This year we celebrated our 6th birthday, marking over half a decade in the online business brokerage industry. In that time, we have completed $60M in business sales across 400 acquisitions, opened three offices on three continents, and developed a team of over 20 individuals to drive value every day to our loyal and growing client base.
We’ve taken time time to reflect on how the industry has developed over that time and highlighted some of the industry milestones that benefit founders, owners and investors looking to participate in the selling and buying of online businesses.
Read on for details on a special birthday giveaway, as well as a timeline of our business from 2010 to present, and our plans to make 2016 the best year yet.
Special Birthday Giveaway!
We’ve bought, built and sold a number of online businesses ourselves, so we know first-hand what’s needed to develop an online business which is optimized to maximize profits and value. This level of insight allows our team to deliver strategic exit planning advice that really works.
Through our brokerage services, we have built partnerships with the founders of some well-known tools and products that can help you grow and market your own website. Today, we have hooked up with companies like SEM Rush and ChartMogul to offer the FE International $11,000 birthday giveaway to our loyal clients and readers!
You can enter by doing one or all of the following:
- Sign up for our newsletter
- Follow us on Twitter
- Tweet out the giveaway
- Visit us on Facebook
- Refer a friend to the giveaway
Tip: do all of the above to get 5 entries!
FE International Birthday Giveaway
UPDATE: Our contest closed on August 19, and here were our lucky winners:
First Prize Winner: Marc Eglon
Marc is founder and publisher of Hackerpreneur, and iOS magazine and weekly newsletter for designers, scientists and entrepreneurs who are hellbent on predicting the future by inventing it.
“I can’t wait to put this stuff to work – it’s the perfect fit. You did a great job on curating this. I use SEM Rush and Buzzsumo at least once week for research so I’m especially excited to level up there. And the other products are amazing.”
Second Prize Winner: Ross Hall
Third Prize Winner: Bjorn Hall
Back to our Story: What’s Happened in the Past Six Years?
Here are some highlights from the past six years:
As you can see, we’ve been very busy!
One of our greatest achievements is our consistent year-on-year (and quarter-on-quarter) growth, which is driven by our reinvestment into education, processes and infrastructure to provide standard-setting industry practices.
Last week we published our 1H’16 results, reporting $12M in sales in the first six months of 2016 (up 73% YoY).
As we look to the remainder of 2016, our focus will be on improving our services to our clients even further and setting standards in online business sales. We’ll be doing this in three ways:
- Expanding our core team in Boston, including our recent move to a new HQ in the Financial District
- Analyzing thousands of data points to create the most accurate valuation methodology in the industry
- Talking to our clients and readers about what they want, and the areas in which more resources are needed
Here are some more details on what we have in store:
Expanded Team in Boston
We’ve called Boston our home for two years now, and for good reason: The pool of talent here is unparalleled, with a truly entrepreneurial community, complemented by the nation’s top schools. This has allowed us to build on our core team with excellent individuals in the form of forward-thinking, data-driven marketing experts and MIT-educated data scientists in our valuation department, under the leadership of a new Valuation Director.
Our biggest differentiating factor is our incredible staff. We are continuously re-investing in people and education to advance our best-in-class processes. These investments add up to better services for our clients and better standards for the industry as a whole. Our mission is champion the industry into a new era of safe, secure and successful dealmaking.
As a seller, you’ll receive the most accurate valuation, as our models are based on 400 real sales. You will also receive the full attention of your dedicated advisor, who will remain with you from listing through to closing. Your advisor will liaise with the internal departments (i.e. Valuation, Brokerage, Marketing, Technical, etc.) to tailor our service to meet your specific needs, while working in a rigid framework that ensures success. The FE International team works in lockstep to gather and analyze information, communicate insights and make recommendations to clients to ensure you maximize your business’ sale value. This process leads to a 95 percent listing-to-sale success rate, with 85 percent sold within 60 days.
If this sounds like a team you want to work with to get your business sold, get in touch to get a free valuation.
New Benchmark Valuation Model
Our MIT educated Valuation Department has developed a new model based on tens of thousands of data points from over 400 acquisitions to accurately forecast the value of your business today, as well as benchmarking areas of strengths and weaknesses to work on as part of an exit planning process. This means you will invest time and effort only into areas that will increase your business’ value ahead of a sale. We take on less than 1 percent of inquiries and nearly half of those require some form of exit planning – this new model will help you get on the front foot and beat the market.
This new model is nothing like the ‘valuation tools’ you’ve seen elsewhere. We know because we’ve spent months using and analyzing other tools, and you’d be shocked at how simplistic (read: inaccurate) they are. The aim of our new model is for you to come away with a better understanding of your business’ value today, and know exactly what can be done with the business to increase it’s value relative to other successfully sold businesses. No other tool out there can do that.
Our clients and loyal readers will be the first to hear when our tool is available for public use, so stay in touch and be sure to subscribe to our newsletter for weekly updates.
Resources for Buyers and Sellers
You should never stop learning, especially in an industry that is growing so quickly. When making the important decision of whether to sell or buy an online business, it is important to educate yourself on the process so that you can move quickly when an opportunity arises.
In order to better prepare sellers and buyers, we’ve been releasing a series of valuation and due diligence articles by business model, covering: SaaS; e-commerce (including FBA); and content businesses (including affiliate, advertising and lead generation). With the Internet Business Due Diligence series now complete and available on the blog, we’ll be focusing our attention to the remaining Internet Business Valuation article releases over the coming weeks.
In addition, we will be adding to our library of eBooks, again focusing on providing in-depth advice that is specific to each business model. There is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all solution to buying, building or selling a website. We’re here to ensure that you get tailored, relevant information that will lead to a timely, profitable deal.
Looking Forward
We are incredibly proud of our track record so far, and we are now forecasting over $30M in 2016 sales. We have revised our company targets and set a new goal of $100M in sales across 500 deals.
We will achieve this by reinvesting heavily to provide you – our friends, readers and clients – with services and resources that set the industry standard. Our mission is to champion the industry into a new era of safe, secure and successful dealmaking.
If you want to talk about your business or our services, don’t hesitate to get in touch with our team. It’s people like you who have helped us reach these milestones, so we’d love to hear from you.