Four founders, four very different reasons to sell. The same answer to “would you do it again.”
On the saas.unbound podcast, founders who sold to saas.group keep circling back to the same handful of questions: did the process feel honest, did the business stay theirs after the ink dried, and did the support turn out to be real or just a pitch deck line. Here’s how four of them answered, in their own words.
“The people at saas.group were from the beginning on super eye-level discussions. They were immediately saying ‘we’re not merging you to any different product line or product suite, you exist further.’ We got the answers to our questions always super fast: what is the enterprise valuation, what is the deal structure, and what are the strings attached, super fast in the process. And in general I wouldn’t say much changed day to day. It still feels like we are a fully independent product within this larger, safer organization. We’re still a small brand team, but we can rely on help from central teams when we need it, and the external goal is just being profitable. That’s a good setup.”
Josef Trauner @Usersnap – episode “How to prepare a SaaS company for acquisition”
Speed and directness came up again and again, but so did tone. Antoine Paré had been through acquisition conversations before saas.group, including one acquirer who told him to join or die. That’s the bar saas.group was up against, and it’s also why he’s candid about the one hard call the deal forced him into.
“SaaS group was refreshing. We had a first call with Ulri and Pavel, Tim Heicks was there too, and we were surprised how easy it was and how good the vibe was. It wasn’t like an intimidating game, they were like ‘what’s your intention guys, you want to stay or not?’ saas.group told us we would be independent, and it’s been true. But after the transaction the biggest change was reducing the size of the team. It wasn’t a clear recommendation coming from saas.group, just them asking questions and making sure we have a healthy business, which made me realize it’s something I even should have done earlier.” DashThis also cut its marketing budget by 40% with help from the central team and held sales results steady, so the hard call and the payoff came from the same place.
Antoine Paré @DashThis – episode “Selling a SaaS business in 60 days”
A good process gets you to the table. What decides whether founders stay engaged is what happens after the deal closes. Peter Leonard went in planning to leave once the transition period ended. He didn’t.
“It really wasn’t until chatting more and more with saas.group, not just the M&A team that did a really excellent job through the transition, but also internal saas.group, chatting with really knowledgeable people on the central marketing team, that it became really attractive to see the type of team we’d have the opportunity to work with. That made it a solid incentive to stay. We found it’s more successful to work with a freelancer or an existing team member for simple projects, which in turn gives us the ability to rely on the central team more for scenarios that really excel with the shared knowledge they have, things like product decisions, UX audits, complex marketing strategies.”
Peter Leonard @MyWorks – episode “SaaS post-acquisition integration with Peter Leonard”
Then there’s Tobias Günther, who sold Tower after 11 years because Lyme disease made the decision for him. He’s the clearest test case for what “no regrets” actually means, because he wasn’t selling into a growth story. He was selling to protect his health.
“I’ve never looked back. I’ve been sad that I can’t work with that wonderful team anymore, this is the one part I really, really dearly miss. But that’s part of the deal in the game. And as we can see from the last two years where I haven’t been part of the team and the company anymore, it’s striving. So it’s everything’s good. It’s wonderful to see from the outside.”
Tobias Günther @Tower – episode “Remote setup is the golden standard”
Four different companies, four different reasons to sell, and the same shape to the story: fast, honest answers before the deal, real independence after it, genuine help when they asked for it, and at least one hard decision nobody sugarcoated. That’s what makes founders trust the process enough to stay involved, or in Tobias’s case, to walk away clean and still call it the right call.
Hear the full conversations with Josef Trauner, Antoine Paré, Peter Leonard, and Tobias Günther on the saas.unbound podcast.
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