[Week 9/52]: Ten Startup Marketplaces Founders Need to be Aware of - it's where I'm searching to acquire companies for under $200K
I'll either buy it myself, or, if it's a larger deal then I'd put in the first check, raise capital from friends, and go all in!
Feb 09, 2026
[Today’s Metaphor]
The world of M&A for micro-startups is blossoming… I did hours of research on the leading platforms so you don’t have to
If you’re trying for an early exit, or if you’re trying acquire a startup and scale it, or even if you just love startups and want to examine the numbers of competitors… this edition is for you!
After searching through the top 10 marketplaces to buy/sell startups, I landed on a top 3. In today’s blog, I’ll be sharing the details for each of those three, and providing links to all 10. TrustMRR is the new comer, you can see their UI below.
TrustMRR.com - a top 3 marketplace
But… TrustMRR doesn’t compare to the leader!
Acquire.com alone in the past 12 months was named to the Inc. 5000 list of fastest growing companies, and if you look at their numbers, it’s no wonder why!
> 2,000+ founders sold their business in 2025 on the Acquire.com marketplace > Closed over $500,000,000 in deals!! > Offering a network of 500,000 acquirers
Just this morning the founder of Acquire.com announced a $1.3M cash deal they helped orchestrate!
That is impressive stuff! If you’re a founder, this is a trend you need to be aware of. Scroll down to read the full story in today’s blog.
But first…
A word from our author in a Harry Potter style talking-painting
“Hey! Welcome to my blog, Don’s Daily!”
Hey, I’m Don! I’ve been building career memories for a decade. Over the last three years I’ve been reinvesting my own capital and time back it into my business. All the while learning and growing my net worth via public markets and crypto.
Over that same period, I also hosted 50+ virtual events with some of the world’s best VC investors and founders for our CEO group. Prior to all that, aside from my first job at Meta, I was lucky enough to raise $10 million in my twenties; doing my best to learn business, investor relations, and the startup mindset all at the same time. Maybe some of you can relate.
All that’s to say, I love business, I love money, I love to try and leverage my time.
This year, I set the goal to publish a thoughtful blog every Monday.. 52 of them! Don’ Daily is a recap of the entrepreneurship adventures I collect, as well as the new lessons I’m constantly learning from doing. My hope is that this entertains, inspires, and influences new creative ideas for you. Every Monday. If you enjoy the blog, please share!
Acquire.com is the incumbent, but TrustMRR is the new kid on the block
Take 10 minutes to explore the startups that are for sale on TrustMRR, or Microns. It’s a website I found over the weekend, and have spent many hours reaching out to founders.
TrustMRR is the best value, and it’s only been available for 2 weeks!
After spending hours on these sites over the last week, I feel doing the research has sparked so many product ideas.
→ I highly suggest looking through the websites linked in ‘Resources’ at the bottom of this blog. You can see actual data of these companies, you can analyze their revenue, and you can gleam insights in comparison to your business.
Example 1: A Crowded Market, but Well Designed Product
Here’s a well built app doing about $10K of annual profit that has some decent pre-seed traction. However, it is in the highly saturated market of habit tracking.
Here’s a super-simple product with high margins. I was considering purchasing this product from him, and then trying to scale it. In the acquisition, I’d have received:
That’s a great deal if you can find the right price. You can see below they really set this product up for an easy acquisition because the landing page and app are all functioning, beautifully designed, and effective for the right user.
I love their landing page:
If I was a parent looking to give my kid a start in business, I’d acquire this for cheap, and let them run it. If I was an entrepreneur with a unique advantage to acquire customers in the habit-tracking category, I’d buy this and scale it.
I passed on buying this one, but if I was going to… I’d have offered 1x sales or walked away. It’s risky to acquire micro-SaaS online, even though this one seems to be legit. My biggest fear would be high customer churn.
Example 2: $30K+ per year of profit
Don’t laugh, but here’s a PDF converter doing about $30K+ per year of profit.
Asking a reasonable $49K to acquire all assets of the business. And it has 75 app store reviews with a 4.7 avg. rating. On the surface, not bad. But….
After I spoke to the founder.. I felt there’s some fundamental business model issues. I asked him to share his screen and show me conversion data to verify the numbers, you can see below he’s converting free-trial to paid at roughly 20%. He verified it! He’s selling what he says he is selling.. however, if you look deeper, there are retention issues of his customer base.
On the surface, that’s a great conversion rate. But as I dug deeper his avg. customer subscription length is 3 weeks! Meaning he’s essentially tricking people into buying a weekly membership, then they forget about it, and 3 weeks later they remember and cancel. So would I buy that business? No.
Not only does the model fundamentally have a leaking bucket, but as AI becomes mainstream everyone will use GPT or Gemini or Grok to scan PDFs. I imagine that’s why he’s selling it at less than 1.5x profit.
For the right price, I could get my money back in the short term, but over the long term there’s nothing here to sink my teeth into. I would never pay more than a 75% discount on annual profit for this one, and even then, it’s too much work for not enough income.
Example 3: Another Tiny Business, with Well Built Working Product, and the founder ended up exiting!
Here’s just a nice story about a hustler from Africa who has sold two of his products on Microns website. And I demo’d them, he’s a talented dev for sure!
This founder is doing about $2K ARR, asking $7K for the company. I demo’d the product and thought it was well built considering it’s early on. I also spoke with him on a call. Now, would I acquire the business? No.
Why? Mainly because I want a more simple product with a higher revenue base. But, if I was looking to get started for under $3K in tech, and I was not technical, I might have offered him something and negotiated him down. You can check the product here: https://stowaa.com/
p.s. He ended up selling this for less than asking. But still a nice win for him!
Resources for you to look through acquirable startups:
Here’s a collection of the websites I made for you, I’ve been using it to hunt down deals. You can use this to either sell your company, or buy a company.
If you want to sell your startup, consider listing it for sale by clicking through each of those 10 links. Or if you’re looking to acquire, spend an hour or two hunting down some interesting deals!
My Thoughts:
There is a matrix of companies for sale. From true tech startups on Acquire.com to more of a side hustle type company on TrustMRR. It’s a matter of taste, budget, and expectations.
I felt these three are the best resources for buying/selling your tech startup. One is premium, one is free. I wanted to list both so you can decide what fits your style.
If you want to put in the hard work, and go hunting in the depths of the free internet, I suggest using sites like Microns.io.
Upside: Easier to find an undiscovered deal at a good price.
Downside: You’ve got to be very careful with what you’re buying. You’ll need to ensure you use Escrow.com to keep the transaction under your control in case you find out what you’re buying is not what you were sold.
After I speak to each Founder, I add notes, and coloring for if I want to pursue an acquisition or not
I’ve built out a list of the startups I thought were interesting enough to buy, and then each day I’ve been speaking with the builders to gauge if they’re a good acquisition. Below is the actual due diligence I’ve done on these companies.
So far, two of them are credible enough products to consider for purchase, but neither of them have an interesting enough market for scale. I’ll keep looking all year! I find this so fun, and it’s amazing to learn about what works and what doesn’t.
Want to suggest a cool topic we can learn on behalf of everyone and share with the group? AI Products? Investor intro’s? Pitch deck help? Startup idea? Co-Founder? Music? Want me to fund something? Something else?
