How to go about acquiring a startup?

[bihan]

i'm a founder & i want to acquire a pre-seed stage company that's mission-critical for what i'm building. i'm looking for some answers on how to go about acquiring and whether i should directly call up the other company or use a middle man?

[talldayo]

If the other business is smart, they won't let you acquire them at all and will force you into a B2B pricing package. Obviously you demand their product and are willing to pay a high fee; sounds like a perfect time to bait you into a contract.

Unless you buy them out for a ridiculously eye-watering price, I don't see how this could work well. At founder-scale you should be focusing less on mergers & acquisitions and more on building your product. A good place to start would be engineering a contingency plan if you can't acquire said company.

[caprock]

Do some research (maybe you already have), and then just reach out to their founder/CEO directly. It can't hurt to have a conversation.

[GianFabien]

Sometimes synergy might work both ways. An aggressive buy-out approach, especially when using a middle person, tends to inflate the asking price and/or create an adversarial situation.

[byoung2]

If they are pre-seed, what do they have built already and how do you know about it? What stage is your company?

[localfirst]

there is no fixed path, start with email and then follow up if they respond.

why raise the cost by using a middle men?

seems like you aren't really ready to do this from your questions.