Tiny Acquisitions: a great MicroAcquire alternative?

Acquiring a business today looks very different than it did a few years go. Instead of buying a coffee shop or maybe a gas station as a path to entrepreneurship, buying an internet business is now maybe the most obvious choice to pursue entrepreneurship.

A brick & mortar business comes with physical assets such as inventory, real estate, and a bunch of other tangible things that take relatively long periods to acquire, exchange & take ownership of due to legal and regulatory hurdles. Buying internet businesses, however, are a little different and acquiring the business assets can be completed in relatively shorter time periods. This doesn't take from the fact that there are still certain time-consuming necessary processes that make exchanging internet businesses much safer.

Based on what I have seen in their marketing content, microacquire was started to streamline the process of acquiring startups through discovery, submitting letter of intents, NDAs, purchase agreements and having a place for all of that to be done to the end of acquiring a business.

From my point of view, microacquire provides tools to make this process easier and I think they do a good job at that.  

If you drill down to the crux of the service microacquire provides though, you would discover that the core function is providing certain resources (advisors, legal, accounting, educational material) and a place to track the progress of an acquisition.

On the other hand, Tiny Acquisitions was started as a marketplace to aid in the liquidation & exchange of inherently valuable digital assets. Tiny Acquisitions connects buyers & sellers of tiny projects and makes the exchange quite simple and all of this happens on platform.

The idea that started Tiny Acquisitions came from my own painful practice as a maker. That of building several new projects and not knowing what to do with the old ones after spending time, effort & money on them and they didn't quite pan out how I wanted them to.

I mean the old projects were worth something! I just couldn't squeeze anymore value out of them but I thought maybe someone else could buy them and put them to good use.

It's almost as if, to the maker, projects get boring after a time or you just have a grand new idea and you kinda want to liquidate what you have and just start something new. This is a part of what I think is "the maker mindset" and it's quite natural for this to happen too. This is probably the definition of what it means to be an indie maker.

Having operated Tiny Acquisitions for almost a year, I realize that the solution of providing a marketplace for the liquidation of tiny projects is exactly what we do and it really helps indie makers get a quick, tiny exit.

So is Tiny Acquisitions a great MicroAcquire alternative?

The answer is no, we're not. Tiny Acquisitions in not a microacquire alternative at all.

Tiny Acquisitions was built as an avenue to further reduce friction in buying and selling businesses that fall within a lower price range and hence carry a somewhat lower risk of acquisition. Currently, projects listed on Tiny Acquisitions are capped at $100,000 USD.

We appeal to a specific niche of developers of tiny projects and provide discovery to buyers who are interested in this category.

Why sellers choose Tiny Acquisitions over microacquire

1. Sellers can easily sell pre-revenue projects
2. Tiny Acquisitions is optimized for the discovery of projects with sale prices of less than US $10k
3. We reduce the noise of requests that do not lead to acquisitions as our  premium buyers have access to the necessary project information to determine interest at a glance
4. Sellers can have a tiny exit within a few hours and receive funds directly to their stripe connect account or via wire transfer within 24 hours
5. Tiny acquisitions provides complete exchange on platform

Why Buyers choose Tiny Acquisitions over microacquire

1. Buyers with budgets of US $10k or less will find the best projects listed in this price range
2. Discover, offer, purchase, close deal and receive assets within hours
3. Get a carefully curated, manually hand picked newsletter of hot projects weekly (an automated list of projects sent out weekly is undesirable)
4. Acquire built out apps, tools or services that would complement currently existing online businesses without having to acquire another full business/startup with it.
5. Pay a one time lifetime fee and have access to Tiny Acquisitions for as long as we exist

I suspect that you thought I was going to contrast and compare Tiny Acquisitions with microacquire and say specifically why Tiny Acquisitions would be a great microacquire alternative.

The truth is, it's not an alternative to anything at all. It's a unique product that helps indie devs & makers get exits and provides a wonderful inventory of tiny projects that are potentially great cash flowing assets in the hands of another operator.

Thanks for taking the time to read, have a good one :)

Email: stephen@tinyacquisitions.com