Selling a SaaS Business: Guillaume Moubeche on his first exit, Google sued by the Department of Justice, PayPal and Venmo will offer and accept cryptocurrency for online transactions, and E-commerce Mar-Tech firm Rokt raises $80 million

Back in 2018, Moubeche and a few friends started lempod, a LinkedIn lead generation platform, alongside their primary project lemlist, an email outreach platform. They bootstrapped lempire (the collective of lempod and lemlist) to an impressive $2.2 million in revenue but soon found that it was difficult to scale two rapidly growing and profitable businesses simultaneously. Recently, Moubeche and his team decided to sell lempod in a strategic attempt to focus on “their first baby,” lemlist. This was Moubeche’s first foray into the world of organizing and preparing a business for sale. In this article, Moubeche details the experience of preparing the sale of the business through FE International, how we helped him navigate the process, and what he learned along the way.

Google sued by the Department of Justice

On Tuesday morning, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) announced an antitrust lawsuit against the search engine giant, Google. The suit, which accuses Google of “using anti-competitive tactics to maintain and extend its monopolies in the markets for general search services, search advertising and general search text advertising,” signals the start of a battle between the government and big tech. After a year-long investigation, the DOJ claims Google stifled innovation, negatively impacted the quantity and quality of consumers’ search choices, and compromised consumer data privacy. Google immediately rejected the DOJ’s claims. “The DOJ’s deeply flawed lawsuit would do nothing to help consumers,” the company claimed in a Tuesday tweet.

PayPal and Venmo will offer and accept cryptocurrency for online transactions

By the end of the year, PayPal plans to support cryptocurrencies by allowing all account holders to buy, store, and sell with crypto. In 2018, PayPal’s major competitor, Square, launched support for bitcoin through Cash App, but PayPal plans to level up by supporting not only bitcoin, but Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash, and Litecoin as well. PayPal also plans to extend crypto support to Venmo in early 2021. This development will set PayPal up as a major player in both digital wallet and crypto-exchange services. “The shift to digital forms of currencies is inevitable, bringing with it clear advantages in terms of financial inclusion and access; efficiency, speed and resilience of the payments system; and the ability for governments to disburse funds to citizens quickly,” PayPal CEO Dan Schulman released in a statement.

E-commerce Mar-Tech firm Rokt raises $80 million

Rokt, a tool that assists companies in making personalized marketing offers surrounding transactions, has raised over $80 million in Series D funding. Due to the explosion in e-commerce sales this year, with consumers spending over $466 billion in the US between March and September, the investment comes at an incredibly apt time. This latest round of funding, led by TDM Growth Partners–who recently raised over $100 million in Series E funding for Allbirds Inc.–bumps Rokt’s valuation up 42% to more than $450 million. “E-commerce transactions require a lot of third parties to come together in the transaction moment,” said Bruce Buchanan, chief executive of Rokt. “Trying to make it personalized for the end customer was almost impossible—that was the problem we set out to solve.”

For sale is a proven and authoritative content business in the video streaming niche with nearly a decade of operational history. Launched in 2011, the business has grown to become a market leader in the cable review space by providing actionable and effective advice for consumers looking to ‘cut the cord’ and move away from cable TV. The business presents a unique opportunity for a new owner to take over a market-leading content business with an aged domain, long operational history in a growing niche, strong SEO foundation, and bountiful growth opportunities at its disposal.

Some key highlights:

• Solid organic search presence with 620 detailed articles helping to secure rankings for over c.72,000 keywords
• Strong growth rate of c.49.5% in the L4M with the reintroduction of sports during COVID-19
• Lean operating model with high net margins

Request a prospectus from the link above to learn more.