How do you weigh an exit vs. raising vs. bootstrapping?

Jason Kirby (00:01.877) Hey, everyone, welcome back to the show today. Today we have Lawrence just with us today, former founder of Bits for Digits. Welcome to the show. Laurits Just (00:12.942) Thank you so much, Jason. Happy to be here. Jason Kirby (00:14.879) Let's go straight into it. What was Bits for Digits? Laurits Just (00:19.062) Yeah, Bits for Digits was a partial acquisition marketplace. So you've heard of full acquisition marketplaces like Flippa or others. And we were taking a different approach in that some founders were looking to sell a piece of their business in a secondary, but weren't interested perhaps in selling all of it. And that was the initial concept for Bits for Digits and what we did for a few years. before also allowing full acquisitions, but we can get into that. Jason Kirby (00:53.173) So why did you end up starting Bits for Digits? And did you raise money? Did you bootstrap? Laurits Just (00:58.51) We bootstrapped it and we started Bits for Digits actually after being inspired by a blog post by a guy, David Heinemeyer Hansen, DHH, as he's also known as, who's the CTO and co-founder of 37signals, including Basecamp. how, like the blog post was basically about how they sold him and Jason, his co-founder sold a minority stake to Jeff Bezos in a secondary. And so we were like, well, not everyone has Jeff Bezos on speed dial. Maybe we should create a place for primarily SaaS founders to do the same thing with high net worth individuals or strategics. So that's what we did. Jason Kirby (01:40.149) pretty interesting inspiration story. ultimately, how far did you take Bits for Digits before you ended up selling it to Flipa? Laurits Just (01:51.096) So we got to a point of profitability, first and foremost. And I mean, for the first year, we were basically using our savings, which we had saved up working corporate jobs. But then we also got a bit of funding in Berlin and Germany, where we founded it. But we got to a place where we had word of mouth, which was important. because that helped kind of relieve some of the direct sales that we were doing, outreach and all of that. And to a point where we could like safely assure founders that they were going to get like a bunch of like negotiations started when they listed on the platform, which wasn't the case in the beginning. In the beginning, it was very like crickets. So that was, it's tough to get a two-sided marketplace started. Jason Kirby (02:49.013) so when these founders come on, how did you go about, yeah, let's talk about that problem in terms of the two-sided marketplace, you know, getting buyers to be aware that they could buy, you know, interest in these companies. How did you find the buyers? Laurits Just (03:03.974) Actually, buyers, if you have supply, buyers have no issue. Basically, we had a subscription business model where they would pay to get the contact details of the founders. So founders would list anonymously, a bit like a microacquire or acquire. And then to get their contact details, we would charge a subscription and they could chat with them on the platform as well as take it offline. But that was the initial monetization before we introduced a success fee. yeah, so buyers, especially when you cater to the more sophisticated buyers, i.e. like private equities and institutional investors, they know about partial buyouts, both minority and majority deals. And so for them, there was no education really needed. But actually, on the cell side was our big learning for us, was how few people had read that blog post. So we actually had to do quite a lot of education on the cell side. Jason Kirby (04:16.927) So when it comes to the buyer side, like, you know, it's one thing for buyers to be educated and know what they want to do in terms of transactions, but like, how do you, how do you make them aware that you existed? Like what, kind of channels did you approach? How did you approach them? Laurits Just (04:32.878) So on the the sell side, Twitter was amazing. This was before Elon acquired and took private Twitter now known as X. But we were we were we were really riding the wave of we were we were basically messaging a lot of people directly because back then like inboxes were were very accessible. So you could DM pretty much anyone except for maybe like famous people. Some of them had their DMs closed. But I actually reached out to DHH himself before we started via Twitter. he actually, like we got on a Zoom call for an hour. He took out of his calendar to speak with us about the deal he made with Jeff, just so that we knew like the mechanics of that and how we could replicate it for others. So yeah, Twitter was a great acquisition tool on the sell side. And then on the buy side, LinkedIn was far. more efficient and also email outreach. We actually did that on both sides of the marketplace. Jason Kirby (05:39.605) So pretty low cost, you know, ways that go out and acquire just targeted customer outreach. And then ultimately you're at a point where you're growing, you're profitable and you're like, what made you decide to sell the flip? But did they, did they hunt you down and put a proposal in front of you? Did you run a process, you know, being that you help companies sell what made you decide to sell. Laurits Just (05:44.812) Yeah. Laurits Just (06:03.758) Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, Blake Hutchinson, the CEO of Flippa had actually taken notice of us even before we officially launched. So he was one of the like one of the early users of Bits for Digits in, I think this must have been around September 2021. So, yeah, I mean, when he when he created like when he signed up for Bits for Digits, we were like taking it back. also a little bit scared, like, was he going to copy us? But then actually the one who announced that they were going to copy us was Andrew Gosteki from Acquire, who on Twitter announced that he was going to launch partial sales as a feature, but then never did. yeah, actually, Blake already had us on the radar, and then we got an offer from another competitor. basically decided to kind of browse for like who else was interested in acquiring Bits for Digits just because we were at kind of a crossroad where we had started hitting like revenue and we had actually gotten to profitability and we were very lean operation. I think at the height of Bits for Digits, we had like nine or 10 employees, which was like half of them interns. So we were very like small business. but we were at a crossroads where we were like, okay, this can either become a like a, you know, small business, a kind of a boutique business where we just continue bootstrapping or we take one of these VCs up on their offer to fund it and really try and take it to the moon. And yeah, we have spoken at that point with almost a hundred VCs, which I don't know if it's a lot, but like when we first started, we got like, basically chased by VCs to ask like if we were raising capital and we were not, we wanted to see if we could bootstrap this at least till revenue and get some traction before raising on, I guess, better terms. then, you know, the markets kind of took a dip and everything changed in the middle of 2022, a year later. And then that's when we were like in 2023. Well, like we can still raise, but it'll be on terms that Laurits Just (08:27.776) pretty similar to when we when we like set out with just an idea. And so either we continue bootstrapping, we raise and try to take it to the next level, or we exit. And that was like the three options on the table for us. And you know, VCs like VC money comes with a bunch of drawbacks, like a bunch of downside as well as upside, obviously, that you need to be aware of. And bootstrapping, I could say the same thing about that, you know, it's, I think, perhaps I don't have the temper for it. I I kind of wanted to either go to the next level or exit. doing revenue-based financing in the most direct sense of the word is kind of slow, at least for us. We didn't catch any huge wave. There was no COVID to make. suddenly like remote work affect our business in any way or form. So it wasn't like we were riding any crazy wave externally. It was really like hard labor that went into building a reputation, getting the word out there, doing marketing and sales. And we were very engaged in customer acquisition and it just kept being that way. We got a bit of word of mouth towards the end of it where we didn't have to labor as hard to acquire new customers. Jason Kirby (09:26.239) Thank Laurits Just (09:53.762) But yeah, by the way, we didn't just do direct outreach. We also did a bunch of events and meetups in both Berlin and London in Europe, where we were based. IndieHackers was actually a great community for us. I don't know if you know of IndieHackers, but it was acquired by Stripe and then sold again by Stripe back into the wild, or sold, I think, just let go. I don't think it was a good business for them or a good community in the end, but it was a good community for us. indie hackers along with a few other online communities, we actually managed to kind of get a good following going. Jason Kirby (10:32.065) So you touch on something I deal with with founders all the time. You know, it's those three doors you see, you know, exit, raise, bootstrap. And, know, for every company, those, all have a little bit of different flavor, different, you know, things you have to do to get past, you know, get to that door and lock that door and move on behind that door. And I find it fascinating that you kind of clearly laid that out. You, you recognized those three options, but also it sounds like you had some self reflection of like. really want to go with those strings attached to either bootstrap or PC. And so ultimately chose door number three, exit. And in that process, walk us through, you mentioned they approached you, but then you shopped around a little bit. Talk about that process. Laurits Just (11:20.588) Yeah, so we had one competitor reach out to us and actually met with them. And yeah, like drew up a good like cash exit, which was nice. But then, you know, that was just an LOI. And then we, we decided to like figure out, you know, take our own advice, if you will, eat our own medicine, and try and like, approach more. We actually listed it, we listed our own business, which Jason Kirby (11:48.583) No. Laurits Just (11:50.274) which drew some attention, but it's very hard to list a business like ours without spilling the beans because it's so, I guess you could call it niche, what we did. So we ended up doing just a quick tab on the shoulder to some of the folks that we were already connected with on LinkedIn, including Blake from Flippa. And that's how we then ended up with getting getting in serious talks with Flippa. Jason Kirby (12:23.541) Okay, so Flippa didn't approach you, someone else approached you, that sparked the outreach into which Flippa you knew and presented and they decided to jump on Laurits Just (12:26.786) Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Jason Kirby (12:34.239) So, know, comment for our audience. just know your users, know who's listening to you, who's following you, and be sure to keep them up to date when opportunities might come about. Laurits Just (12:44.642) Yeah, for sure. For sure. mean, and if you can use like, cause again, you're kind of limited to your connections. mean, I don't know how many followers people have or, you know, connections on LinkedIn and stuff, I mean, you can either like, you know, broadcast or DM, I don't know, like a few hundred people, or you can like broadcast it to, you know, like 500,000 people if you're listed on a marketplace like Flippa. So if you are exiting, I would say, and you want to get like maximum number of offers in the door for consideration. That's just no good alternative to a platform like that. But yeah, obviously you can start with the ones that you are in direct competition with and just like ask them. Jason Kirby (13:29.525) And then, so effectively, was a strategic exit for you. And yeah, just out of curiosity, when you approach them, like something I do with founders is like, I don't want to sound desperate. I don't want to be like, please buy me. How did you approach? Laurits Just (13:45.912) Well, it was very easy not to seem desperate when you aren't desperate. So I think the fact that we already had an LOI, was a cash exit, was good ammunition to enter discussions with others about, because we weren't, again, like my co-founder and I were not settled on selling. were like, we had gotten an offer which came like without us having to ask for it. And then we were contemplating that versus the other two doors, right, which was taking one of the VCs up on their word to fund us or continuing down the path of bootstrapping, which to be honest, like neither myself or my co-founder had the kind of temper to continue doing because it's like there's just no break in the sense like it's a slow grind. It's a slow grind. We've been doing that for years. And yeah, if at some point you're kind of hoping to catch a break, but that break that never really came, I would say. So you just got to grind it out. And if you want to do that, you can do that. Or you can raise money and take it to the next level and accelerate growth a bit. And so I think the exit was just definitely on our list of options that we wanted to figure out, OK, how good a deal can we actually get here to really seriously contemplate if we should choose that or if we should go with one of the other options. Jason Kirby (15:12.245) Yeah, no, think that makes sense. uh, and that's, that's the thing is like founders got to take into consideration how they personally feel about outcome or a transaction. And I think that's something that a lot of, you know, maybe just a broker or, you know, VCs don't really care about, which I think is unfortunate. You know, it's like, you know, what, do you want to do for the next five, 10 years of your life? Laurits Just (15:29.89) Me too. Laurits Just (15:35.23) Exactly. It's a great question, right? Because if you take venture capital, you are basically on a schedule for the next five years minimum, I would say. And so you got to really reflect upon that and see, is this what I want to spend? I'll be 34 by the time I'm done with the first five years of that venture. And if I raise again, and raise again and raise again, the clock resets, you know, my investing period, another four years, another four years. And so you just gotta be like, you gotta come to terms with that. And you know, if you love what you do and you know, you have success with what you're doing and you know, the growth is up into the right, then fantastic. mean, I would not, personally, I would not tire of that. But the slow grind of bootstrapping at the pace that we were growing was not the, like blitz scale that you've seen other businesses do for sure. think very few bootstrap businesses have that experience of blitz scaling. And I think for me, I just, I have a temper of like, want to like stuff needs to happen. I can do with like, you know, grinding it out for a few years, but grinding it out for another five was not really, was not really high on my, on my priority list. So for me, the exit became like actually a pretty Pretty good choice, pretty good option after we spoke with Blake as well. Jason Kirby (17:06.549) think the first step is always build a business that's desirable for either an investor or a buyer. then from there, understanding what options are on the table. And that's why I really wanted you on the show was because I understand kind of that mental process that a founder goes through when having to decide left, right, down the middle, where do I go and what's best for me. And now what you're doing at Flipa Invest as we kind of talk about. Capital strategy is an option for our audience of what are the options on the table? Is venture, everyone says venture, but that's all because that's all they know. Venture has all the press and all the media and all the sex appeal, but so many more options. And to be honest, I know a lot more bootstrap founders that sold that are a lot happier than venture-backed founders that are still on the grind. So let's talk about, kind of, all right, you get acquired. Laurits Just (17:47.17) Yeah, it does. Laurits Just (17:56.984) Same, same, same. Jason Kirby (18:03.091) you know, walk us through kind of when that happened and kind of what the plan was, you know, post acquisition and kind of where you are now. Laurits Just (18:10.862) Yeah. So yeah, we got we put pen to paper on the deal in December 2023. So at the like one of the last business days of the calendar year. And then I took a break basically for the like first quarter, first almost first two quarters actually of 2024. And then joined Flippa around like Jason Kirby (18:35.135) Nice. Laurits Just (18:40.64) late spring, early summer, I think around that time. But yeah, I needed to just like get my bearings. So when traveling a bit, I had really just kept my head down for almost three years. So it was nice to just get out of my hamster wheel for a little bit and just breathe some fresh air and then get back into it with Flippa. So when I joined Flippa, The role that I had agreed to was to head up basically a new business unit within Flippa. So Flippa, for those who are not familiar, is a platform to buy and sell online businesses. It's the world's biggest. It's been live since 2009, so 16 years now, and has over 2 million registered business buyers. and hundreds of thousands of business owners registered. I think at any given point in time, the 6,000 businesses listed for sale. so &A is really in the lifeblood of Flippa and they wanted to expand the range of services and often products to also include fundraising. So a lot of founders come to Flippa, they get their valuation, like what's my business worth, but they're not really ready to sell. Maybe they want a bigger valuation, so they want to grow into a bigger valuation. And so we have so many buyers and actually a subset of those 2 million buyers are what you would qualify as accredited, meaning they're accredited investors who are eligible to buy unlisted securities. And that allows us to solicit them with offerings that, hey, here's a business that's raising capital. You can invest in that business and help them basically grow it by deploying your capital and get ownership on the upside. So Flippa Invest was really the product that I was hired to kind of grow and launch or launch and grow. So yeah, I started designing it, working with our head of product, working with our sales teams, working to make sure that we could kind of leverage obviously our base of buyers and the subset of those who are Laurits Just (21:04.11) accredited investors to offer business owners, here's a new platform that you can raise growth capital on from our existing investors. So we have 75,000 accredited investors, which comprise mostly exited founders, as well as current business operators, and then also institutional family offices and private equities. But what we don't have is VCs, right? We don't have venture caps. And so the people you raise capital from don't have those unrealistic expectations that you're going to be the next Uber or you're going to be the next DoorDash. You're going to like 1000X my return. Most likely, that's like, first of all, that's not going to happen. And our investors are fair and square, not even interested in that. Uber and DoorDash are still not profitable to this day, I think. So they would be way more interested in a more modest return on capital, as well as some dividends, some profit distributions. And that's where Flippa Invest distinguishes itself from other alternative fundraising platforms like AngelList, where you will find those typical Silicon Valley investors who are actively looking for the next Uber or DoorDash. Our investors are not. And so I think it's a great alternative for the position that I was in with my co-founder, where we were like, either we take these VCs that we've spoken with and that are asking us on a quarterly basis if we're raising. We take them up on the offer and we go balls to the wall as it were, or we exit or we bootstrap forever. And so here's a fourth option. Well, how about you raise from someone who's more aligned with your motivations, with your aspirations for the business? If you get an offer on the table to exit for 20 million or $50 million, a VC will probably try and actively block that because that's not going to return their fund. That's not an outlier. That's not an outlier. So for them, that's not a good outcome. But for you as a founder, that is a good outcome. So our investors are way more aligned with founders who may want to take an exit at some point down the line. And even if they don't, like again, like profit distributions is also a great incentive for our investors to invest. Laurits Just (23:28.91) So yeah, that's really what Flippa Invest is and that's what I joined to kind of help build. Jason Kirby (23:34.549) Well, this is why I think it's fascinating to have you on the show and to present founders this alternative, this other source of capital, because VCs are easy to find. So they think VC and they go to VC. run, you like you talked to a hundred VCs, but in most cases, it's not the right fit. And so you just spent a hundred hours, 200 hours chasing the wrong people. And when it comes to You know, this type of option, so Flipa Invest or this kind of like partial, you know, sale. What's kind of the, like, can you give some examples of the type of companies that it makes sense for, or like the size, the average transaction? Like, what, are you, you know, kind of expecting here? Laurits Just (24:19.95) So we have a few requirements on Flippa Invests. And one important one is that it's post-revenue. It has growing revenues, in fact. So we don't have a fixed band for your monthly revenue, because it really differs. Like SaaS business versus an e-commerce, the margins are typically very, very different. So we don't have fixed bands for what your online business needs to make, but it needs to have growing revenues. so because that de-risks the investment for the investors in that you have traction, it's more of a proven business that you're raising growth capital for. And it's not pre-seed money to help an idea turn into an MVP, turn into a business. there's already a product, there's already a business. So that's how Flipa Invest can also have a different type of investor because it might have like maybe a bit of a capped upside, but there's also capped downside. It's less risky, you could say, than the typical moonshot business that you find on other fundraising platforms because these are real businesses. sorry, Jason, can you remind me of the question? Jason Kirby (25:44.521) Just like what's the typical transaction size or? Laurits Just (25:47.49) Yeah. Yeah. So, so we have like, we have the funding target. We do have fixed bands for those. so now that we're like just launching Flippa invest, you can raise between $50,000 and a million dollars. That's the kind of like the band that we're, the, the, the scope you could say that we're, initially launching with. And I think with, with time, we're going to increase that, to like a few million, but in the early days here, we would rather, under I guess under promise and over deliver than the other way around. So we don't want to see like huge rounds listed and launched on FlipInvest that just collect cobweb. We want to fill the rounds that launch with us. So we're starting small, you could say, but the businesses that are raising like one business is doing 2.1 million ARR. It's a cybersecurity SaaS business, fantastic business. And so they're raising, I think, $300,000 with room for oversubscription, I think. But obviously, we also have businesses that make way less money. So we have one that makes, I think, about $100,000 or $150,000 a year. So that's an MRR of something like $10,000 or $12,000. And so they are raising think 250,000 and then another business is actually raising a million dollars. So we have different round sizes, different company sizes. Some rounds are like full rounds and some are just like bridge funding. Some are, you know, follow on funding. we have like businesses that are bootstrapped and some are more in the like carousel of like fundraising multiple rounds. So it's a bit of a mix, but We really like the businesses that are first time raisers. So the ones that have not raised before are considering raising maybe to never raise again. Those businesses go really well down with our investor community because they have like maybe they're really close to profitability and they have a path to profitability as soon as they get profitable. It's like, why would you ever raise again? So it's like those businesses are great fits for Flip Invest, but we have a range of different types of. Laurits Just (28:10.348) sizes and stages. Jason Kirby (28:12.789) So, know, putting on my buyer's hat. like I come in, I'm like, all right, I want to invest 50K, 100K and see some kind of either future dividend or equity appreciation and deal. So I'm coming in and I'm picking, like, I want to see, you know, cybersecurity SaaS, you know, like that. I believe in cybersecurity and I like the SaaS model. So I'm perusing the options. Let's say I come to this $2.1 million, cyber security option. Who sets the price? Laurits Just (28:43.47) So we're not investment advisors. We're not lawyers. We're not going to tell founders how to price their business. We're not appraising their business. We have a legal partner that can help you create term sheets and basically figure out how to structure your offering. We don't do that. We just basically bring it to market. so that's where our service falls short at the moment. I think in the future, we would like to offer some of these things ourselves rather than have partners do it. But at the moment, that's how we do it. So the price of the business is brought to us. We reserve the right, if your offering is outlandish, to not bring it to market. We still have a reputation here and we're trying to create a platform that's beneficial to both sides of the coin. So yeah, the price of the business or of the round, it's something that is set by the founders that are raising capital, but we reserve the right to basically tell them that it's not a fit for our investor mandate. Jason Kirby (30:09.493) So, you know, and this is why I appreciate your guys' model. It's still kind of like founder choice, but maybe we'll talk about this, but like things I see on other, what we'll call more traditional crowdfunding platforms. You know, everyone knows kind of their names. The, what I've seen a lot of founders do is they'll go out and say, we're raising, you know, $2 million on a $50 million valuation or some like kind of crazy, absurd valuation makeup. Yeah. Exactly. So like that's, that's what I appreciate. Cause it's so, there's so many of those that do that because, know, like, the retail investors, they don't know any better. And they just kind of make whatever price and there's almost no dilution to the founders when they do that kind of stuff. But in reality, it's. Laurits Just (30:36.308) a great example. We would not have them on our platform. Jason Kirby (30:53.333) pretty bad investment decision. Laurits Just (30:55.96) Yeah, no. So, you know, I'm also talking to a lot of Y Combinator founders. They're obviously on a different path. A lot of them, know, actually there's a whole range of startups that get Y Combinator backed and funded and go through the acceleration program. And they come out the other side. Some of them turn into these you know, moonshots businesses and that's fantastic. We need those businesses. I still am a firm believer in venture capital and it serves a purpose. But there are also businesses that come out to the other side and perhaps they might have shot for the stars, but they're going to land on the moon and it's still fantastic business. And some of them are going to raise on Flip and Invest, but they're not going to raise at the $50 million valuation. They're going to raise at a different valuation. We do have those great white company or black businesses launching rounds on Flip and Vest, which is amazing. But they're raising perhaps with a different temperament than some of the other more early stage businesses that they just have a pitch deck and they have an idea and a few guys from college. A bit like my co-founder and I, we also have these resumes. He worked at Google, I worked at BlackRock. we're gonna go out and make a create a fintech because you know tech and finance they go together and they become fintech and Then you know we had a hundred VCs literally dial us down and ask us like when are you raising capital? And at that point yeah, maybe you can spin up a story and you can raise that at an absurd valuation But the good thing about like when you actually have traction and revenue is that like things Things become way more clear like what kind of business do you have on your hands? Is this a? you know, is it growing? Okay, if it's growing like 100 % month over month, all right, well, then maybe this is a moonshot business. But if it's growing more steadily or more, you know, slowly or, you know, whatever the case, like if you have a sense of how big the market actually is, because one thing is a slideshow, another thing as well, how like proof is in the pudding. So, but so yeah, like, I think Flippa Invest really fills a gap in the market that's underserved. Because at the moment, Laurits Just (33:18.338) For the buy side, their only option to really get in on the action here is to buy and operate these types of businesses. Can you not get exposure to these businesses by just investing in them passively? So I think that's why it's really interesting for the buy side. And obviously for the sell side, I as a founder, I would have loved to have investors on my cap table who align with my aspirations for Bits for Digits, which were... Like it's part of the reason that we didn't raise was like, weren't convinced that Bits for Digits was going to be a dekakorn. Okay. A dekakorn means a $10 billion valuation business. that's, you know, few businesses have that kind of market potential. And I think Bits for Digits didn't, and we came to terms with that. then taking the VC dollars was kind of like, it was like, you know, you need to have strong conviction that you can deliver those results. And I think. Jason Kirby (33:58.857) You Laurits Just (34:16.236) we weren't 100 % sure that we would basically sign on to deliver that. Jason Kirby (34:22.421) I think it's completely fair and reasonable. And most founders need to come to that realization. There's always that dilemma that, I gotta be the next Steve Jobs or I gotta be the next Uber or DoorDash, whatever. And they kind of set themselves up for that mindset. Cause you kind of have to have a crazy mindset to be that big, but you also have to have a great business, great team, money, a lot of other things. And so I always love exposing founders to things like Flip Invest or debt or various different forms of equity or just selling the company and seeing what can materialize. And whether it's a big exit or a little exit, think about the opportunity costs of continuing to march down a path of a maybe lackluster business when maybe they sold off the assets to someone that could do something more with it and then go free up their time to go work on something different and what that opportunity cost might be. It's always great to hear about these types of options. Laurits Just (35:18.67) For sure. And you know, there's a lot of risks trying to create something new. Like that's what I basically, I tried to do with Bits for Digits. You know, I was like, there's nothing in the market that does this, that serves this purpose. And the same with Flip Invest here, trying to create something that doesn't really exist. And you know, it's still early days. We're going to see how well it kind of resonates with both founders and investors. I'm very bullish on it because we do have a big investor base that are very excited about it. And we have a lot of founders who are also very excited about it. I think given the scale of Flippa, it's the right incubator, if you will, for this business to launch. Jason Kirby (36:07.871) Do you foresee some kind of a feedback loop of, you know, someone comes in raises 250 and flip invest and then comes back like two, three years later and sells the company. Laurits Just (36:17.439) Absolutely, absolutely. It's a flywheel, right? It's flywheel effect here. We can now service businesses in all of their like, or soon all of their different like stages of the life cycle, both when they're growing and when they're maturing and exiting. So that's the beauty of Flippa, the ecosystem that we're in. And I think in the future, hopefully we can service them even earlier in the process. Jason Kirby (36:45.097) So we gotta be clear, know, our founders, maybe they're interested, they wanna explore this, but nothing like this is free. how much does something like this cost for a founder to consider? Laurits Just (36:56.898) Yeah, so we have a launch fee, just like you see on other fundraising platforms. So to bring your round to market and in front of our 75,000, actually, it's more like 78,000 last I checked this morning. So 78,000 accredited investors to bring that to market, help you prepare, like get everything set up. It's three and a half thousand dollars. So three and a half grand. And, and so like, I always say this to founders, even in the event that you don't meet your funding target, can still talk to your investors and they can still write you checks. It's not like we're going to block you from taking a small round. can flex up and down. But also, even if the investors are maybe not all investing, some of them, can still, these relationships you can bring with you. And I think that's quite valuable because Like good luck trying to reach 78,000 accredited investors on your own. It's very hard to get in front of that many eyeballs that are, you know, high net worth individuals with, you know, more than just capital, I would say, because on Flippa Invest, you find these business operators and founders who have run their own business or are running their own business and they have network, they have expertise. They have what VCs claim to have as well, which is added value. And think so that's why we call it smart money, right? In the industry. So it's more than capital, but yeah, these relationships will carry through. in the event that you do meet your funding target and you do raise around, we have a platform fee as well. And so depending on whether you raise via an SPV or without an SPV, we have a different percentage that we charge. So if it's without an SPV, we charge a payment processing fee per investor that that invests in your round. of 2.5%. And in the event that you use an SPV via us, so we have a partner, Sidecar, if anyone knows, they will form and manage the SPV on your behalf, basically, for the round that you're raising on Flippa Invest. And for that, we retain 4 % to help pay some of these fixed costs associated with spinning up an SPV. Laurits Just (39:20.044) So yeah, that's basically like there's an upfront fixed flat fee and then there is a like down the line a percentage platform fee. Jason Kirby (39:29.981) No, I think that's far within reason and kind of market for these types of services. So I appreciate you sharing that. With anyone that might be listening, if they wanted to learn more about you or Flipa Invest, where would they go? Laurits Just (39:44.952) Go to flippa.com slash invest. That's basically where Flippa Invest will live and where you can also apply. We have a screening process where we'll get on a call, we'll have a look at your deck, your P &L, make sure you're a good fit before onboarding you. So you can go to that URL, flippa.com slash invest and apply to raise growth capital on the platform. Jason Kirby (40:14.153) Okay. Awesome. Well, Laura, it's been an absolute pleasure having you on the show and sharing your journey and also this tool that is now something that founders can consider as a potential pathway for fueling their company to hit the next milestone. So appreciate you coming on. Appreciate you sharing your advice. Laurits Just (40:31.182) Thank you so much, Jason. It's been fun. Jason Kirby (40:35.061) All right, let's wrap.