Startup Sphere Weekly #52

Pitch deck templates selling for $280,000. Plus, a Shopify plugin selling for $70,000.

Author

Vlad Verba
January 23, 2025 • Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes

Hey it’s Vlad,

Welcome back to Startup Sphere - a 5-minute weekly digest about online businesses selling for life-changing amounts of money.

I’m excited about 2025 and building out this newsletter. The goal is to hit 10,000 subscribers.

If you want to help me out, share your custom referral link with a friend and I’ll send you a database of all the businesses that I featured since starting the newsletter https://www.thestartupsphere.com/subscribe?ref=PLACEHOLDER

Thanks for the support - let’s get into this week’s business listings ⤵️

Weekly Rundown

Shopify app to verify user’s age

Asking Price: $70,000
TTM Revenue: $16,000
TTM Profit: $15,000

This app provides age-restricted access to Shopify stores. Its goal is to help sellers (alcohol, tobacco, adult products) comply with legal regulations.

Shopify products have multiple advantages - mainly targeting and marketing potential customers effectively. Firstly, these businesses can focus on app store optimization (ASO) as their primary acquisition channel. Secondly, you can target potential customers by reaching out to Shopify stores (through cold email, social media DMs, etc). I like that this makes marketing straightforward and predictable.

The listing mentions that the business has a $1 customer acquisition cost (CAC) and a $20 lifetime value (LTV). This makes the business a very compelling acquisition.

*****

Pitch deck templates for startups

Asking Price: $280,000
TTM Revenue: $66,000
TTM Profit: $38,000

This is a great example of a simple business making a sizeable income through templates.

The business for sale is a suite of pitch decks, financial models, etc, that help entrepreneurs secure funding for their businesses. The business also offers an upsell, by offering professional pitch deck reviews.

I was surprised by the pricing, with the company charging $129/month. However, this is a great price point, especially for a product with such low maintenance.

I would ask the current owner some questions about the profit margins because I am curious about the expenses for a simple template product.

*****

AI-powered edtech app

Asking Price: $510,000
TTM Revenue: $345,000
TTM Profit: $145,000

I’ve seen a couple of AI edtech tools pop up on TikTok, so this was an interesting listing to come across.

The education niche is huge and has an endlessly growing customer base. The one downside is that students usually don’t have much money, which can sometimes lead to difficulty getting customers. Although, this doesn’t seem to be a problem for this business.

The listing mentions that they have strategic influencer partnerships, which is likely how they grew the business. I also think this is the best path to growth moving forward. I’ve seen many examples on TikTok of influencers advertising educational software and plugins.

The business is for sale at a decent price, at only a 1.5x revenue multiple.

Cast Your Vote

Which business would you acquire?

Vote below and let us know why:

Login or Subscribe to participate in polls.

Last week’s results: 50% of voters chose the software to turn blogs into infographics as the best business to acquire. Read last week’s newsletter here.

Micro Acquisitions

Share Startup Sphere

Looking for your next venture? I’ll send you my database of all the businesses I’ve featured in Startup Sphere. Just refer one friend through your personal referral link: https://www.thestartupsphere.com/subscribe?ref=PLACEHOLDER

Thanks for reading this week’s newsletter. I hope you learned something new.

Till next week 🦄

— Vlad