before.

SPEAKER_30: No, no, no. I, I think generally historically that's been correct. And then what I like to

SPEAKER_29: do is look at individual verticals and then confirm that for myself. Like it would be good to confirm it for CEO pay. Like if we're going to make that statement, okay, women CEOs aren't paid as well as male CEOs. I think actually just looking up the data is a good first place to start and see if that actually still exists because we've now had the law change in California about boards. And then, you know, with Marvel films specifically, I know that this has been like a, a massive discussion. So I would be very interested to see what Brie Larson got since Captain Marvel made a billion dollars. Like did she get, and then what did Robert Downey Jr. get paid on his first iron man?

SPEAKER_10: Right. So for a billion dollar lead superhero film, I'd like to see the data actually on female leads versus male leads versus a Chadwick Bose was a Chadwick Boseman play, play black Panther.

SPEAKER_27: She, uh, spoke out about ass demanding more. She earned $5 million for starring in Captain Marvel. And

Jason Calacanis: that was more than Robert Downey Jr. and Chadwick Boseman got for their own first standalone Marvel films, because she was like, you gotta ask for what you deserve all the time. She paid more.

SPEAKER_162: Yeah. But wait a second, they got paid, she got, they only got $5 million for a billion dollar film?

SPEAKER_165: Dude, like if you want to make, if you want to make real money in this world, do not be a movie star.

SPEAKER_166: Oh, it's always the first one. They don't, it's the first, it's the first one. And then you kill them

SPEAKER_89: on the second and third. Yes. If it works, I guess, I think that's the tradition. So she has been out

SPEAKER_168: very loudly advocating for equal pay in the, in the other movies too, because she's doing a second

SPEAKER_42: one that's coming. Yeah. Yeah. I would like to know what her chat GPT, what is she making for her

SPEAKER_109: second chat GPT? Oh, here we go. Captain Marvel two will reportedly make Brie Larson the highest paid actress in a superhero film. Good for her. Good for her. Cause she's like, she's a warrior for it

SPEAKER_70: too. Like, you know, she's been a tough negotiator. Scarlett Johansson made $15 million for Black Widow. Wow. Wow. Uh, that's, that's, that's big cash. And she kind of had to sue to get it though, right?

SPEAKER_87: No, I think that was, Iron Man one, Robert Downey Jr. made $500,000 with an unknown cut of back-end profits, but that was the first one ever. No, but you know why? There's a backstory there.

SPEAKER_180: Oh, and then he was unassurable because of, um, his previous issues, issues in his personal life.

SPEAKER_30: And he said, listen, I know that you don't want to bank on me. I want to bank on myself. And I think he was like, I'll do this essentially what is for free or close to free in order to, and I'll take it on the come, you know, give me the back end and, you know, and then I think he got 250 to 500 million

SPEAKER_42: for whatever that last deal was. Yeah. It was like a quarter billion dollars to do like six

SPEAKER_30: appearances across films. Hmm. All right. We gotta go. Uh, we gotta go. What a great episode. Uh, and, uh, a great discussion about fairness and pay on MLK Day. A great time to have that discussion.

SPEAKER_186: It actually is. You're right. We totally talked about equality on MLK Day guys. That was a total

Jason Calacanis: accident. Uh, super great interview that Jason did with Andrew Gazdeki of acquire.com, formerly known as micro acquire. Yeah. Talking about the rebrand market market. Yeah. Yeah. All right.

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SPEAKER_194: slash j a s o n to get started for free right now. All right, everybody. Uh, we're gonna talk about

SPEAKER_42: mergers and acquisitions right now with the king of acquisitions. Andrew guys deckie from acquire.com

SPEAKER_196: previously micro acquire. How are you doing, Andrew? Doing good, Jason. Thanks for having me. Uh, well, thanks for coming on the program. It's 2023. There's a ton of M and a going on right now.

SPEAKER_42: And I thought we would chop it up and talk about it. Um, I say your name guys deckie with a lot of emphasis because you have done one of the most brilliant, you have done one of the most brilliant, uh, marketing campaigns ever. For people who don't know on Silicon Valley, there is a guy named Russ Han hammerman. He's played by Chris. The amount. Topolus the D metropolis. Yeah. Metropolis

SPEAKER_197: Matt. Oh, dear man. I got that right. I'm sorry. Sorry, Chris. Have you heard this? Sorry, Chris.

SPEAKER_29: No, he plays Russ Hanneman, who is a kind of character, but you, uh, with micro acquire decided when you were gonna make announcements, you would have Chris do these, I guess you got through to him on,

SPEAKER_201: on cameo. Yeah. So the, the first one, I've been just a fan of the show. It's oddly realistic. I'm

SPEAKER_202: sure you can relate. Yeah. Before I launched micro where I saw, I just typed in like, is there anyone on Silicon Valley and he, Russ Hanneman was on there and then I selected him and I believe he was like 500 to higher at the time. Now he's like 7,000 higher. So he's, he's doing pretty good.

SPEAKER_36: Yeah. Good for him. Well, anyway, just for the audience, here's an example of these brilliant

SPEAKER_208: cameos that you've done and just hiring him to make announcements. Let's listen for a minute.

SPEAKER_210: All right. Andrew Gazdecky. Not a very musical name, not a very sexy name, but it's a name

SPEAKER_212: that gets s*** done. Clearly, Andrew. Let's talk about what you're doing right now. You just launched a startup helping other startups find startup buyers. Startup, startup, startup, startup, startup. I like it. That's today's startups. You're trying to find buyers to get startups acquired. That s*** is cool. That's like ROI. ROI. Radio on internet. I thought of that. I made a B. You didn't. Don't feel bad. You thought of startup to find a startup to get the buyers bought up from the startup with the startup to get acquired by the startup with the startup. So you want to start up? Don't start up with me. One day, you, Andrew Gazdecky, are going to make it to Tres Comas.

SPEAKER_217: I believe in you. I believe in you. Andrew Gazdecky. So don't start up with your startup that's helping other startups find startups. Come on with this guy. My head hurts.

SPEAKER_223: Andrew Gazdecky. Uh, well, classic. Um, and he just, he's made everybody now knows how to pronounce

SPEAKER_197: your name. Now do your friends call you guys daggy? They do. Yes. I wish I got those videos in middle school because it would have saved me a lot of pain in terms of pronouncing my last name.

SPEAKER_223: Try having a last name. Calacanis. People are clocking us. Calacanis. We will get it all wrong all the time.

SPEAKER_42: All right. Let's talk about, I think people know what micro acquire now acquire.com. Congratulations

SPEAKER_196: on getting the domain name. That's like a million dollar domain name, huh? Thanks. Uh, we paid, uh,

SPEAKER_226: 200 K for it, but, uh, acquire.com. Good job. Yeah. You want to hear the story behind it? Yeah, I do actually. I mean, I'm a domain aficionado as it were. Yeah. So I was trying to get it for about

SPEAKER_202: two years, just telling, you know, in communication with the owner and then I was on vacation. So no work, vacation. And the funny part is I was with my, uh, wife's parents and the owner reached out and said, Hey, we want to sell it. Kind of, you know, told him the story. Things aren't going good in the economy. Here's my offer. It's 200 K take it or leave it. And I got the domain. And then I go back to, you know, hang out with my family. I'm like, I bought a domain for like $200,000. And everyone's like, wait, are you like, have you been drinking? Like like for a domain, but we got a really good deal because they were asking, um, six, 700,000 just, uh, two years prior. Yeah. I mean,

SPEAKER_42: anything that's in the dictionary that's under 10 characters is going to be, you know, a couple of

SPEAKER_29: hundred grand calm.com famously, Alex, uh, two got that for like 150 K 200 K. I got inside.com for 60 K.

SPEAKER_10: You know, sometimes you get lucky. Um, but a.com, uh, of, of this stature is absolutely fantastic. So

SPEAKER_202: micro acquire is now acquired.com. Yep. That's correct. I heard, um, angel.com and for like a

SPEAKER_29: million bucks. So I, you know, they offered, I offered like 250 for it. Um, and somebody who is, um, I think like angel studios, I'm looking at it right now. I, I tried to buy it, uh, when my book came out, some company, a software company owned it, they found a broker and I guess I think they sold it for three, maybe for 400 or 500 K, which is a little bit above that, but angel studios

SPEAKER_196: owns angel.com and, uh, good for them. Uh, but I think it's like, um, religious programming kind of situation. Hmm. Like if you want to, if you want to watch Christ, um, and you accept Christ into

SPEAKER_42: your heart, go to angel.com. All right. Some rich person started that. So yeah, you can't get everything. And then I was, I was going to buy Jason.com, uh, but some developer bought it and he's

SPEAKER_36: Jason.com right now. I thought that would be a nice one to have, but it wasn't like a must have for me. Um, Jason Greenwald, I guess he's from Florida. He's a rich, uh, developer.

SPEAKER_202: One, one domain I almost bought is we're just getting started.com. Oh, I like that one. Yeah. Cause every startup is like, we're just getting started. We just raised like a series D. We're just, we just IPO. We're just getting started. So I always joke about that, but they wanted a thousand bucks, but like through a check and I was just like, okay, no, if anybody wants a domain,

SPEAKER_36: you could probably. He owns a Tesla too. Look at Jason Greenwald. He follows me on Twitter. Oh,

SPEAKER_196: he's a Bitcoin guy. That's it. Master of coin. Yeah. So good for him. Um, I think he made a bunch

SPEAKER_42: of money in Bitcoin and then bought a killer domain. Um, so let's talk about what's going on an M and a obviously we have, uh, a cataclysmic series of events. People raised a lot of money at high valuations. Now funding has dried up. A lot of people are sitting on businesses that can't raise

SPEAKER_247: money, but that do have a business. Um, and they're kind of caught in a valuation trap. You know,

SPEAKER_42: they may have raised that 50 million. When they had no revenue, then they got to 2 million in revenue and the market says, Hey, 10 times 2 million is 20 million. That's what we think this company's worth, whatever it happens to be. Yeah. What are you seeing in the data? Because if people don't

SPEAKER_29: know, acquires a marketplace, you can list your company. If you're a person like me who likes to buy companies or buy things, you can pay, I think 400 bucks or so for an account. And I think there's like a new premium account for 800 bucks. I won't make it a commercial for it, but the buyers pay a subscription, which is demand and missing cost. Uh, but I guess it keeps the lights on for you.

SPEAKER_36: You don't take a transaction fee, right? Where you take a small transaction, no transaction fee,

SPEAKER_202: but we have plans to in the future. What we've been doing is, um, you know, streamlining all the parts of an acquisition from the legal docs to due diligence, to creating a P and L. And once that

SPEAKER_197: workflow is completed, um, we'll add a small transaction fee, but it'll be lower than an investment

SPEAKER_36: bank. How do investment banks charge and select which companies they want to sell, right? Because you're trying to disrupt that sort of process, I assume. Yeah, that's a good question. I actually

SPEAKER_202: worked with an investment bank to sell my first company business apps. They typically would charge a percentage fee and then a minimum fee. And then they have, um, what's called a tail. I'm sure you're very familiar with this. So their minimum fee was $800,000. Um, we didn't end up selling. I was 25 at the time and I still just had gas in the tank. So I kept going. Um, and then eventually sold to a private equity firm. But I remember being in their offices in San Francisco and saying something along the lines of like, you guys have the coolest job in the world. I do all this work. And then I come in here and you guys just take like, uh, you're going to get like a nice fee off if this all works out. Yeah. And so I think that was probably like the first moment I was like, this would be a cool business to, you know, be involved in or, you know, potentially disrupt. Yeah. I mean, if you are a

SPEAKER_42: major firm like Allen and company, those are like the big firms, uh, or catalyst, they will sell things that are worth billions of dollars. Then there's sort of a mid market in a smaller, more boutique, um, kind of space. And these bankers charge something in the range of 5%. They might want to retain or a five or 10 K a month to, you know, kind of work on your documents and try to find buyers. They run an auction and they, like I said, they want a minimum of 800 K let's say in a sale. If you sell for only 10 mil, if you sell for 10 million, that's 8%. If you sell for a hundred million, it would be a lot less, but then they're kick, they would kick in on their like three or 4% fee

SPEAKER_29: and try and get three or 4 million. So it's like, I guess, selling your home. You're kind of like, well, what, what do they do for 5%, what do they do for 6%. So when you do charge a percentage,

SPEAKER_112: what are you going to charge you think? And to try to keep it to one or 2%. Yeah,

SPEAKER_251: we'll probably be like two, 3%. And then we'll have different services that we offer. Like if you want

SPEAKER_202: more of a hands-on approaches, when you sell a business, it's a very emotional, you know, sometimes you need, you know, a business M and a expert all the way to a therapist. So depending on like the level of complexity of the deal or the size of the deal, we'll probably just go off like a Lehman scale or something like that. And a Lehman scale is just basically, you know, decreases based on the size of the deal. But we haven't made any determinations on exact percentages, but that's probably where it'll land. The larger the deal is smaller, the percentage, and then the smaller the deal, the higher the

SPEAKER_247: percentage. Let's talk about what businesses are selling on the marketplace quickly. What are buyers

SPEAKER_42: looking to buy as we sit here in early January of 2023? If you see a company come up on the

SPEAKER_196: marketplace and it sells, you know, in under 30 days, what would that business, what would the

SPEAKER_202: qualities be that it has? Yeah, definitely. So we focus primarily on profitable SaaS companies. So if you have a 5 million year bootstrap SaaS company, it's kicking off 2 million year in profit, that'll get multiple offers within two weeks, like a frenzy. Yeah.

SPEAKER_42: And what would the multiple be on that? You have 5 million in top line revenue, 2 million public comps are trading at, you know, whatever, five times, it's really rough out there. But for a

SPEAKER_208: small company like this, what would somebody expect? You got 2 million in profits, what would they expect

SPEAKER_202: the multiple to be? What are you seeing today? Yeah, typically we see, uh, for we release a report every six months based on all the acquisitions that we see. So on average, we see annual recurring revenue between four to seven X. If it's a really profitable company, we've seen multiples on profit from like six to 11 depends on the growth rate, the type of business. Is there a strong management team in place? Um, there's a number of different factors that'll, you know, sway that multiple, but that's kind of the ranges that, that we see. So it's kind of in line with public comps. 6 million in, so 2 million

SPEAKER_42: in profits. Times 6, 12 million times 10, 20 million, something in that range. Um, and then when the

SPEAKER_208: markets were really hot, maybe two years ago, you started seeing very weird behavior, didn't you?

SPEAKER_202: Yeah. Well, actually, so what we've seen is, is something kind of nice. So in the last two years, we saw founders coming on listing companies for, you know, a million in revenue, but pricing it at like 50 X or something like that. And so there was a big issue of getting deals done because seller expectations were here and buyer expectations were here, very reflective of the venture markets. And so this year we're actually seeing acquisitions accelerate because founders are starting to realize, okay, my business, you don't just take annual recurring revenue and just times about 50 or something like that. I wish it was that way. I really sure we all do, but yeah, uh, but it's not wire has to

SPEAKER_42: figure out a way to make their money back and they're looking at it. I would think, uh, okay,

SPEAKER_196: can I, can I get my money back in three, four or five years of running this business? Do I have a thesis on how I could grow this business and pay back the money? Uh, and then some, right? Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_202: And then it's also important to point out, you know, there's typically two types of buyers, there's financial buyers and strategic buyers. So a financial buyer will be a private equity firm, sometimes, you know, an individual buyer. It, it really depends. Um, and they're going to be mostly focused on the profitability. Like you said, like, can I get a payback within four years? Then you have strategic acquires. So we work with a lot of different, you know, public companies, corp dev teams, and they might be acquiring a company that it's just a team. Like their, their revenue's low, it's minimal, but they'll still pay an outrageous multiple on that revenue because you're acquiring the team and the IP, et cetera. So it also depends on just the buyer and the reasoning

SPEAKER_42: for buying the company. What, what's the sweet spot in terms of sales right now on a marketplace like this? Obviously, if you're going to sell a company for a billion dollars, you're going to, you know, go to Allen and company or code advisors or catalyst or something, but where do you think your marketplace winds up in terms of the sweet spot, things that are not too small, that it's

SPEAKER_196: not worth the time and things that are not so big that you're going to put a team of bankers from Goldman Sachs or Allen and company on it. Yeah, that's a good question. I would say, um,

SPEAKER_202: upwards we can handle, we have buyers that can transact up to, you know, nine figures, like hundreds of millions of dollars in values there. Um, so very large private equity firms, you know, public companies, but when you get up into, you know, acquisitions of that size and that complexity, I'll be the first to admit, go hire an investment bank. Like this is a life-changing transaction. You probably have investors involved, maximize that outcome, however you can. But with that said, we have a network of M&A advisors, investment banks that we actually work with. So we'll actually refer you to the best bank or the best M&A advisor based on the size of your company, e-commerce, SaaS, um, whatever it might be, but directly on the marketplace. So that would be kind of like an off market sale. Um, and then on the marketplace, I would say probably 10 million is probably where the revenue kind of caps out. You know, if, if you're looking at a list directly on the marketplace on your own, um, but we have facilitated acquisitions ranging from as small as, you know, 10 K all the way up to, I believe our biggest is somewhere in the range of, you know, 15 million or something like that. We haven't gotten past that yet, but if the value is there, we do have buyers that can transact in, you know, much larger amounts. Let me tell you about a radically new type of solution

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SPEAKER_247: Our founder starting to build businesses to flip them yet. I mean, we have like domain speculators who will buy a domain like acquire inside, they'll develop it a bit and then they'll look for a buyer.

SPEAKER_202: Yeah, we've it's been surprising. So when I started this business, um, and this is like a bug within micro acquire is you can only sell one business per account because I thought who has like five startups? I mean, right. Makes no sense. You know, but people do. And so we've had multiple serial, we call them serial micro acquirers. We probably got to get a new term now that it's acquired.com. But yeah, we've had people sell five, six businesses and not just for 10k or 50k, but there's one individual who in total has sold, I believe, I think the record is nine and combined revenue or combined transaction value of all those businesses is in like eight, nine, 10 million. So he's made 10 million off acquired.com by selling all these businesses. And sometimes he'll buy businesses and then flip them, Michael, improve them and flip. Oh, wow. So he's like, he's like somebody

SPEAKER_197: who's really good at buying homes and flipping them in a way. And I'm only thinking of one person. This is a very common thing that we see is people will buy assets, resell assets. Um, that we yeah, we see

SPEAKER_206: definitely multiple and serial buyers and serial sellers. So both sides.

SPEAKER_288: Uh, how do you, you know, help facilitate the transactions? It seems if somebody puts something

SPEAKER_42: up, you know, the buyers, do you kind of polish things up and then email folks and say, Hey, you should probably know about this. It's just came on the market. Do you have people who will

SPEAKER_36: dial and say, Hey, do you want me to set up a meeting with this person? Because marketplaces need a little bit of a flywheel starting, right? A little grease on the wheels. How do you get how to get that going? What? Because that's sort of like custom services in the marketplace. Yeah.

SPEAKER_292: Yeah. So these are things that we're probably going to start charging for in the near future,

SPEAKER_202: but we do quite a bit of stuff for free. So if you're looking to sell your startup right now, start a plug right now, Jason, but no, that's fine to do a little mini plug. Sure. It's completely free. And so what we do is we'll put you in a newsletter that goes out to over 200,000 buyers. Um, so those are just people who have registered people who have subscribed. Um, yeah, I get these. Yep. We create social media posts that go across, um, you know, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter. We have a private, uh, buyer group that we share the deal with. Um, in certain cases, we will actually smile and dial. So we'll do, we'll create a sim for the business. So we do quite a bit to get, um, what's it says many eyeballs on the company as possible to

SPEAKER_225: ensure you have the best chances of, um, what's a, you said you create a sim. Yeah. You know,

SPEAKER_202: some, uh, Simpson, it's just a dumb acronym for confidential information. Memorandum is basically like a pitch deck, but backwards for selling your company. Got it. Um, I may have

SPEAKER_42: heard that. I mean, I've heard memorandum, but I've never heard the term sim, but yeah, there it is sim. So are, are people getting frisky or are they licking their wounds? The buyers? Tell me about

SPEAKER_202: the buyers in a recession. Yeah. So I would say it's, it's too early for me to make a prediction in terms of where this market is going, but I can speak to what we have been seeing. So we've been seeing an increase in buyers registering like last month was our highest month of registered buyers. We signed up, I believe actually we, I know it was 12,042 or something like that. And we average around like 8,000 per month signups on buyers. And then on the sell side, we also saw, um, like a 34% increase in terms of the amount of sellers signing up. So start registering to sell their business. And then we saw, um, a 38% increase in offers sent to startups. So basically what I'm saying is,

SPEAKER_225: um, we're seeing more buyers sign up than we've ever seen. Um, and this isn't from increased marketing

SPEAKER_202: spend or anything like that. Yeah. It makes sense. Yeah. So I think what we're, we're starting to see is, you know, we went through last year where everyone's just kind of like, what's going on? Where's the bottom. And now I think, uh, with buyers, they're seeing opportunity in the market. And I think we're also seeing, unfortunately, startups in the market starting to realize, you know, maybe it's time to see if we can find some sort of acquisition.

SPEAKER_42: Yeah. It makes sense. You know, this is reminds me of Andrew, like real estate. I remember when real estate markets, you know, having bought, I've bought two, three, four, five properties in my life and over five transactions, you know, you'll learn a little bit each time and in the down market after the great recession, uh, 2008, 2009 time period, you know, buyers who had bought, you know, at X price, we're really having a hard time accepting X times 0.7. And then the buyers on the other side were like, well, this house is worth 0.6. This is what I'm willing to pay for it. And oh, and you're seeing that right now, right? Like hot markets like Austin, we're getting $2,000 a square foot. Now the same homes that I've been looking at, I've been looking at the same home. So they're considered a move to Austin are now going for a thousand, like literally the people are going the 50% off in some cases. Um, and, but it takes a while for people to kind of get there. And I think for some folks, if they can't raise funding, this is what I see from my side, if you can't raise funding,

SPEAKER_29: uh, and you've tried everything and you're on fumes, you're going to try selling because it's better than

SPEAKER_202: shutting down. Yeah. And I, I would also note that we've been seeing increase, a dramatic increase in the amount of venture backed businesses and we typically have before. And again, we typically service, um, companies that haven't raised capital. Um, and I think that's a great thing because typically, you know, when you run out of money, you just kind of shut the company down and even, but you have great IP, you have great customers. There's something of value there. Yeah. A team. And so even if you don't, you know, become a millionaire or whatever, as a founder and your investors don't, you know, see everything, at least just getting something back and having the company live to fight another day. I think, um, the part it's obviously not the most ideal outcome for a startup, but it de-risks is entrepreneurship in my view, where, you know, you may not have achieved the goals you wanted to, but, um, yeah, we're seeing a lot of those types of businesses that are just looking for, you know, what I'd call like a soft landing acquire by the IP take team,

SPEAKER_223: what have you. Yeah. I, I think it's very wise for founders to try and make your investors whole

SPEAKER_42: and you can always do a carve out. So let's say you've raised 5 million for your business and somebody is willing to pay 5 million for it. Okay. The, the founding team gets nothing then. And the investors get their monies back to get their money back. You can always go to your board and say, hey, listen, we got a $5 million offer. Would it be okay for us to carve out a million of it? And you guys take 80 cents on the dollar and the team gets a million bucks in incentives or whatever. And, you know, we see this over and over again. So I think having that mature conversation with your investors. And then what that does is if you, even I've had people return 10, 20, 30 cents on the dollars, Andrew, I think, oh, they, they did right by us. Cause I've seen other people with six months of cash in the bank be like, yeah, you know, I'm going to give everybody six months severance and shut this down. And I'm like, you're not going to even try to sell it. I'm like, yeah, I, I emailed three people. I'm like, did you really do your job then? And it just put you in a bucket as an investor. You put that founder in a bucket of like, well, I'm probably not going to fund them again, uh, because they didn't go down swinging. I like to see a founder go down swinging. I'm not saying you have to, you know, spend burn two or three years of your life going down swinging, but six months going down swinging. I'd like to see you battle to the end. You never know.

SPEAKER_202: Yeah, I, I completely agree with you on that point. And I think, you know, to defend maybe that founder and just the slightest bit is acquisitions are hard and complex and tick can take a long time. And, um, you know, maybe they don't even know where to start. And so with acquire.com, you know, you, even if you're not looking to sell right now, and maybe you don't know if you're going to be able to get to that next fundraise, you can still start building those conversations and those relationships now just in case you need them down the line. I like that. Yeah. Do like a little soft sell,

SPEAKER_221: do a little like check, test the markets. Well, you know, why not? You never know.

SPEAKER_42: Tell me about the difference between we, we know what software businesses go for. What about content businesses and services businesses? I see a lot of people with services businesses, you know, they build websites for people or people who have content or community-based sites. How did those get valued? Are those popular too? Are there buyers for those?

SPEAKER_202: Yeah. So we, when we, when I first launched, um, micro require where.com I'm gonna, gosh, I gotta get used to saying that. Yeah. You'll get there. Yeah. Um, we were only focused on, I should say just me. Um, but I was only focused on SAS businesses. So we just started listing content businesses. So I don't have too much data to really speak on that, but they sell also like crazy because the transfer is so much easier. If you're just thinking about it, it's just a website and a domain and traffic and ads. And there's, there's literally public companies that just roll up content websites. Yes. Like there are PE firms that are extremely profitable and they just have content websites. Yep. I did not know this. This is just a completely different world of tech and it's just

SPEAKER_42: content websites. It's fascinating. I mean, look at CNET and CBS and Yahoo and AOL that Jim Lanzone's running those assets. Uh, you have bank off with Vox who bought recode and curbed and a bunch of a New York magazine, a bunch of assets over there. He also bought weblogs Inc when he was at AOL, uh, my company. And then, um, there's John Miller, who was Jim Bankoff's boss. He bought wikia and wikia bought a bunch of assets. In fact, I think they bought some of the assets that were owned by CBS and

SPEAKER_196: CNET for a while, including like Metacritic, which I wanted to buy at some point because I saw this

SPEAKER_202: very cool website. Yeah. Another, another trend that I think is really cool is, um, existing businesses buying media companies. Like we saw HubSpot by the hustle. Yes. We saw Stripe by indie hackers. We saw Zapier by maker pad, and there's been a number of others. And I think that's going to, that's going to continue as well. Um, and Salesforce is buying all in podcasts for a hundred million

Chamath Palihapitiya: dollars. Yes. Listen on acquire.com. Biggest acquisition.com Andrew guys. Daggy made his 10

SPEAKER_29: million dollar chip off of that. I mean, it is. Yeah. It's hilarious. I, the hustle is amazing that they, the HubSpot bought that. But if you think about it is, you know, if HubSpot is spending a bunch on advertising and they're spending whatever, 10, 20, 30 million dollars a year on podcast advertising, if they buy a podcast where they buy an event and it works out, maybe they, they will wind up saving money and they have their own property. I know the HubSpot team reached out to me over and over again. They're like, Hey, well, this week in startups join the HubSpot podcasting network. I'm like, you have a podcasting network. What? Okay. Interesting. No, no, thank you. Uh,

SPEAKER_10: it's very nice of you, but not for us. I mean, I think it's a great move. If you're, you know,

SPEAKER_202: a venture-backed business and you have capital, because we have a number of different newsletters, communities. Yeah. Assets like that, that you can purchase, like specifically one that comes to mind is we have a, a number of different like sales communities. And if you're a sales tech company, though, I, I see those and I'm like, oh man, you're gonna get acquired by sales, big VC

SPEAKER_247: backed sales, um, makes sense company. But what about things like a LinkedIn group or a Facebook group, things that are built on other people's platform. Has anybody ever tried to sell those?

SPEAKER_202: So back in the day, and this is a true story I sold, I can't, I won't say the handle name, but it was on Instagram and it was a picture. It just was an account with like 5 million followers full dog pictures. Great, great asset. If you're an e-commerce company selling dog food or something like that. But other than that, we don't sell because I think it's against LinkedIn's terms of

SPEAKER_247: service and Facebook service. I think LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram all say that you can't, but I, I, I have talked to Elon about it and we've talked publicly about it. There will be an after

SPEAKER_196: market for handles on Twitter. Twitter used to not be able to sell handles. So there would be like this, like, oh, I'll hire you as a consultant and throw in the handle, right? But they should be auctioned

SPEAKER_223: off just like domain names are, right? So if you, somebody wants to buy at Jason for a million dollars, like I'd consider it, I guess, and go back to Jason Calacanis. Yeah. I don't know.

SPEAKER_202: I mean, they have a lot of value, especially if they have the audience and the reach. Yeah.

SPEAKER_331: That makes perfect sense. I'm happy with that. Jason on, I have Jason at Jason on Twitter, Instagram, and I have Jason on Tumblr. Yeah. You know, you know, I'm after at acquire,

SPEAKER_197: so I'll be, well, you know, when that, I know you, you see me and about 17 times. Thank you for that.

SPEAKER_42: Um, no, I think when it does, I think what their, the plan is to have an, I mean, Elon's been pretty upfront about this is to just let people resell them and then take a cut. Right. So if I want to

SPEAKER_29: sell at Jason and the platform gets, I don't know, I'm picking a number 25% of it or 30% of it. Like that seems fair to me. Um, Twitter has then an after market. And if you haven't used your Twitter handle and there's a premium, like, you know, at acquire or at acquired or whatever it is like,

SPEAKER_319: sure, why not let you and the acquired team go at it? Right. I mean, you know, and have a bidding war

SPEAKER_245: for it. Why not? I'm, I'm, I'm all for anything that is acquisition. So that's, yeah, I like it.

SPEAKER_29: All right. Well, listen, continue success with the business. If you're out there and you're looking to sell your company, check out acquire.com. And, uh, where can we see a super cut of all these Russ hammerman, uh, or Chris, Chris's, uh, Andrew guys deck video. So they all, I wish there was a playlist somewhere. I guess you just got to follow micro acquire and look on the media tab.

SPEAKER_202: Yeah. If you go on YouTube, you can just type in, um, Russ. Yeah. Russ hand on Mike, where you can find a few, but, um, if you want to learn more about, um, acquire.com, just go to our website,

SPEAKER_29: sign up and we'll be happy to assist you. Congrats on all the success. And, uh, for my founders out there, you know, if you can get me back 50 cents on the dollar, I'm going to think a lot better of you than if you get me back zero on the dollar, you know, cause I have LPs and, you know, like, uh, getting something is better than getting nothing. So give it a shot, you know, try, try to get a save.

SPEAKER_184: If, uh, you know, if it doesn't work out, we expect seven, eight out of 10 of our investments to go to zero. So why not try to get a win out of those, you know, you get a win out of a couple of those. It's, uh, it helps everybody. All right, Andrew, good luck with everything. Everybody check out our acquire.com previously known as FKA micro acquire. Take care of Andrew.

SPEAKER_295: That's that key. All right. That's it for today. Everybody enjoy the rest of your MLK day.

Jason Calacanis: Hopefully you're doing some service in your community. We will catch you tomorrow for more tech news.

SPEAKER_09: Bye-bye.