Acquisitions Anonymous - #1 for business buying, selling and operating - The AI Business That ChatGPT Might Destroy

Episode Date: August 25, 2026

In this episode the hosts debate whether a profitable AI assistant business listed for just 1.5x earnings is an incredible bargain—or a business that's about to be made obsolete by ChatGPT and ...Claude.Business Listing – https://mailchi.mp/websiteclosers/new-deal-alert-artificial-intelligence-ai-digital-assistant-on-demand-ai-agent-low-churn-cross-channel-memory-integration-subscription-based?e=42dc999128Welcome to Acquisitions Anonymous – the #1 podcast for small business M&A. Every week, we break down businesses for sale and talk about buying, operating, and growing them.Looking to build a professional website in minutes? Try Wix: https://wix.pxf.io/c/6898629/3115214/25616?trafcat=templateHubSpot is the backbone for how businesses scale without chaos. Try them out here: https://go.try-hubspot.com/OeG9VrSubscribe for more episodes: https://www.youtube.com/@AcquisitionsAnonymousPodcast?sub_confirmation=1Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://www.acquanon.com/newsletterSponsors:Premiere Sponsor – Inzo TechnologiesWhen you acquire a business, you also inherit years of accumulated IT and cybersecurity risk. Inzo Technologies helps acquisition entrepreneurs evaluate technology during due diligence and stabilize IT after closing with a buyer-operator perspective. Get a complimentary IT risk audit at https://inzotechnologies.com/eta and mention Acquisitions Anonymous.Secondary Sponsor – Quiet LightThinking about selling an e-commerce or SaaS business? Quiet Light's team of former operators provides free business valuations and has decades of experience helping founders successfully exit. Visit https://quietlight.com to schedule a free valuation and mention Acquisitions Anonymous.What happens when an AI startup generating $1.4 million in annual revenue and $340,000 in earnings hits the market for just $500,000? That's exactly the deal Michael Girdley brings to Heather Endresen and Mills Snell in this episode of Acquisitions Anonymous.The business sells subscription access to an AI-powered digital assistant capable of scheduling meetings, drafting emails, creating presentations, conducting research, generating images, and more. At first glance, the valuation looks almost too good to pass up—but once the hosts dig into how the product is built, the real debate begins. Is this a defensible SaaS business, or simply a wrapper around ChatGPT and Claude that could disappear the next time OpenAI releases a product update?Along the way, the hosts explore AI wrappers, customer stickiness, switching costs, marketing moats, vertical SaaS opportunities, and what makes an AI business valuable in a world where the underlying technology is improving every month. It's a fascinating discussion about buying businesses during one of the fastest-moving technology shifts in history.Key Highlights:- AI assistant business listed for $500K on $1.4M revenue and approximately $340K EBITDA (about 1.5x earnings)- Discussion of AI "wrapper" businesses and whether they have sustainable competitive advantages- Why customer memory and personalization could increase switching costs—but may not be enough- Debate over generic AI tools versus vertical, industry-specific AI solutions- Final verdict: all three hosts give the business a thumbs down despite the attractive valuationSubscribe to  weekly our Newsletter and get curated deals in your inboxAdvertise with us by clicking hereDo you love Acquanon and want to see our smiling faces? Subscribe to our Youtube channel.Do you enjoy our content? Rate our show!Follow us on Twitter @acquanon Learnings about small business acquisitions and operations.For inquiries or suggestions, email us at contact@acquanon.com

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to Acquisitions Anonymous. This is Michael. Unfortunately, my camera is broken. So if you're on YouTube, I'm really sorry. Hopefully you see a picture of me talking. Today's deal was me, Heather and Mills talking about something that we haven't done before, which is in the AI space. And believe it or not, we came to a very interesting conclusion about a business that was
Starting point is 00:00:19 only offered for a bit over one and a half times earnings. So it was quite a deal, quite the deal. But we thought some interesting stuff around it. Stick around for the whole episode to see where we ended up. You got pull set, Acquisition Anonymous. Another episode of Acquisitions Anonymous. We don't have 100% beers anymore. And thumbs downing on just the plus inventory line.
Starting point is 00:00:41 When you close a deal, you inherit the cyber and IT problems that have been piling up for years. Inzo Technologies, that's INZO, helps acquisition entrepreneurs evaluate technology risks during due diligence and manage cybersecurity, IT, and voice after close. CEO Nick Acres acquired Inzo and recently led the company through its first ad-on acquisition. He brings a buyer-operator's perspective to what needs to be uncovered before the wire and stabilized once ownership changes hands. Enzo offers a complementary IT risk audit of your target company to help surface the biggest risks in plain English and deliver a 30-day plan to reduce exposure and lower the risk of downtime. visit enzo technologies.com slash ETA and mention acquisitions anonymous. That's I-N-Z-O-Technologies.com slash ETA.
Starting point is 00:01:36 I have good news for you guys. Tell us. Please. Anybody want to know what it is? Yeah, yeah. My camera's not working. So you don't have to look at me. Oh, I thought you were saying this before we hit record, Mike.
Starting point is 00:01:50 Oh, no, I had it makes more sense. That was the good news. That was the good news. All right. That was the congratulations. I was hoping for better. Oh, thank you, Heather. What's new with you guys?
Starting point is 00:02:03 Heather, you have such nice flowers in the background. Was it your birthday or something? It was my birthday. That was my birthday flowers, so I got older. I guess that's good. Happy birthday. Thank you. And I have vacation coming next week, so I'm looking forward to that. Where are you going?
Starting point is 00:02:21 Really, it's a staycation. We do it every year, a beach house in Laguna. So super nice, super fun. And Mills, are you in Columbia, South Carolina or Greenville? I am. I know you sent me that article on Greenville. I love Greenville gets all the love, Greenville and Charleston, and we're just right in the middle. Why does Columbia get no love?
Starting point is 00:02:41 Because we're the state capital. That's a very elitist way of looking at it. Is that really why? Well, so what comes with the state capital is you're full of federal government buildings and state government buildings. So there's this crazy stat inside the city. limits of Columbia, like 77% of the parcels don't pay property tax because they're either churches or state or federal and they're exempt from property tax. And so it kind of drags a lot of the economic development down and everybody else has to pay the property taxes to make up for that.
Starting point is 00:03:16 But Greenville and Charleston have been a lot more progressive in terms of revitalization of their downtowns. We're kind of catching up now. Did you guys see there were some articles going around where they've gone to these small towns where data centers have been built. And if they're high property tax states, basically these towns are sitting on just like tens of millions of dollars a year in property tax revenue and no place to spend it. It's like a fascinating deal. The same thing actually happens out in deep west Texas.
Starting point is 00:03:46 Are you guys familiar with this in oil country? No. So part of the reason why Texas can taxes is because they make so much money from the oil. So that's why we don't spend much money on schools. Like social safety net is basically like we run these huge like budget services and because they're tied into all this oil revenue, which property taxes happen that way. And so if you go out to West Texas, A, it's not a great place to live. So there's not many people there, but the people that do live there, there ends up being these massive like income
Starting point is 00:04:21 streams for the local municipalities and counties because there's all this oil value. and then nobody there to like spend it on. So you'll go out and there's these little tiny high school, so like 200 people, and they have $30 million football stadiums. It's crazy. It's crazy. So speaking of AI,
Starting point is 00:04:42 I brought an AI deal today. That was, I've done some good segues before. Good segue there. That was not intentional. That was just dumb luck. Cool. Can I pitch you guys on this one?
Starting point is 00:04:55 Please. It's hot off the presses because I got it via email this morning. And I was like, we should talk about this one. It is an artificial intelligence digital assistant that is an on-demand AI agent with low churn, cross-channel memory integration, subscription-based, and does natural phone conversations. And they're asking a half a million dollars for it. The good news is, I think they put every AI buzzword in there. I was going to say, I don't understand, but it sounds really good. It sounds like they hit all the high points.
Starting point is 00:05:23 It's like every AI buzzword except for organic and all natural ingredients. All right. So sales asking prices $500,000 for this AI business. Sales are $1.4 million and they made $340,000 on those sales. And they're asking $500,000. So that is what is that multiple? 1.15, 1.2?
Starting point is 00:05:50 No, 1.5. basically. 1.5 times the earnings. Website closers presents an artificial intelligence subscription-based business that has carved out a unique niche in the fast-prowing digital agent market.
Starting point is 00:06:03 This agent is not another basic AI writing tool. The platform can schedule meetings, review calendars, send emails, conduct research, prepare presentations, create images, draft long-form documents,
Starting point is 00:06:12 manage reminders, and support strategic conversations. The product is designed for business owners, coaches, consultants, advisors, and other professionals who want an assistant they can use from a computer or while they are away from their desk. The seller owns the core code-based prompts, workflows,
Starting point is 00:06:27 memory architecture, product design, operating methods, and related intellectual property. No developers, contractors, investors, or outside parties hold rights that would prevent these assets from being transferred. The acquisition includes the application environment, user dashboard, knowledge-based, source code repository, cloud accounts, communication systems, workflow logic, prompt libraries, fund-based support channels, website assets,
Starting point is 00:06:47 and related social media accounts. It operates through recurring revenue subscriptions and token-based usage. Their current pricing includes one active plan at $95, while average customer value is approximately $90 per month. The company has also sold higher-level access for much as $500 per month when the product is offered as a more advanced AI agent. The business is not seasonal and has no major customer platform or vendor concentration, and their multi-model set up a lot of product to work with several leading AI providers instead of relying upon one model or service. All right, I'll pause here. Who wants to take a summary of what this is in like a non-broker language?
Starting point is 00:07:29 I'll try because I've been playing around with AI agents and projects. It's just somebody has built an AI agent that is useful to small businesses. And I think they're trying to sell it to folks who don't know how to build them themselves. But when I, you know, it seems like it's got a lot of features to it. You know, they've got the knowledge base. They've got, you know, some phone communications. It sounds like it's sort of a general tool for a small business owner, and they could use it in a multitude of ways with their business.
Starting point is 00:08:05 But I have to say, probably could build one yourself for less than $500,000. So I guess the interesting part of this is this is not a very old business because this capability hasn't been around that long. And we're in a very rapidly changing environment with AI that makes, you know, self-service easier and easier every day. So, but I think it's just a, you know, someone built a tool and made it very generally applicable for small business owners and they're selling subscriptions to the tool. I'm like a total newbie when it comes to this and I haven't really done as much
Starting point is 00:08:42 experimentation as you guys have. But isn't this basically, I mean, it seems like they found a way to do something that you can do on your own with AI, but they've just now packaged it to somebody and said, hey, look, we've put all the prompts in for you ahead of time. But part of like the benefit and part of the allure of AI is that you don't have to code it yourself. You don't have to connect all the dots. You just tell it what you want. And if you're doing the prompts the right way, it is connecting the dots for you. Right. But I think the issue probably with small business owners and really any other sector is there is only a small percentage of people who have learned how to use the tools themselves or are not intimidated to at least dive in there and try. And so this is sort of bridging the gap between the people who have become at least somewhat adept at using them themselves and those that have not.
Starting point is 00:09:40 and maybe this is sort of a middle ground where you can get people using the tools without having to build them themselves and get a little handholding probably on what it could do. So I think that's an interesting approach. And I think that's something that probably can last for a while because it is going to take a long time for people to fully come up to speed on all these new tools, especially when some of the language is really intimidating, you know, that's used. I think that's, it's interesting, but I think what's really sort of perplexing to me is, why buy this business? If you know enough to, to want to be in this business of selling an AI agent subscription, you know enough to build one yourself. Not, you know, you, I can see why the end user needs to subscribe to this, but I can't see why someone would buy it for 500,000. The next logical thing to me is like, okay, even if like it's a buy versus build question,
Starting point is 00:10:45 even more so than that to me, the question becomes it's just so much easier for somebody to come compete this away from you. Yeah. You know, like the threat of substitutes or the threat of alternatives is incredibly high, whether you buy or build. Like, this seems like it's not differentiated at all. marketing would be the only way to differentiate this. To your point, you could cut and paste this deal teaser over into Claude and have the bare bones of building the competitor product. But I think the only moat that you could have here potentially, and I didn't really see it or hear it in this teaser, would be great marketing. You know, if you had some fantastic marketing that would be hard to replicate, that would be sort of where the enterprise value.
Starting point is 00:11:34 of something like this would lie in my mind. So I would, to push back on that, I think there's actually another boat here that makes this somewhat stickier than it would seem at first glance. So to make the argument for that, Mills, do you understand how this works kind of technically, like in the world of open AI
Starting point is 00:11:54 and anthropic, like, or would it be helpful to kind of talk about what this guy or this person did? Let's talk about it. Okay. So there are, and Heather, correct me if I get any of this So there are fundamental like the core kind of primary models that are out there
Starting point is 00:12:10 and those are the ones that are like you hear Claude or you hear chat GPT co-pilot right? That is where some big hyperscaler like that has bought or at least a big data center. They're running these huge models with 15,000
Starting point is 00:12:26 20,000 GPUs and they're throwing workloads out it over and over again all the time. And that's where you hear about Claude, Fable, you know, different models of Claude and different models of chat GPT, meta has their version, and then there's a bunch of open source ones. But those are kind of these frontier models that are out there. And so those live in these big data centers.
Starting point is 00:12:45 They only really work super well if they're on this big time hardware. So that's why most of us, including myself, like, or just rent time on those, and it's all done in the cloud. So the way something like this works is this is typically what this guy built is called a wrapper. It's like a wrapper application, which basically just gives a basic level of instructions, but in the background, the models that are running all this are chat GPT or Claude or
Starting point is 00:13:10 whatever. And there's a tell that this is happening because if you look at the profit margin, it's like, wait, this is a SaaS business and you're running it with one guy who only works 20 hours a week with no staff and you're only making $340,000. The reality is that other million dollars is going straight to OpenAI
Starting point is 00:13:25 or Claude or Microsoft or whoever. Okay? So what's interesting is... So your cost, really quick, Michael, your cost of goods in this case is like token utilization and you're just it's throughput you're a toll in essence 100%. You're marking you're marking up the the existing chat chbt or are clod with your own wrapper around it to make it consumable, right? So I'll pause there. Heather did I get anything wrong or say anything confusing? No, I think you're exactly right. They just made it simple. They used all the tools that
Starting point is 00:14:01 are available and are expensive to use and made it really simple, like you said, a wrapper so that someone can easily come into this and do all these cool functions that they've built. So I think what's interesting and what is a cool feature about this, and you'll see it if you use like the desktop app for Claude or Codex from chat GPT, they actually start to build up a memory of who you are and what you do over time. So they'll answer things tailored to knowing more about you as a person. Like I asked at one point, I asked for like an itinerary to drive across the U.S. And three days later, when I brought up some question that wasn't really related to that, about, you know, the types of flowers found in rural New Mexico, it like told me in the context of
Starting point is 00:14:48 knowing I was doing a road trip, right? So that's the kind of power here. So to tie this all the way back to why potentially this is stickier than we kind of maybe imagine at first glance, these agents that you're running on your desktop when you buy the system are probably learning a lot about what you do, who you work with, and the context of your entire environment, such that if you switch to somebody else or a different version of this once you're already a customer,
Starting point is 00:15:11 potentially the new version has to relearn a whole bunch of new stuff to get up to speed on your life. So that's why I wanted to talk about how these work, because the fundamental model is having this memory means that something like this can actually get smarter about you as you use it, which just helps with stickiness. You're right. And I think that's a very good point that I didn't think of. What's tricky about this is it's got to be so new that you have no customer churn data. You know, you would just have sort of a customer churn hypothesis like what you just explained, but not really historical data to rely on. It's also interesting to think about where this is in the life cycle of AI adoption. Like the people that are using AI now are like me and Heather, right? Like totally comfortable being at the,
Starting point is 00:15:56 the forefront of this stuff. It's okay that it breaks all the time. Like, that's it. The vast majority of the people are where you are at Mills, which is just like, you know, hey, I'm up on a roof. Like, I ain't got time for this, which I appreciate. Hey, everyone, it's Bill. And I want to talk to you about Quiet Light brokerage. I was so psyched when Quiet Light agreed to sponsor the podcast because I am a customer. I have used Quiet Light to sell three businesses. And if I were selling an e-commerce or a SaaS business, I really would not consider anyone else. Like I said, I went back to them three times. I work with three different brokers at Quietlight. Had a great experience all three times. Even on one occasion, they found a buyer for a business that I just didn't know it was
Starting point is 00:16:36 even going to be possible to sell. So they have pulled rabbits out of their hats several times for me. They've been in the e-commerce and SaaS business brokering game a very, very long time. They really know what they're doing. They have great reach with both buyers and sellers. And the other thing I really love about Quietlight is all the brokers there are former operators. you can't just show up and go, hey, I'm a lifetime business broker. I want to work at Quietlight. You have to be a former operator. So they all know what it's like to be in the operator chair. So if you go to Quietlight.com, they have free business valuation calls, which they'll do with you. No obligation. Just tell you what they think about your business, what they think it would be worth.
Starting point is 00:17:13 And then what you might need to do to kind of get it ready for market. Those guys over there are great, great SOPs, great systems. I just felt like I was in really good hands all three times with Quiet Light. So if you're interested in selling your business, especially in e-commerce or SaaS, hop on over to quietlight.com, fill out their onboarding form for a free valuation call, and you can tell them Bill or Acquisitions Anonymous, sent you. It's a question of, okay, if you want to keep growing this thing, like, how are you going to make it accessible to the mid-market and the mainstream? Because, like, you're not out here, Mills looking for something like this.
Starting point is 00:17:46 Heather and I are like, cool, we'll do it ourselves. Like, where does it go from here? That's a big question mark for me. Yeah, right. Like I said, this is sort of for the middle ground people who are ready to use it. They can, they hear about it, but they don't want to build it themselves. They don't know how. They don't have time for that.
Starting point is 00:18:02 For $95 a month, they get access to something that's already been built. That's great. But it's great for now. That's what I worry about. It's great for now. But it really will get easier, even though, yes, like when we play with it right now, it does break a lot. It gets a little frustrating.
Starting point is 00:18:16 It's going to get better. You know, it's going to get even easier for people to just sort of, you know, walk through a few steps. and have it know about your company or whatever it is you're trying to do, your project. And so that's what, it's really hard to predict anything in this space, what the lifespan of the product will it really be, or how many times you'll have to evolve it, I guess, if it's going to survive, how many times would you have to evolve this business, this tool, and even maybe your marketing approach to still have a business in five years?
Starting point is 00:18:49 It seems like from the outside looking in, there's like a high amount of variability or like fickleness between different models. And like, you know, right, Claude came out with, was it Optus? Which was the one that they like released and they're like actually, we can't use it for a few weeks and then they re-released it? Yeah. Oh, the next one. Yeah, that's right. There's another one they still haven't given us yet. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:19:16 But like it seems like what I hear and see on Twitter is. is people being like, oh my gosh, you know, Caw just came out with this thing or ChatGPT just came out with this new model within theirs. And now it's like 10 or 100 times better than the previously best one. And so it seems like they at least acknowledge that they kind of have a certain level of agnosticism when it comes to it. But I wonder how that actually works in practice, given the memory kind of dynamics that you talked about. Yeah, and you can create that memory so it kind of lives at the wrapper level, which is definitely doable. There's lots of innovation kind of happening around that.
Starting point is 00:20:03 These guys advertise it a feature that they can switch between models, whether it's Chad GPT or Claude, depending on who's giving the better deal of the week or some of the other ones as well. But again, it's tough to know at this point because things are sort of early? Is that a feature or a bug? Like, you don't know. I would really like if there was a niche here, if you sign the NDA, and they were like, we, you know, they acknowledge they don't have customer concentration or vendor concentration. But if they, I think they said, like, this works for business owners or advisors or coaches or something like that. I'd just be really curious, like, if you sign the NDA and, like, they're really dialed in on, like, you know, orthopedians.
Starting point is 00:20:49 you know, surgeons or, you know, health practitioners or dentist or financial advisors or so, like, if they were like, yeah, you know, the guy who started it had a core business and he just kind of grew this alongside it and that was his niche. I think it would be really interesting because I think it would make for a stickier experience than just, hey, we can do this for landscapers and interior decorators and brick mason. Like, we can do it for everybody generically the same. Yeah. So, the alternative if you're, like you said, this is sort of a generic tool that they can maybe sort of customize once they start using it. But the alternative if you're a small business owner is you could hire a freelance person to come along and build what you need, let you go off and use it,
Starting point is 00:21:37 come back and customize it some more. So I think that's, to me, that's sort of the competitor model to this. obviously there's limited supply of freelance folks out there that you can hire and that are reputable and all those good things. But, you know, I think that's probably one of two solutions that small businesses would look at today rather than just try to do it themselves are going to have relancer help them or plug into a tool like this. So it seems interesting to me that this is, in terms of like the actual tasks that are being identified, I think it says it, Maybe Michael. Oh, here we go. So schedule meetings, review calendars, send emails, conduct research, prepare presentations, create images, draft long foreign documents, manage reminders and support strategic conversations. To me, it's like a question of how are people using this. And I think, like, where I am and where like most of my contemporaries are is we bought like a new semi the other day. And my truck driver is like taking Facebook marketplace listings. and saying, hey, what about this freightliner Cascadia, you know, this year, this make and model? And Chad GPT is like very quickly. And this is, this guy is like a, you know, borderline boomer, but he loves it.
Starting point is 00:22:56 And like chat GPT is becoming his friend because it's like, well, here, you know, usually around this many miles, you have transmission issues or you have fuel pump issues or whatever. And I think most people are using it for just one-off tasks. I need help making a decision about this truck. Yes, exactly. Yeah. And so it almost seems like this is just an assimilation of those tasks, not like a complex hierarchy of, you know, related tasks.
Starting point is 00:23:24 It's just more like kind of send an email, respond to this client communication, like whatever is the gist that I get from it. Look, here's a, and I think there's a big problem with this business that we haven't really talked about. And it's just what you mentioned, right? You see all these people using a generic thing. this comes across as totally generic. I think that's where it is.
Starting point is 00:23:45 And by the way, I did the math. They have about 900 customers. Like, not that many. And there's, the biggest problem for this is if you look at where Claude and Chad GPT and all these guys want to go,
Starting point is 00:23:59 they are building desktop apps that do precisely what this thing does. They're generic in that way. So I think it's more defensible to your point, Mills, if this was specific to a particular industry and verticalized, But this is the prototypical business that should be terrified based on what the core models of Chad GBT and Claude and these guys are doing because they want to own this space. Everybody needs this thing and they're going to build it.
Starting point is 00:24:25 And they're halfway there. Like if you use Claude Desktop or Codex from chat GPD, it does exactly this. Well, it's kind of the Shopify store problem, right, where so many people are using Shopify for e-commerce. and then there's this whole secondary marketplace that emerges of Shopify apps. And my impression, and I'm not an e-commerce person at all, everybody knows that, is that Shopify kind of protected the masses, so to speak,
Starting point is 00:24:54 by not competing with the Shopify app marketplace and just owning it, but not stealing, you know, those underlying apps and embedding them themselves. And that won't happen with something like this. They'll just go ahead. and absorb it. And I think, I think to Michael's point, so building generic kind of catch-all products within AI probably isn't something that lasts long-term. Building products that use your domain expertise, something that you know specifically really well, I think that's where
Starting point is 00:25:30 it's at. Like, you could do something like this business model with something very specific that you know really well. I think that's where I would want to be. it's where I am. I've been building, yeah. Well, Sam, Sam Altman had a line when was asked, he's the head of chat GPT, when somebody asked him, like, you know, these people building businesses on open AI, should you be scared, you know, when should you be scared of open AI and when you should be, you should be, feel like you're in a safe place with open AI.
Starting point is 00:26:05 And he gave an answer that I thought was perfect because it works for almost every single time you're building a business on somebody else's platform, which was, he said, look, if you as a partner of ours or you're building on our platform, if you are excited every time we make a new release, that means you're on the right track. If you are scared every time we make a new release that we might be running you out of business, that means you're on the wrong track. And the vertical thing that you're talking about is precisely on the right track, right? It's like, okay, chat GBT is not going to specialize in roofing. Like, it's just not going to happen.
Starting point is 00:26:42 But they sure as heck are going to create a general purpose assistant for business owners and executives, which is precisely where this guy's located in his business. One of the things that I've found like a really helpful use case on is we purchase, you know, just tons and tons of materials. And they're all job costed. And we get very specific quotes for each job. even if it's the same material on a job today versus a job 30 days before or after, the quotes can be different. And then we usually pay for those materials, you know, many months later once they actually ship,
Starting point is 00:27:18 but doing like a holistic review from like quote to, you know, invoice to payment. Because these invoices, like I look at them every Friday, and it's just like stacks, you know, of paper. And I don't, like tying all those things together takes an incredible amount of time. annually, but I was doing it this morning and I was thinking, I'm shocked. I get all these cold outreaches about we can, you know, generate roofing leads for you or do you want to sell your business or can we help you with your, you know, phone system. But I have not gotten anyone that is, you know, something like this with a wrapper on it that is wrapped around invoice review or payroll review or things that like actually moved the needle for me significantly.
Starting point is 00:28:02 Well, I mean, I would tell you, like, sit down with like codex or, you know, clawed desktop and tell it your problem and then say, tell me how to solve this. Treat it like you would like a smart chief of staff or an employee and then see what comes back. I bet you, I bet you you would spend a couple hours on a weekend with a nice Coors Light or White Clow. Mike Ultra, Michael, Nick Ultra. White Claw. And I bet by Monday you'd be like, cool, I've automated this whole thing. Like, I bet you it'll happen. So that's the power of all this is you don't have to know, like, when I was growing up,
Starting point is 00:28:46 to be a coder, you had to know, like, the language of the computer. Now the computer speaks our language, speaks human English. And it's just, it's changed everything. Everybody's a programmer now. Like, that's the whole difference. I'll send you a picture when I do it. Okay. Yes.
Starting point is 00:29:00 Of the white claw? Well, of me doing it with the white claw. I'm partial to high noons, but yes. Bartles and James. Oh, gosh. You're going way to. Heather just had a flashback to college. Yeah, I solely did.
Starting point is 00:29:18 Cool. Any other thoughts about this one? Then I think we should go around the room and talk about thumbs up or thumbs down. I'm ready with my thumbs down. Go ahead, Heather. Tell us your thinking. Thumbs down. I don't think it has any staying power.
Starting point is 00:29:33 I think you can build it for less than $500,000. Again, if you're in the market to buy something like this, you know enough already to probably build something pretty close to it. And I just don't think generic tools that they're going to be swallowed up by the apps themselves or the platforms themselves providing the service and getting better at it. So, you know, nice little business for someone to own for a little while, but not something you can buy for $500,000 and make money. Mills.
Starting point is 00:29:58 I'm thumbs down too, but I do think it's reasonably priced, given that it's, you know, less than two times earnings. You know, every business owner thinks that their baby is beautiful. I would be really curious to hear this person's kind of counterpoint to the fact that this isn't differentiated. And I just, I'm very curious what they would say. I think it's a fair question to ask. It's a fascinating one because it's one of those businesses that, for all the reasons,
Starting point is 00:30:27 Heather said, once you know a little bit, you see all the problems with this business and also why it's so cheap. But it's also maybe one where somebody goes in and just says, is there something here we're missing? Like if there's something aspect of this, they're missing. And an interesting thing we didn't really talk about, they haven't done any advertising. It's all word of mouth growth. This is just a coder who just created something that enough people wanted that they shared it with their friends. So that's maybe a sign that if somebody called on this, maybe there's something that's not in the listing. because we certainly know brokers are not necessarily the most digitally native people.
Starting point is 00:31:02 This was a good one, Michael. Thank you. Happy to do it. I was sitting there having my oatmeal this morning, and I was like, we should talk about this one. This is a fascinating deal. If you enjoyed this one, dear listener, please do us a favor and go tell a friend about this episode. That will help us grow the podcast. We have a loyal, very great group of listeners, and we would love to add some of your friends to that.
Starting point is 00:31:24 So do this, that favor, and we'll catch you next week.

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