Overview:
Picture a Bloomberg terminal for tiny SaaS and indie products. Instead of doom-scrolling Acquire and random forums at 1 a.m., you get a ranked feed of the 10–20 best micro-acquisition listings, each with a punchy one-pager: what’s working, what’s sketchy, where the quick wins are in the first 30–90 days, and a simple risk score. The engine quietly scrapes public marketplaces, normalizes whatever metrics exist, and uses an AI memo to highlight growth levers and landmines. You can just open your inbox or a lightweight dashboard and decide, “Make an intro, pass, or save.” If you want more handholding, there’s an optional intro/success fee and a lightweight diligence checklist so you don’t get burned on churn or sketchy MRR. It’s basically giving solo buyers the signal that PE firms get from an analyst—without the overhead.
The Trends:
Online marketplaces for buying small, profitable startups (e.g., Acquire.com/MicroAcquire) have grown materially, increasing listings, buyer pools, and closed deal volume—making continuous deal flow for micro‑acquisitions more accessible. (1, 2, 3)
Micro‑PE and roll‑up strategies (aggregators and product studios) are scaling into micro‑SaaS niches, driving demand for small, profitable apps as consolidation targets and creating repeatable playbooks buyers can deploy. (4, 5)
Independent operators and solo buyers increasingly purchase micro‑SaaS and side projects — many have modest capital but strong operator upside, creating a large buyer segment that prefers one‑page memos and easy-to-evaluate targets. (1, 3)
AI and data platforms are rapidly entering deal sourcing and diligence—vendors now offer automated discovery, risk-flagging, and instant analysis that speed screening and enable lightweight, solo-friendly diligence workflows. (6, 7, 5)
A diverse supply of indie marketplaces and creator platforms (marketplaces, theme/asset stores, Gumroad/CodeCanyon/Flippa/forums) increases available deal sources but creates fragmentation—motivating aggregation, normalization, and scoring layers as valuable product features. (2, 3, 7)
Your Answer:
A deal-sourcing subscription that continuously scrapes indie marketplaces (Acquire, SideProjectors, CodeCanyon, Gumroad, relevant forums), normalizes seller metrics, and surfaces only ranked, investable micro-acquisition opportunities.
Delivers bite-sized, AI-generated one-page memos per listing that highlight growth levers, churn red flags, tech stack, revenue quality, and a 30–90 day quick-win roadmap so solo buyers can act without full-time diligence teams.
Risk-scoring model + normalized KPIs filter noise and prioritize deals that fit solo-operator risk profiles—reduces time wasted scrolling and prevents costlier underwriting mistakes.
Optional micro-services: success-fee intros to vetted buyers, and a lightweight downloadable diligence checklist for rapid on-the-ground validation (code, revenue, legal flags).
MVP tech is lean and solo-friendly: a set of scrapers + ETL to normalize data, a small scoring model, and an email/report generator to automate a ranked daily/weekly feed.
Pricing & monetization: subscription tiers for filtered feeds ($49–$199/mo) + optional 2–5% success fee on introductions—aligns incentives and scales with deal size.
Go-to-market: target indie buyers, bootstrapped founders, micro-PEs and operators via Indie Hackers, Twitter, Acquire communities, newsletters, and partnership listings; offer free trial with 5 curated leads.
Defensibility & expansion: accumulate listing/outcome data to improve scoring, integrate more marketplaces, add exclusive seller intake, and upsell deeper diligence or post-acquisition playbooks.
Your Roadmap:
MVP: build an automated scraper + normalizer that pulls listings from 5 sources (Acquire, SideProjectors, CodeCanyon, Gumroad, relevant forums). Store raw data in Airtable or a small Postgres DB.
Create a simple scoring function (revenue multiples, traffic signals, age, tech risk flags). Implement as spreadsheet formulas or a small Python script running on Render/Heroku.
Generate AI one-page memos using an LLM: intake normalized record → prompt template that outputs growth levers, churn red flags, stack notes, and 30‑/90‑day quick wins; send daily email digest via ConvertKit/SendGrid.
Launch a beta newsletter/subscription: 50 curated deals/week, ranked. Use Gumroad/Stripe for payments and a Typeform signup for buyer preferences.