Full Width [alt+shift+f] Shortcuts [alt+shift+k]
Sign Up [alt+shift+s] Log In [alt+shift+l]
14
I spoke with an entrepreneur recently who, after 5 years of running a successful and growing business, said "After 5 years I finally know the real business we're in.". It means they outwardly do X but on the inside the hard part is Y. As an
a year ago

Improve your reading experience

Logged in users get linked directly to articles resulting in a better reading experience. Please login for free, it takes less than 1 minute.

More from XO Capital - Field Notes

Everything I've learned about buying small software businesses over the past 4 years

💡 We started out buying 1 business for $25k in 2020. Our deals are now around $1M - $2M purchase price. So my notes below relate to a mostly linear path from $25k to ~$2M. XO has been a tough ride. We had some wins, some losses and overall haven&

3 months ago 59 votes
Getting Smaller To Get Bigger

💡 We have another fresh round of capital to deploy into 1 business at up to $1.8M purchase price. Must be b2b SaaS, low customer concentration, 80%+ gross margins, 50k+ MRR. If you have a tip, pass it along! We're underway with xo 2.0. That means,

6 months ago 34 votes
How to 10x an acquisition

I'm going to break down how we more than 10x-ed ScreenshotAPI and why this acquisition worked when others didn't. Not everything here is generalizable, but I'll pull out what worked well from our first interactions with the seller to the deal closing a few

7 months ago 40 votes
We 10x-ed screenshotapi.net and sold it

Before we jump in, I was on a pod talking through content, acquisitions, etc: This exit is bitter sweet. Screenshot was our first ever acquisition. We 10x-ed it, and it is really the reason XO exists today. If this first acquisition hadn't gone well, I think I would

7 months ago 31 votes
Acquisition #12 - Onsched

We've been a little quiet over here as we start rolling out XO 2.0, using outside capital instead of our own cash to acquire larger businesses. It's taken a bit of time from deal #11 to #12. We didn't buy anything for 9

8 months ago 31 votes

More in startups

Trade deficits do not make a country poorer

There are real problems with trade deficits, but Trump doesn't understand what they are.

21 hours ago 3 votes
The Camera, Vincent Van Gogh and "The Starry Night"

How the invention of the camera changed art and led to Van Gogh's classic painting.

6 hours ago 3 votes
The U.S. Led the World in Science and Technology and Just Gave It Up

Prior to WWII the U.S was a distant second in science and engineering. By the time the war was over, U.S. science and engineering had blown past the British, and led the world for 85 years. With the cutbacks of U.S. government support and the Chinese investing heavily for the last three decades to surpass […]

2 days ago 8 votes
Tariffs: Another American act of intentional self-harm

As Adam Smith said, "there is a great deal of ruin in a nation."

2 days ago 3 votes
After U.S. failure, Vietnam’s EV leader turns to markets dominated by Tesla and BYD

VinFast follows its Vietnam playbook in Asia and targets the luxury market in the Gulf.

3 days ago 4 votes