Episode 419 | VC Prospecting Emails, Building Features vs. Integrations and More Listener Questions

Rob: In this episode of Startups for the Rest of Us, Mike and I talk about how to handle VC prospecting emails, building features versus building integrations and more listener questions. This is Startups for the Rest of Us episode 419.

Welcome to Startups for the Rest of Us, the podcast that helps developers, designers and entrepreneurs be awesome at building, launching, and growing software products. Whether you’ve built your first product, or you’re just thinking about it, I’m Rob.

Mike: And I’m Mike.

Rob: And we’re here to share our experiences help you avoid the same mistakes we’ve made. What’s going on this week sir?

Mike: Well, I’m in the midst of polishing up by a bunch of screenshots for Bluetick to distribute with product listings that I’m posting on various websites at the moment. I started doing it and I realize the screenshots that I could take that would take me like two seconds to do just from various places inside the app don’t really tell a story about the app itself or any of the screens themselves because you kind of have to have used the product in order to understand certain pieces of it.

I kind of backed off a little bit and said okay, well how can I tell a story with these screenshots? I was like, most of the screenshots are actually like smaller versions of the screen itself and then like descriptive text around it and arrows arose and it kind of tells more a marketing story around what the product will do for you as opposed to like just strict screenshots that you see on a lot of those websites.

Rob: I agree. I think taking screenshots and making them palatable is such an art and just trying to take a screenshot of like an entire screenshot of a whole screen in your app almost never works. There’s just too much information, there’s no context, you don’t know what’s going on. It a very developer thing to do because we’ve seen screenshots and inspects before mockups inspects.

When I’ve seen screenshots that wind up being really helpful, it tends to be this really highly cropped thing that’s just one corner of the screen, is high resolution and like you said, it has some type of helper text. It takes a lot of time I guess is what I realized to make good screenshots. Much like making a good explainer video, it seems like you’re cranking out in a few hours tends to take a lot of time to do something like that.

Mike: Yeah, those things take a couple of days. I actually allocated a day earlier this week to basically create a new explainer video and that was just not enough time. I’ve done them before. I knew that it took more time but I guess I was overly optimistic about how long it would take.

Rob: Yup. I kind of always end up with those things. This blog post called How I Created 4 Startup Explainer Videos for $11 and that’s at robwalling.com in my essays section. I ran through how I created some pretty LoFi explainer videos for Drip and why I did that. It’s definitely a bootstrapper’s approach because it was time consuming.

I think I spent a full day from the time I wrote the copy until I recorded. I recorded four different ones but then as far as I can repurpose a bunch of a copy and the parts, basically the animations can repurpose them. Not something I’d recommend if you have the budget to just hire someone professional but definitely something that a scrappy bootstrap startup should probably think about.

Mike: How about you, what’s going on this week?

Rob: I’m having a tough week this week man. Sherry’s out of town she’s with her family. Her dad is pretty ill and it’s been a long time coming. It’s been more than a year of stuff kind of degrading there. So she’s out of town and I’m trying to figure out, I tend to do really well with just me and three kids and I can do it for about four days and then things just drop off a cliff. On the fifth day I wake up tired and then I think the kids are tired of me, kind of tired of each other and I kind of start running out of patience and it’s just this vicious cycle I’ll say.

At the end of the week, it’s Friday right now when we’re recording, we’re doing an emergency recording session because, I’m supposed to record next week but I’m going to be out of town. I think that’s the other thing, I usually don’t enjoy being on the road very much and I’m pretty much on the road for almost the next two weeks. So it is what it is, these are just times and stuff that I have to do. I think it’s stuff that will certainly help with TinySeed and a lot of it is work stuff and being face to face with some folks where it’s important.

For now, I’m just kind of looking forward to getting back here for Thanksgiving and getting pass this week. It’s probably been one of the I’d say worst weeks of maybe the last quarter. It’s not like some catastrophic lifelong trough. But last several months, this has been a tough one.

Mike: Yeah I’ve realized earlier this week that my kids have days off from school this week, next week and the following week. I’m just like, do you kids ever go to school?

Rob: Yeah, it’s like who’s going to watch these kids while they do that? Oh me, I’m just going to work less. Already an announcement to the listeners, you and I have been on the mic for almost 30 minutes and I’ve been interrupted twice by my kids. One kid is home sick and another kid I homeschool part time. But since Sherry’s not here, I’m home schooling full time and on and on. It’s just enough interruption that you can’t actually get anything done. So I feel your pain with the kids home.

Mike: It’s a good thing you don’t write code.

Rob: Maybe there’s a reason I don’t write code anymore.

Mike: It could be. Maybe that’s the trick, I don’t know. I forget who, there was somebody who commented on—I think it was Alex Yumashev he’s like, “Oh I was able to only spend 1% of my time on my phone this week.” and somebody asked him how he did it and he’s like, “Well, I had a third kid.”

Rob: That’s a good way to do it. So today we’re answering some listener questions. Our first one is about how to handle VC prospecting emails and it’s from a long time listener he says, “Hey guys, I got the email below and I was briefly excited and when I clicked on the link and opened up a form where I’m asked about my company’s earnings.” The gist of the email is it’s from a what looks like a venture capital firm and it says, “I’d like to speak to you about a financial opportunity regarding your SaaS business. As an acquisition advisor, I’m seeking to acquire business in this space season.”

So I don’t know this much of VC, it’s almost like private equity right? We may want to acquire you. So back to the original email he says, “Based on his email and the form that was presented, it seems like he’s not really interested in my company, he’s just casting a broad net seeing what’s out there. I think it would be interesting for you guys to discuss A, what to do if you get half asked acquisition related emails like this and B, what to do with all those VC emails, venture capital emails. People seem to get looking to connect when you have no interest in venture capital. Keep up the good work on the show.”

So what do you think? There’s two separate things here. I think anyone who’s built any type of business got any traction winds up on any list anywhere eventually gets these emails. I remember in the latter days right before the acquisition of Drip, I was getting probably three or four of the VC emails a month and I was getting I’d say maybe one a month of acquisition related, maybe it was one every six weeks but there was definitely a pretty steady flow of them. So what do you think about these?

Mike: I guess if we separate these two because as you said, they are two entirely different questions. The part about VC just looking to connect like on LinkedIn or sending emails. I get a bunch of these emails like, “Hey, can we hop on a call and talk about your business?” And I’m just like, “No, I don’t have time to talk to you and even if I did, this isn’t a good fit.” I’m just blunt with them and it’s like, spend your time someplace else because it’s just not going to happen. A lot of times, I will just let the email go and I’ll just ignore it and then if they send me a couple of follow ups, I think if I get like two follow ups, I have a cold emails folder that I just dump these into and then if it gets to at least two and it still looks like they’re still going to continue to email me then I’ll just respond and say, “Look, this is not a good fit. It’s not going to work. I’m just not interested. So take me off your email list.”

For the other ones if it’s like a situation that he described where it’s an acquisition related email and they’re asking questions about finances and stuff, my advice in that situation is really just like ask what their range of interest is because what you don’t want to do is you don’t want to go and fill out a form that gives all the information about your business because they may be looking to use that to justify a purchase price or to lowball somebody else’s business or something along those lines. You just don’t know what that data is going to be used for and there’s no trust. So why would you give over that information.

But if they’re actually really looking for those types of businesses, then they know how much they’re willing to spend. They know what their budget is and they know that below a certain threshold, they’re not going to be interested and they know that above a certain threshold, it’s probably not going to work because they’re not looking for a business that’s at large because they’re just not going to be able to pay for it. Ask them what their range is and if you fall within that range, then you might want to have a conversation with them. But otherwise, I don’t see any real obligation to start forking over information that is very specific to your business without actually going down the path of formal offers and all that other stuff. But if you’re not interested at all, you can say, “Hey look, it’s not a good time. Maybe let’s keep in touch.” But I don’t know if I’d entertain them. Just don’t spend a lot of time on them is really what the bottom line is.

Rob: I think that’s a great advice. I think especially the venture capital emails, I mean they call it junior partner, but just a junior person that is prospecting, it’s cold outreach.

Mike: Like an intern. That’s what you mean, intern.

Rob: An intern, exactly. That’s really what it is. They might be called the junior partner but that’s essentially what it is and it’s like, “Go find some deals.” So, with the venture capital stuff, I pretty much like you, I just put that all into a folder somewhere in case in the future ever I decided by some crazy thing that I was going to raise venture capital which is never on my radar. But at least then you have all the names you could reach back out to.

The acquisition stuff I agree with you. I used to respond directly like you said and just be like, “What are you looking at? What ranges are you looking at?” I mean basically what you said, I would never fill out a form like that and if that’s their requirement, then delete. It’s done. I feel like you don’t have to feel like they’re back to in a corner or something because they’re sending you this email. You don’t have any obligation to do any of this. Also, when those come into my inbox, I would tend to put them in my this week folder.

So I talked this week on ZenFounder I guess it’s last week when this was live but the ZenFounder podcast I did a solo episode where I talked about productivity hacks. One of my productivity things in Gmail is that I have this label and it’s _thisweek and the reason it’s underscore is so it goes to the top the list. Anything that is not time urgent for me or is someone else putting something on my to do list that does not need to urgently get done, I throw into this thisweek folder.

And then once a week, I have a 30-minute time box that pops up and says, “Go through this week folder.” And then, I would go through all these and respond and I would try not to let it get into some big back and forth because that’s how people suck time from you. They don’t do it necessarily intentionally but they do it because it is in their best interest and not necessarily in yours. That’s the biggest thing I would think about. You don’t have to respond to every email and even if you do, like you just said Mike, don’t spend a ton of time on this. That’s the key. So thanks for the question.

Our next question, it’s another anonymous question and he says, “Hey Rob, congratulations on selling Drip. I’ve been following you and Startups for the Rest of Us for a few years and consider you some kind of a role model. Thanks so much for all the useful tips and inspiration. I have a question, I’ve built a SaaS. It works well in the German market. Now that we’ve entered the English speaking market, it’s become clear that it’s scheduling feature, like scheduling for appointments is a deal breaker for most of our trial users. We don’t have it built yet so I’m thinking now if we should build the feature from scratch which would be a lot of work and distraction and it would be essentially expensive for us. Or, should we build an integration with some of the existing big players like say Calendly or Acuity or I’ll say YouCanBook.me. What is your opinion or experience with this? Thanks a lot for your time.” What do you think?

Mike: So this is something I’ve actually looked at for Bluetick and the path that I’m going down is to integrate with other ones who do exactly that. You could invest all the time and effort of building your own version of it from scratch but that is a value add to your products, not necessarily a core feature. For those other products, it’s their core feature. So you may be able to attract certain types of users who aren’t already using those but at the same time, there are huge numbers of people who already have those products in place and they work really well and they’ve got a lot of support infrastructure and customer validation and users, all the stuff that goes with supporting an entire product that does just that.

For you to replicate that inside of your own app is like a small piece of it is probably not the wisest move in the world. So I would lean towards going with an integration of some kind and if down the road it makes sense to build your own version of it so that your incoming customers don’t also have to have a subscription to those, then maybe that makes sense at that point. But I wouldn’t start there, I wouldn’t try to rebuild an entire application that other companies do and that’s all they do.

Rob: Yeah, I would agree with that advice. This is what we’ve seen with the all in one tools much like the infusion Infusionsoft or even the Hubspot where they have built all this functionality into one and so I guess I’ll speak to Infusionsoft itself if you’ve used it and you’ve tried to use their shopping cart, their affiliate management, their landing pages, their CRM, they’re not very good.

The core email stuff is decent and they were the innovator in the visual builder, but it’s a pretty rough product outside of that, I’ve never use those things. I’ve heard it from dozens and dozens of Infusionsoft customers who said, “Yes, I’ve tried their shopping cart and it’s not configurable and it’s kind of a kludge.” And so, that’s what we have to think about, are you going to build something that is a worst in class but is literally just a checkbox so the people say, “Oh, they have the scheduling feature.” the moment you build it, people are going to say, “Oh, Calendly does this and I can check this one box and I can put this buffer around my times or I can do it only every other day or I can do weekly this and that.” Suddenly it’s like you are almost on the hook to build this best in class product.

So I think that if you want to do that, you can make it a very deliberate decision to do that over the long term and think three years down the line. Do you want to still be maintaining that and adding to it and expanding it because it’s not a one-time build. Not only are you going to have to get it to feature parity with your competitors but then as they get better here and after they implement those features. So it really will be like having two products. Now, if you had funding or you’re going after huge market or growing very fast, then maybe that is the right choice.

Maybe it is the right choice to not send people off to sign up for Calendly or Acuity or YouCanBook.me because you would want to maintain those dollars, you don’t want to retain them. Having someone go and pay for those other subscriptions would actually be a loss of value to you and you need to capture as much value as you can. But when you’re a bootstrapper and you’re a small team and you’re going based on revenue, I would say by default, integrate first and do a pretty quick integration. Then do a kind of a V2 integration which is the next level up and is even better. Then if everything catches on, you’re six months down the line and you really have realized this is the core feature, then maybe you evaluate building it.

That’s a very common path to what you see even bigger startups do is first they go integrate and then they circle back and they build out the core features in the app that are the most popular. The most popular integrations become core features in the app but then you at least have more data and you kind of have a longer timeframe to think about it. You’re not making this rash decision of like, “Everyone’s requesting it over the course of this month. Let’s commit ourselves to this thing which lasts years.” you’re going to impact your product roadmap for literally years if you do that.

So I’m on the same page as you. I would integrate first and then I would think about what is does it look like improve that integration and then what does it look like to eventually if we need to build that out. But to do it very deliberately and to give yourself more time for again as to the ramifications of what that means. So thanks for the question, hope that was helpful.

Our next question is about going in circles, no traction, no investors so Gabriel Popan. He says, “Hey Mike and Rob, thanks the great show. I’ve been listening for a couple months now. I’m catching up on older shows as well. I’d appreciate some advice or starting point on this, on the single developer of a note taking app, I’ve reached to the point where the app needs a team and some funding to move forward. I would like to apply for seed investment. But given the fact that investors like to see among other things traction, some customer base etcetera. I know that the chances are slim for me to get investment. I did my homework and I am able to articulate the key differentiators properly. Right now, I cannot get any traction with the current state of the app. it’s not consumer ready. So I’m stuck in this loop. I’m reluctant to apply for seed investment as a single developer as I know this does not look good to investors. All I have is a website, screenshots, a blog, a demo and a deck. I know that’s not enough but I also know that this has some potential. How do you break out of this loop?” So Mike, I’ll totally let you handle this first. He has a lot of I know statements in here that I question if they’re factual.

Mike: I was going to call this out, I was going to call this out like, how do you know that it’s not enough. It seems to me like the core problem here is that you need money in order to be able to take the products to the next level and there are some customers there. There’s a customer base which looks like you’re getting some traction with it. How do you know that you’re not going to get the money unless you ask for it.

Rob: But he said he doesn’t have a customer base.

Mike: Oh he doesn’t?

Rob: No, he said, “The current state of the app is not consumer ready,” that all he has is a marketing website, screenshots, a blog, a demo and a deck. So he doesn’t yet have, I’m assuming zero paying customers at this point.

Mike: Does that mean he doesn’t have a product either?

Rob: He says, “I can’t get any traction with the current state of the app.” So that tells me there’s code written. I don’t know item maybe the UI is bad, maybe it’s just not usable yet. He said it’s not consumer ready, I don’t know what that means.

Mike: I wonder if this is a mobile app or like a web app.

Rob: It says note taking which tells me it might be both. Note taking app you think of like Evernote or something it’s like you kind of have to be mobile and web.

Mike: Right. Honestly, I would wonder more about whether it’s the space as opposed to the app itself because there are a lot of note taking apps. And there’s a lot of them that are free. That’s the thing, there’s so much competition and I feel like it’s like project management software or blog trackers. Developers for whatever reason love to build blog trackers.

Rob: To do lists.

Mike: Yes, to do lists, blog trackers, those are the things that every developer decides, “All these other ones suck and I’m going to create my own and it’s going to be better than all of them.” and the reality is that like, everyone has different tastes and that’s why there are so many of them and it’s hard to build like mass market appeal with any of them because everyone just has these different tastes associated with it.

It’s so easy to get into this space because the bar is really low to build most of those apps. I’m not saying that’s not complicated and there’s not a lot to it, it’s just that it’s fairly straightforward in terms of the technical challenges that you have to overcome. So everyone says, “Well, I can build one that’s better than that and it will do exactly what I want.” The problem is, everybody who uses those apps has slightly different needs and therefore that’s why the market is so incredibly fragmented.

I’m with you, I think that there’s a lot of “I knows” in here that are probably not justified but at the same time like, I don’t know how much traction you’re going to get with an app like this or how you would go about pitching this to investors to begin with without getting that traction. You even look at Evernote, I’ve used Evernote before, I still have my account but I barely use the product anymore. And why is that? It’s just like I got away from it and I found other things that I like better. So there’s huge term problems as well in those types of apps and I don’t know how you overcome those types of things.

Rob: Yeah, it’s definitely an investment play and I think that’s the struggle. Trying to build an app in a crowded space like this even with differentiators, you have to validate that that differentiation matters to anyone before anyone is likely to give you investment. Honestly in your shoes, this is what accelerators are made for. It’s made for people who have ideas and either no traction or maybe a little bit of traction. That’s why YC started. You can come with an idea.

I know a lot of people come in beyond that but you got put your hustle pants on in all honesty. You either need to apply to an accelerator if this idea is that big, you need to have a network of people who are willing to invest in you because of your past history. I’m guessing that that’s not the case, you would have already done that. You need to teach yourself to code or if you’re already a developer, nights and weekends.

I mean we’ve all done this years and years of nights and weekends I did to get stuff off the ground. If you’re not a developer, then work aside hustle, save enough money, hire a developer, have them bill that. I mean there are ways to get this done, they’re hard. It’s hard work. That’s what startups are. There is no easy answer. So you break out of this loop by just saying that you’re not going to give up until you have something to show people. If you truly believe that this is something that that’s going to be a differentiator.

That’s my first two thoughts one is I think accelerators are ideal for this. Number two, I think you’re going to have to hustle way harder than you’re letting on in your email. I’m not saying you’re not hustling, but you’re certainly not presenting that in the email that you’ve just gone to the mattress that are pulling out all the stops because that’s what it’s going to take to watch an app like this. My third thought is, have you validated this with anyone? Does anyone else care about the note taking differentiators you’re talking about.

So I would be literally going to local coffee shops and just ask if it’s a B2C app, I would just start asking people. I would approach people. I would be on forums. I would start on indie hackers, be on hacker news but I would also if this is a note taking app for veterinarians, I would be on the veterinarian forums. I would buy that ticket to the conference where you need to approach people that might use this app.

It’s just like have the conversations and try to invalidate your hypothesis. Your hypothesis is that these key differentiators are going to so differentiate your note taking app that it’s going to have all this traction and it’s going to grow big and grow fast. I think you need to validate that assumption.

Mike: The one thing that you mentioned in there that I think is actually something for him to key in on is the, you’ve mentioned the note taking app for veterinarians. The way this is presented to us is that it’s a generic note taking app. I think if your knee is down to a particular type of industry or market vertical or even a position in a company, that would probably be a great place to go.

I have seen apps that are specifically designed for the person who changes your tires at the car shop. They have apps that are specifically set up so that they can take notes on, “Oh, you last came in for your car and this is what things look like and this is what we should look, or this is what we should reach out to you about in the future because we see that there’s like a degradation on the muffler or something like that and it looks fine now. But what about in six months, what about in a year? Maybe we should send you a coupon or something like that.” Those are the types of things that you’re going to want to key in on to find who the audience is that’s actually going to pay for it. Then you have your value propositions and everything else.

Rob: Yeah. This is a hard place to be. This is what every early stage entrepreneur, this is where almost all of us find ourselves in unless you have a Cinderella story. You’re Mark Zuckerberg and you’re at Harvard and you’re hacking away and suddenly your app is growing 9 million percent a month or whatever. That almost never happens, almost never. It’s always this struggle. It’s the untold struggle and I think that does us all a disservice because when you get to the point where Gabriel is at, you don’t realize all the hustle you have to put into it to get any type of escape velocity.

The untold hours and nights and weekends and the sacrifice that it’s going to take and the fact that it may not work out. You may spend the next six months or a year of nights and weekends and then realize, “This is no different than Evernote. I can’t get any traction.” or “This is different but nobody cares.” or “It was different, but Evernote implemented my feature and now I have to start over from scratch.” and this is the path that you’re going to travel as a founder.

I really think you want to ask yourself, “Is this what I’m signing up for? Is this something that I want to do?” because it is a life long journey I believe. From the time I first launched something in 1999 until I was even able to quit my job is for myself full time it was 10 years I think. There are some tough times there. I think all of us, each of us, each successful entrepreneur has that story to tell. Hopefully it’s not 10 years for you, hopefully it’s gotten shorter now that there’s better information out there. But I want you to think in terms of years, not months when you’re thinking about trying to build a successful business. That was a good question, thanks for sending it in.

Our last question of the day is all about buying a software business. It’s from Alex Bush and he says, “Hey Rob and Mike, thanks for making such a great podcast, very educational. I am entrepreneurial myself but so far, I’m in the consulting world trying to save up as much FU money as I can to go full time with my own business. I’m focusing on selling services and educational materials for iOS developers. I listened to a few of your episodes lately about taking on investment and it got me thinking about acquiring a business rather than building one from scratch. So question for you, how would you go about this? Specifically, how do I find an online or software business for sale? How do I approach them? How do I find all the info? How do I get all the data like their user base, their accounting books, what they’ve done for marketing etcetera that I need about them to make an educated decision. What are the price ranges I’m looking at for a profitable business. So far, I have found Flippa, flippa.com and it is very interesting but some of the prices in bids there seem to be too good to be true. How would I vet them? Is it even a good place to look?” what do you think Mike?

Mike: I’m going to give a couple of links in addition to Flippa for you. One of them is allsideprojects.com and you’ll find things there that have various price ranges and there’s different tags and stuff that you can sort and it does look like you can buy various websites and apps and products over there. But there’s also a new one that I saw, it was on products on Product Hunt, it’s called one 1kprojects.com and its pitch is, “Neglected side projects for less than $1,000.”

So you can go there and take a look and see what they have there and they’ll tell you what the MRR is, what the price is, what the product does and kind of who it’s aimed at. You can get a good sense of at least whether or not it’s worth your time looking at, but that’s the place that I would probably start over Flippa. It’s relatively new, I remember I saw it was within a month ago. So it’s relatively new.

I can’t voucher the quality of anything that you find there but it seems like they’re getting a fair amount of traction and the site looks pretty clean and polished. so I would imagine that they’re heading in the right direction because there’s a lot of people out there with projects that they started working on and they just didn’t go anywhere or they’re down to a certain point they just can’t make it work. So that’s a place I would start.

Rob: That’s a cool idea. I hope this sticks around. I’ve seen a lot of these things crop up over the years and then they just go away because they don’t make enough money. But I like this idea because of how many side projects people start and shut down. It’s like wasted value. You know how economists look at like, I think it’s like Christmas as this huge waste of economic value because you buy things for people that they don’t want and then they either have to sell them for less or they return them and they get store credits instead of getting value.

That’s why I see people building side projects shutting them down and then all these other people are coming in and saying, “I really wish I could take over a side project.” so I hope that this kind of thing sticks around. It’s kind of cool and it’s neat that they’re at a low price point. I mean I guess if they get traction, they’ll expand out because certainly sometimes there are things that I suppose could be worth more than $1,000 but I love that idea as you said, allsideprojects.com and 1kprojects.com. We will include links to those in the show notes.

The other thing I think you could look at and even five or six years ago, I wouldn’t have had this suggestion but there are a handful of basically website or app brokers. They do both, they do ecommerce websites and information products and software and all that stuff. There’s a handful of them that are pretty damn good and they’re specializing in this kind of stuff. So FE International is one and quietlightbrokerage.com is another and empireflippers.com. Those are the three that I tend to recommend to people.

You get on their lists and they get new listings each week. You kind of got to go through and look at them. Now those are going to be I would say definitely higher quality and also higher cost to something like Flippa. I have bought many websites, web apps on Flippa. Some of them are complete junk and scams. I had to spend a bunch of time vetting them even then sometimes it did mark out but the cost was so low that in the end, it was very much a net positive for me but it was a lot of time that I spent vetting.

It wasn’t just you walk down the street and find this amazing deal on this amazing piece of real estate, that never happens. If you’re a real estate investor, you spend a ton of time learning the market, learning how to negotiate, learning how to vet things, learning how to do the work and what it’s going to cost, same thing here. If you’re going to buy an app, you need to educate yourself. So don’t think that you’re just going to walk up and on the first day, find a great deal that you don’t have to vet and everything’s laid out for you.

Especially the cheaper you get, the more risk that there’s going to be. You just have to be willing to take that risk. So I have always been a proponent of buying or I say always, since my first acquisition worked out in 2005 and I realized, oh my gosh, this is like the shortcut. Forget all this building stuff. I mean as fun as the building is, it’s also super stressful. It takes too long and you never know if it’s going to work and it takes a year or two to get the product market fit. Whereas if you can acquire something that’s already halfway there or already has product market fit, honestly I think you are definitely ahead of the game by thinking in those terms.

Mike: Well I think that about wraps us up for the day. If you have a question for us, you can call it in our voicemail number 1-888-801-9690 or you can email it to us at questions@startupsfortherestofus.com. Our theme music is an excerpt from We’re Outta Control by MoOt used under Creative Commons. Subscribe to us in iTunes by searching for Startups and visit startupsfortherestofus.com for a full transcript of each episode. Thanks for listening. We’ll see you next time.