In today’s episode, I interview Shakil Prasla founder of SZ Ventures and owner of 8 (and counting) profitable eCommerce businesses – none of which he runs day to day.
In this episode, Shakil and I took a deep dive into his business model of buying existing profitable eCommerce businesses.
We talked about why he prefers to buy existing companies, how that makes fundraising so much easier, and how it allows him to keep out of the day to day operations.
We also talked at length about how he finds his deals, the criteria he uses to avoid making a bad decision, and the myriad of creative finance strategies that he uses.
If you are thinking about starting an eCommerce company, I urge you to listen to this episode to gain a different perspective.
Starting a company is really hard. I have done it 3 times and I don’t really ever want to do it again. I’d much rather buy a business that already has products, customers, and cash flow.
Truth be told, that is the #1 reason why I interviewed Shakil – I’m currently on the hunt for a company to buy and wanted to learn as much as I could about the process.
Today’s Guest
Shakil is an entrepreneur and investor who has been in the ecommerce space for over 5 years. He received his undergraduate degree and MBA from the Austin at University of Texas. He started his first company in 2012 and since then has bought 8 online companies at prices ranging from 6 to 7 figures. These focus of these companies include Amazon FBA, dropship, stocked physical products, and custom on demand products.
Listen Now and You’ll Discover
1. Why buying existing companies is easier than starting new ones
2. The 5 different ways he finances his acquisition
3. The 4 different ways he finds deals
4. The top 3 criteria that every deal must have in order to be considered
5. The top 5 questions he asks every seller
6. How one of his deals went south, how he fixed it, and the lessons learned
7. How he finds his business partners
8. The #1 way he’s been able to find managers to run each company
9. How he structures his managers’ compensation plans to ensure the highest probability of success
Resources
Note: Some of the resourced below may be affiliate links and if you use that link to make a purchase, I may receive a commission (at no cost to you) from the company whose product(s) you purchase.