# Bootstrapped, Profitable, and Acquired in Four Days

Channel: acquiredotcom
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rMv0FU21KSU
Duration: 12 min
Language: English
Words: 2145
Transcript page: https://viewrankai.com/tools/youtube-transcript/rMv0FU21KSU

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[0:06] All right, I'm here with Pit, the founder of Help Bloom. Pit, how you doing today? Doing good. How about you? How are you doing? Good, thanks. I appreciate you coming on the podcast, and I'm excited to hear your your story. But before we dive into that, you want to give a brief introduction of yourself for people that

[0:20] may not know you. Um, I am Pri. I used to work as a software engineer for four years. Worked at two startups. Then I started building my own products. Nice. Well, tell me about Help. Uh what problem did it solve and how did you get the idea? Help was a customer support software. It had live chat, help center and AI agent that you could use to automate most of your support. Um I got this idea while researching what to build next. I wanted to build something which was an integral part of any day-to-day business. Uh something that people would use daily and feel like this is an integral part

[0:58] of their whole infrastructure or how they do things. So Helbloom or a customer support software made a lot of sense and that's why I started it. Nice product looks slick. I was checking it out uh before the podcast. Um how is it different from say crisp chat or intercom? So my main differentiators were two uh one was affordability while these other platforms used to charge and some of them still do based on the number of team members or agents you have on the platform. So if you have a team of six then the cost multiplies by six and they also charge you based upon the number of conversations you have

[1:36] number of customers you have it's a it's based on variable pricing and uh that was sort of the mo or key factor for elum that everything was unlimited on the p paid plan unlimited team members unlimited messages unlimited customers nice and sorry yeah and this other thing was simplicity uh simplicity because all these platforms were very old And over time they accumulate features and shove things here and there. So when you land on these platforms for the first time, you're very confused about what to do and how to take control of the platform itself. So from that point of view, I my goal was to make helproom as simple as

[2:14] possible. I can tell again the product looks looks super super slick. I think with AI customer support is one of the most interesting areas where AI can help and automate a lot of stuff. Um so again looks great. How did you get the first customers for help? Uh my first customer was through my network. I used to work where where I was working for my last uh full-time job. They were planning to build something like this internally with their engineering team and they thought why not use this existing SAS then spend time building it on our own. So those were like they bought it first uh the

[2:52] paid. Nice. And then what did you do for marketing past that? Did you do social media marketing? Did you do SEO or blogs? I tried everything. I did SEO. I wrote a couple of blogs. Uh spent time optimizing my website for SEO. I posted content. Uh posted on Reddit. Tried paid ads. What worked out mostly like all my customers who came through were through Reddit. So I would find these posts where uh somebody was asking about a competitor and they were not happy or not satisfied what with what they were getting either the price or experience and then I would go there and talk about my product and offer them a demo or

[3:31] maybe a quick look and that's where that's how they discovered me and came to the platform. Oh nice. How would you find these uh Reddit articles? I guess put another way uh how would you maybe advise another founder that's looking to implement a strategy like this just go to Reddit and search competitors? uh no uh what so I would think from my customers uh point of view if you are looking for a software like this what you would do typically is now you go to chat GBT mostly but or something like that but usually what people do is they go on Google and search for intercom

[4:06] alternatives or cheap or free live chat and then Reddit some Reddit articles come on the first page right and then you go click there and figure out what people are suggesting so I would do the same thing I would uh go to those Reddit posts through this way and then I would leave a comment there and when actual people came in they would also go through the same process and see my

[4:27] comment and then come to help. Nice. And then what was the business model for help? Was it just one subscription with unlimited users and usage? There were two uh two plans. uh first one was unlimited everything help center live chat and the up upsell was an AI chat where you would get 5,000 uh message credits with AI and in addition to that there was a there was an option to add white labeling so you would that would remove all powered by help loom and all of my branding from uh the chat widget and every help center and all of that so these were the three things

[5:03] through which I was monetizing nice well it sounds like you had product market fit you had a bunch of happy customers. What made you ultimately decide to sell help? So when I started uh all of this, my goal was pretty clear. I wanted to build a product which is able to sort of be run by a very small team. Uh primarily me or with or two people at most. And with a tool like help room, I didn't realize this when I was building it. I realized it when I started marketing and talking to people. uh with customer support tools uh the market is very saturated intercom crisp and all these

[5:40] other platforms have been there for many many years. So when you talk about features or table stakes, they have iOS app, Android app in in the customer support tool itself, they have an integration with everything that's out there like Facebook, um Instagram, WhatsApp, Telegram. So I would have to build all of these features to sort of somebody would come in and they would be like, "Oh, I need this." And then another person would come and be like, "I need this." So I couldn't really sort of see myself building these features quickly. And another thing was that since the market is saturated, every platform out there has same kind of

[6:19] features. So crisp also has all of those features. Intercom has also those features. So there wasn't any differentiator or uh mode that I could uh foresee through which I could convince people to switch from these platforms because the only uh differentiator that I had was cost and they would be like the difference is not that much and I also realized most people don't care about uh cost that much. They want if the tool is working for them and it's not a lot then they're happy with it. So considering all of these things, I uh thought about uh

[6:52] making an exit and the it was growing. The growth was gradual but it was growing and I realized for what I want to build as a business with my lifestyle and my constraints solo bootstrapped uh this was probably not uh the kind of business that would uh make it for me. So I realized it would be better run by a team or people who are excited about these kind of products. So I uh signed up on acquire.com and uh luckily found somebody who was looking for something

[7:22] like this. Exactly. I think that makes a ton of sense. Tell me about the process on acquire. How many buyers were interested? Uh what did the first couple weeks look like? Uh so the process was very uh quick. I listed uh I listed went to bed, woke up and I think they I got one comment about something but it was overall approved very quickly. I was live in a day and within uh two days I had received I think uh four or five offers while there were like 15 or 20 people who were in conversation they were asking questions but I had four or five legit offers with

[7:58] lois. So I think on the third day or fourth day itself I got on a call with Suzan who has acquired help uh and we talked and from there it was mostly due diligence that took time. Uh so overall I think 3 4 days was the timeline from when I listed and it got sort of uh in the acquisition phase. That's incredible. That's super fast. And Sugjan's a great buyer as well. I've

[8:23] I've worked with him on a couple deals. Um what made Sujan stand out in terms of being the winning buyer? Did he have the best offer? Was he the easiest to work with? Did he have the best terms or the best vision for the business post acquisition? Uh why Sugjen? Uh so we didn't uh talk about the offer initially but he gave an impression that he was okay with the asking price and in addition to that I liked the vision that he has. So they have a portfolio of SAS

[8:53] companies and they run these companies. They have a lot of experience running these companies and I for one wanted help to exist because I had built relationship with these customers and I didn't want help to disappear in in a week or two. I wanted it to exist. So uh and their intention was the same. They wanted it to grow and uh reach out to more people. So that was the more more of an alignment part. Other people were interested but they some of them wanted a part of the code and didn't really care about uh continuing it uh in a way and some people just wanted to

[9:28] understand how all all of this works. But I wanted somebody who was actually interested in improving it and keep running it over time. Makes complete sense. If you were talking to another founder and they were looking to get acquired, what's a what's a couple of tips you think you'd give them? Um, first and foremost, keep your um u accounts and everything that you're supposed to transfer like credentials, uh, platform access, accounts, code, documentation. Keep all of that ready from day one because eventually, I believe in this that eventually everybody sells. So you should be ready for that from day one. It makes everything easier and when you are

[10:10] trying to get acquired u have a valuation that makes sense. Your asking price should make sense should uh to you and to also to the buyer. U in addition to that um be very transparent about what you're looking for uh post acquisition. Be clear about the terms. If you don't want to be involved be clear about it. If you want to be involved be clear about that. be very transparent about everything. I think

[10:34] that's that's pretty much it. That's great advice. Especially getting the asking price correct and then just being transparent with what you're looking for out of an acquisition with buyers. It can really help the process along and buyers will really appreciate that. Um, what did you do to celebrate when the wire hit your bank account and the acquisition closed? Did you go

[10:54] celebrate? Go to a dinner? Yeah, I celebrated it with my friends and family. Dinner and food. It involved all of that. Nice. Well, Pri, what's uh what's next for you? What are you building next? Uh I'm uh not sure about that bit yet, but I'm definitely looking to build something in the agent space, AI agents and everything around that. So, I'm still exploring. Haven't logged in on

[11:18] anything yet. Nice. Well, Pri, thanks so much for coming on the podcast. Congrats again. Uh maybe I'll see you back on here with another acquisition. I hope so. Thank you so much for if people want to follow you online, where can they find you? Uh, I'm active on Twitter, X, Wicked Mistra. I'll put that in the show notes. All right, P. Congrats again on the

[11:36] acquisition. Thank you so much.

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