Inside the SaaS acquisition: how to sell your company successfully with Antoine Minoux @Fernand

saas.unbound is a podcast for and about founders who are working on scaling inspiring products that people love, brought to you by https://saas.group/, a serial acquirer of B2B SaaS companies.

In episode #26 of season 5 of saas.unbound, Anna Nadeina sits down with Antoine Minoux, founder and CEO of Fernand—a customer support platform tailored specifically for SaaS companies—and the former founder of ImprovMX, a popular free email forwarding service that he recently sold. Antoine shares his fascinating journey through building, operating, and eventually selling a SaaS business, offering invaluable insights into the acquisition process, challenges faced, and lessons learned along the way.

From ImprovMX to Exit: The Story Behind the Sale

ImprovMX started as a simple tool created by an indie developer in Georgia (the country), designed to forward emails from custom domains to personal inboxes. It organically gained traction within the developer community on platforms like Reddit and Hacker News. When the original founder found the workload overwhelming and the project unmonetized, Antoine and his co-founder acquired it for less than $5,000, rebuilding the product from the ground up.

They enhanced ImprovMX with subscription plans, premium features such as webhook redirection, faster email forwarding, and improved security and compliance. The product grew steadily, reaching around $30,000 in monthly recurring revenue (MRR) before Antoine decided to sell.

The decision to sell was driven by the operational demands of running an infrastructure-heavy service sending two million emails daily. Antoine and his co-founder, primarily builders and not operators, found the 24/7 technical support and scaling challenges draining and distracting from their passion project, Fernand. They wanted to focus on Fernand, a customer support help desk built for SaaS businesses, which they believed had more long-term potential without the need for extensive team expansion.

Finding the Right Buyer: A Strategic Approach

When it came time to sell ImprovMX, Antoine explored multiple avenues. Initially, he reached out to his network from a previous exit and expanded his search using resources like Laura Roa’s blog post listing typical SaaS acquirers and brokers. Despite interest from bigger companies, many wanted a higher ARR (usually over $1 million), making the valuation offers less appealing.

Antoine then engaged Quiet Light, a broker specializing in SaaS business sales. Through Quiet Light, they prepared a detailed prospectus and connected with multiple buyers. Among them, Matthew stood out—not a private equity firm or large group, but an individual with a technical background and a genuine interest in operating the business himself. This alignment of values and vision was critical to Antoine’s trust in the buyer.

“It felt like he could have joined the team right now. He understands the technical side and values what we’ve built. It was a green mark all around.”

The Acquisition Process: Legal Hurdles and Transition

The sale process involved extensive due diligence, legal negotiations, and operational handover. Antoine highlighted the complexity of transferring a European company to a buyer in the US, especially concerning data privacy regulations and migrating hundreds of thousands of free users and thousands of paying customers to a new Stripe account in another country.

They worked with a French law firm experienced in SaaS and startup legal frameworks, navigating the challenges of cross-border asset sales and aligning French and US legal requirements. Despite the hurdles, the process was smooth thanks to transparent communication and mutual respect between seller, buyer, and advisors.

Post-sale, Antoine and his team provided three months of transition support, though the actual hands-on involvement was minimal—under five hours in total. Most of the effort was upfront: creating a comprehensive data room with operating manuals, system documentation, and account credentials to ensure a seamless handover.

Lessons on Data Room Preparation

Antoine stresses the importance of early preparation, even if selling isn’t immediately on the horizon. Creating a well-organized data room using tools like Notion, and formalizing operational procedures, can dramatically ease future transitions and improve team onboarding. He likens this process to painting walls before moving out—something that makes the company more attractive and easier to manage.

Key Takeaways: Trust and Alignment Matter Most

Reflecting on the sale, Antoine highlights trust as the most crucial factor. Having a buyer with integrity, shared values, and a genuine interest in the product ensures a smoother process and a better future for the company’s users.

“If I ever sell again, the gut check on trust and ethics will be my top priority.”

Focus on Fernand: The Future of SaaS Customer Support

With ImprovMX sold, Antoine and his co-founder are fully focused on Fernand, a SaaS-tailored customer support help desk aimed particularly at B2B SaaS companies. Fernand recently launched AI-powered features that enhance customer support workflows without replacing human agents.

The platform enables users to train AI models on their own content—knowledge base articles, past replies, and website data—allowing smart reply generation with simple prompts and an AI chat widget that can handle common customer questions, always offering an easy escape to human support.

Antoine emphasizes Fernand’s philosophy: AI should augment, not replace, human support, increasing efficiency while maintaining personal touch.

Marketing Challenges and Opportunities

Despite strong product innovation, Antoine admits marketing remains a challenge. The existing landing page no longer reflects the product’s capabilities, and he is working on a comprehensive marketing overhaul to better communicate Fernand’s value proposition and pricing. Retention is solid, aided by some natural lock-in like DNS settings, but acquiring new customers requires more focused effort.

The Future of SaaS in the Age of AI

Antoine shares his perspective on AI’s impact on SaaS. He sees AI as a powerful tool for empowering creators and developers, enabling faster and better product development—even for non-expert coders. However, he predicts that some enterprise tools with poor user experience and high costs (e.g., Workday, Concur) are more vulnerable to disruption by custom AI-driven solutions built in-house.

From a UX standpoint, Antoine believes that chat-based interfaces are overused and often ineffective. Instead, AI should work behind the scenes to simplify setup flows and personalize experiences. Users prefer familiar interfaces and workflows, augmented by AI in the background rather than through constant conversation.

Biggest Wins and Failures: Personal Insights

One of Antoine’s biggest wins in recent times was a bold marketing stunt at the OMR conference in Hamburg. Dressing up as a vintage postman and personally delivering letters to attendees, he created a memorable brand moment that generated significant online buzz, reaching over 100,000 views on social media—far exceeding the conference attendance.

On the flip side, Antoine candidly shares the struggle of balancing product innovation with marketing efforts. Despite having wireframes and plans for a new website and marketing strategy since December, finding uninterrupted time to focus on these tasks remains difficult due to his full-time job and family commitments.

Productivity Hack: Using AI to Accelerate Work

Antoine’s favorite productivity tip is leveraging ChatGPT Plus to automate content creation. Whether drafting customer support articles, changelogs, or even managing personal projects like house renovations, AI helps him save time and produce high-quality outputs quickly. He customizes AI with context and screenshots to generate tailored results, making routine tasks more efficient.