Investing In Digital Assets with Blake Hutchison, CEO of Flippa
Ryan Kolden:
Welcome to Alternative Wealth, where we explore traditional and alternative investing, retirement, and personal finance concepts. I'm your host, Ryan Kolden. Join us as we talk about the strategies and tactics that can help you make better financial decisions.
Disclaimer & Disclosure: Ryan Kolden is an investment advisor representative of RPG Family Wealth Advisory. Kolden Wealth is a DBA of RPG Family Wealth Advisory. The opinions expressed by the host and or guests in this podcast do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Kolden Wealth or RPG Family Wealth Advisory. No information on this podcast should be construed as as investment, legal, tax, or financial advice.
Ryan Kolden: Today on the show we have Blake Hutchison. As the CEO of Flippa, Blake has been leading the business for six years, building Flippa's platform and expanding the business globally to help over 12,000 business owners sell annually. In his words, Flippa is building the investment bank for the 99%. Prior to becoming the CEO at Flippa, Blake served as the general manager and chief revenue officer at Luxury Escapes, the fastest growing travel company in Australia, and head of strategic partnerships at Xero, the world's leading cloud-to-cloud accounting product. Blake, welcome to the show and great to have you with us.
Blake Hutchison: Thank you, Ron, I appreciate it.
Ryan Kolden: Of course. So let's get started with your background, Blake. Can you briefly describe How you got to where you are today? How did you become the CEO of Flippa?
Blake Hutchison: Yeah, I'll start with a funny anecdote first. I have been a founder and I did exit my company with Flippa. So I had the unique privilege of being a customer of the platform prior to taking on the CEO role here. I must admit that the founders and the board were not aware of that when they reached out. But the reality is that I have used the platform as a customer and that stood me in good stead. In addition to that, I've been, I guess, privileged. to having, for the most part at least, worked for founders. And so if I think back to my first job out of university, whilst I wasn't working for a founder, I had great accessibility to the founders of Lonely Planet, as did most of the staff there. I then went to my first startup in San Francisco in 2006, and again, reported to the founders there. In fact, funny reporting line, I reported to both founders, which I would never recommend anyone doing. But that was a company called Nile Guide. We'd raised $13 million a couple of weeks out from the GFC. We'd raised that with a small team and the platform built out, but very, very little customer traction. We raised $13 million and I had the unique privilege of watching. the challenges of building a travel platform right within the GFC period. I then started my own business. I then had fantastic exposure to Rod Roery, the founder of Xero, which ultimately went on to become an extraordinary business in its own right. Then I ran Luxury Escapes for a guy called Adam Schwab, who's the founder of that business, which is now doing over a billion dollars. I think that there's a couple of things there. One, exposure to founders gives you a good sense of what is important to a business owner. I think that's really important. And then secondly, exposure to multiple different business models. Obviously, Lonely Planet was a publisher. Primary source of revenue was selling guidebooks. Nile Guide was a trip planner. Primary source of revenue at the time was ad revenue and some bookings revenue, which is affiliate revenue. Xero is cloud iconic accounting software, and that's a SaaS business. Luxury Scapes is an e-commerce business selling travel bookings. My own business was a blend of commerce and subscription. And now here I am at Flippa running a marketplace. So I think the broad sort of experience to different business models is important.
Ryan Kolden: Got it. I find it particularly fascinating. I didn't know that you sold your business through Flipa and now you're running the business. That's actually really cool. Now, one of the things that this show focuses on is alternative investing, which that is just investing in things that are non-traditional assets, things like private equity, venture capital, credit. You know, something like private equity can take many, you know, shapes and sizes and forms, but the general idea is purchasing an existing business, things like manufacturing, consumer goods, construction, all with leverage. Operating it more efficiently than one day potentially selling that or can just holding it, you know, indefinitely and operating it. Can you explain from a high level view what a digital asset is and what types of businesses that you would put into that category?
Blake Hutchison: Yeah, so the internet economy is arguably the new small business economy. Of course, in the past, we'd seen a small business owner as a tradesperson, a plumber or a builder, someone who had a brick and mortar retailer, or perhaps a cupcake maker or a butcher. Those are traditional small businesses. And that has shifted as businesses like Stripe and Shopify and Google and WordPress and Wix and WooCommerce and Square and PayPal have made it easier for small businesses to trade within. the internet economy. And so today, more than ever before, there are more digital assets than there have historically been, and we expect that that trend will continue. So a digital asset is an e-commerce business a blog or online publisher, a SaaS business, and then media generally, things like YouTube channels, and even the app ecosystem, iOS and Android developers. So often when people say, but I don't get it, what can be traded on Flipgrid? I say, well, get out your phone, and show me all the apps you use. Each one of those apps, with the exception of maybe the top 10%, are owned by developers and small business owners. Now, of course, the top 10% will be things like Google Maps and TikTok and Twitter, NowX, and they're, of course, massive organizations. But the vast majority of the apps sitting on your phone are small businesses, and the vast majority of them will be trading less than $10 million annual turnover. So Flippa is the investment bank for the 99%. It is much like the private equity thesis in that you are buying something that is established and you're looking to either get operational improvement out of that business, actual improvement out of that business, or you're looking to get strategic leverage as a function of what it does and what you already do. So it's very similar. It just happens to be that you're buying small examples of what private equity would tend to buy, which are bigger examples of those.
Ryan Kolden: Right. And I know it's going to really depend on just kind of the current moment or kind of what's going on in the online space. But what would you say the most popular types of businesses are on your platform?
Blake Hutchison: So there's the mainstays and they've been pretty consistent. So e-commerce, online publishing, which is best represented as a blog, a SaaS business, traditional SaaS businesses, both vertical and horizontal, and iOS and Android apps. So they're the mainstays. There's four of them. and they still command the most attention on the marketplace and we see around 5,000 assets in any given month. There are some fast growing types of asset. So YouTube channels are very fast growth asset type within the Flipper ecosystem. KDP, which is an Amazon Kindle publishing. Things like sort of SaaS businesses that are, that are built on top of some other platforms. So Chrome extensions, Slack plugin, plugins, Salesforce apps, those types of Asset types are fast gaining momentum because people like the fact that they're inextricably tied to an existing community and or user ecosystem. And that makes customer acquisition a little more predictable. And then you're starting to see things like newsletters and even digital agencies where they'll straddle the digital economy, but have some service layer to them, which makes them applicable to a different type of buyer. We tend to follow buyer intent signals. So we're a bit like a search engine ourselves in the sense that investors will pop onto the platform and they'll hunt out what they're looking for. And so as a result of that, we can watch intent and where we see high volume of intent, we'll tend to go and create a new asset type. Examples of that would be newsletters where we saw, not necessarily right now, but around about 12 to 18 months ago, we saw huge amounts of interest in the newsletter economy. And so we launched newsletters as a category and it's gone well ever since.
Ryan Kolden: And what would be kind of the most popular industry types by transaction history? One of them that comes to mind is, for example, the pet industry. I know just people are fanatics about their dogs, so they're always buying a new toy or something. What would be, generally speaking, maybe like the top three industries that you're seeing right now?
Blake Hutchison: Yeah, so that's where it's very similar to traditional brick and mortar and traditional PE in the sense that these are investors, so they're highly unlikely to get romanticized over something speculative, and so they're the traditional ones. Pets is very hot, Ryan, always is, always has been, won't change. Health and wellness always has been. probably will grow as people become more attuned to their day-to-day lifestyle habits. Finance, travel, I would say they're the four mainstays. So pets, health and wellness, finance and travel. Home and garden, I mean, it's kind of as you would think actually. So if you've got a SaaS business that is operating in the travel space or the health and wellness space, you'll tend to find that that, you know, receives a lot of buyer attention, much the same as if you have an e-commerce business in that space as well.
Ryan Kolden: Got it. And I kind of want to transition a little bit into the buy side that you see over at Flippa. So what are some, maybe some of the most interesting use cases by investors that you're seeing in the acquisition of business? So like, for example, Are the majority of transactions occurring by first-time business owners or are you seeing people go out and buy a complimentary business to their existing primary operating company?
Blake Hutchison: Yes, both is the answer. By volume, it's first-timers and they're often buying five and low six-figure assets. But by revenue, by transaction value here at Flippa, it's the repeat and often strategic and institutional buying types. And that's just, as you would expect, the law of large numbers. I mean, they're typically have a bigger wallet from which to invest from, and they have the ability to deploy a bit faster and more regularly than others do. So in that particular case, in the latter case, yes, they are buying something because it has strategic relevance. So the best example that comes to mind right now would be one of the world's largest online toy retailers. currently buying some e-commerce assets within the baby space. And so that makes sense. The toy space is inextricably connected to the gifting space. The gifting space is inextricably connected to kind of the new parents slash baby space. And so if they go and acquire that asset or multiple assets within that category, there's a cross-sell opportunity for them. And it tends to be that the ICP, the ideal customer profile for the online toy retailer, is probably the same as some of those online baby retailers, baby fashion retailers. People don't sell babies online, do they? And so therefore, there's a strategic relevance and that's why they buy it.
Ryan Kolden: Got it. I'm just curious with that specific transaction or multiple transactions, did that large company basically use your platform, purchase the companies and then you found out about it after it happened or did they reach out to you and utilize your broker service?
Blake Hutchison: Yeah, they revealed themselves. So, you know, the key thing about our platform is we've obviously got brokers and M&A advisors, and that's a really critical part of the service layer, because that's what, you know, customers expect. But the reality is we're a technology company, and so we've built a bunch of tooling under the hood to ensure that The deals happen in a very efficient way and that both buyer and seller, as well as broker, are able to build a relationship faster and sooner in the process, as well as use that for matching purposes. And so in that particular example, as with thousands of others, they create a mandate and a profile. So the profile itself says something along the lines of, I am the CEO of one of the world's largest online toy retailers. and I am interested in acquiring deals that have strategic relevance, then the mandate says my mandate is to buy e-commerce assets within the baby category with EBITDA range of X between X and Y. total turnover range between X and Y in the following geographies with gross margins of X and average order values of Y and no greater than a refund rate of Z. So they'll put all that in a mandate. And as a result of that, they're revealing themselves to us, but they're also revealing themselves to the entrepreneur and the entrepreneur tends to respond very favorably to knowing that a strategic is interested.
Ryan Kolden: Right. Today in 2025, what is the general market for buying and selling digital assets looking like, you know, kind of as a whole? Are you seeing transaction volume decline, stay the same or increase? Just what's kind of the general outlook on things right now?
Blake Hutchison: It's tricky commentary because we don't think our data is analogous to the industry right now because we're up 35%. So total trading volumes are up 35%, but we have heard from boutique brokerages and M&A advisors that that's not the same for them. And so our trading volume is up, but I couldn't tell you necessarily if that was the case for the entire industry. So I think that's really interesting. Now it could just be that we have really ramped up our supply side acquisition. So that's going after business owners who we deem to have high intent to sell and a wanted desire to exit. And we've really ramped up that effort. So it could just be that as a function of Flippa investing in brand awareness, Flippa investing in its programmatic outreach efforts and among other things, that we've been benefited by that. Generally speaking though, there's a lot of interest and buyers at the moment have good levels of dry powder from which to deploy. And therefore there's a bit of competitive tension where that was sort of a bit constrained over the last 24 months. That seems to have come back really hard. It's come back for a few reasons. This is an asset class, so you introduced your podcast as being a podcast about investing generally, and in many cases, alternative assets. It's an investor mindset to think about macroeconomics, geopolitical challenges, high inflation rate, high interest rate environment, and therefore become a little less confident and bullish about their investment decisions. The good news is that for a good quality business, There's great demand right now, and we are seeing record amounts of demand in our deal rooms. So at any given time, we're running maybe 20,000 different deal rooms of different of course, and the deal rooms are where all the buyers behave and act. And so we're seeing incredible volume within the deal rooms right now. We think that's going to be a leading indicator for continued growth of our capital.
Ryan Kolden: Outstanding. Normally, when a business owner is looking to sell their business, they might traditionally reach out to an M&A advisor, a business broker, or if the transaction is large enough, engage an investment bank. And one of the first steps of that process is always going to be valuing the business, which can involve several different ways they could do that. It could be asset or income-based. It could be looking at comparables. It could be all three of them, right? to derive a value. Now, if you're like a first-time business owner on Flippa and you have no clue how M&A works, how does that person go about valuing their business and utilizing your platform to do so?
Blake Hutchison: Yeah, so I guess the first thing is to acknowledge that, yes, you're right, there are lots of different ways that you can value a business. We agree that, you know, you can take a view that you can look at a revenue multiple, an asset-based valuation, discounted cash flow, or what they might call STE multiple, which is seller discretionary earnings, where you essentially take out things that are non-carry forward costs that have been one time that the buyer is unlikely to take over. And so we acknowledge those common valuation methods. What we do at Flipper is we use market comparables, industry-specific multiples, and recent sales data. And then we use trend analysis. And so we then provide an indicative valuation. And as a function of doing 12,000 transactions a year across the digital economy, we tend to be able to benchmark quite well. And so if you can benchmark based on historical sales, plus use trend analysis, i.e. there are a lot more buyers interested right now, do Do countersigned LOIs look to be trending up? And do the terms within those countersigned LOIs show that multiples are trending up or down? You tend to be able to provide a very, very accurate valuation, far more accurate than if you use a common valuation methodology. So we tend to use our historical sales data as the basis. And the best way, therefore, for a business owner to get an indicative valuation is to use Flippa's free valuation tool. And that's actually indicative to like the Zillow Zestimate. You don't need a professional housing appraisal to get a view of what your house is worth today because Zillow has outstanding sales data. And this is the same for Flippa. So long as you provide revenue imports, cost imports, operational data, and connect to one of our 15 different data integrations so that we can actually see the veracity of the information you've provided, then we tend to be able to provide you a pretty accurate valuation. That's free. It will never not be free. And we see 9,000 new business owners use that tool each month.
Ryan Kolden: Perfect. You mentioned about the large toy company, which would have been a company or a corporation. The last time we spoke, just very briefly, you also mentioned you're starting to see a little bit of institutional demand for these types of businesses, things like private equity or family offices. Can you briefly explain how these types of investors are using Flippa to source deals? And I'm assuming you're seeing more kind of the direct deals occur because as far as, I'm sure they exist, but as far as my experience is, I haven't seen any large funds, someone like a KKR or Apollo. open a fund, raise a bunch of money, then go buy a bunch of these businesses. I assume these are more all just direct deals.
Blake Hutchison: Yeah, that's right. I mean, there are some very big funds on the platform, but I don't think KKR or Apollo are examples of that. They're not raising a fund specifically to go and roll up a bunch of micro assets, but what they are doing is deploying analysts within the platform to go and find deals that have strategic relevance to a specific portfolio company. And that could have come as a function of a board meeting or a general strategic direction. Let's say for argument's sake, you were to own one of the largest brick and mortar athletic leisure wear companies. And let's say, and I'm clearly talking about a real example here, but let's say you've got 50 or so stores around the USA, but let's say you've got very little digital presence. Well, you could go and acquire a YouTube channel, which was all about athletics and was owned by a substantial YouTube influencer with literally millions upon millions of video views. And you could use that to own an audience and be less susceptible to the cost of customer acquisition long-term and use that as a foot for your brick and mortar retailer ecosystem. Now that's just one example, but that's very common as an approach. I think the important thing maybe for people to note is that this is not venture capital. So they're paying for historical performance and whilst they're looking for opportunity, the reality is that they are looking for something that they can slot in and get inorganic growth benefit from much like a traditional PA does. So the behaviors are the same. There are, of course, lots of examples of businesses that have raised lots of money purely for this purpose. Constellation Software is the best example of this, right? You know, they are a prolific acquirer of tech assets and they and their network of sub-brands are shopping on platforms like ours, among others. You also get people who are going after a specific asset type, so there are There are roll-ups, funds, they're just for YouTube channels. There are roll-ups and funds just going after iOS and Android apps. There are roll-ups and funds going just after Shopify plugins. So, you know, this is about niching down and then using capability to go after a specific type of asset where you think it's currently undervalued, where the long-term thesis says, well, this is clearly going to grow.
Ryan Kolden: Very interesting. transactions on Flippa a little bit more specific. What is the average transaction size that you see on your platform?
Blake Hutchison: 2.1 mil, albeit, I should admit that averages are a bit misleading. So 2.1 mil is a function of quite a few of the larger deals. But we, as a price agnostic platform, We have a self-service platform and we have a managed by platform. And the managed by platform is run by third party brokers, as well as certified M&A practitioners in-house. And the self-service platform is reserved for smaller deals. So Flippa will do all four figure, five figure, six figure and seven figure. We have done eight figure deals, but if you talk about our core ICP, it's a six and seven figure.
Ryan Kolden: And from what I understand for larger deals, just like you mentioned, business owners, they have the option of using a broker. Can you explain just briefly how, let's say that I was someone who was going to sell for my business for seven figures. How does that kind of just like the process or work or what would you tell someone like in this hypothetical example of how would I transact that business with a broker on your platform?
Blake Hutchison: So I think there's a couple of comments here first and foremost. One, the value proposition is clearly certified advisory, but the world's largest buying community where we can match up from hundreds of thousands of relevant buyers and zeroing on the right buyer for your asset, and that's technology capability. The advisory is working in unison with the technology to ensure an efficient process. So very quickly, end-to-end, it tends to start out with the valuation tool. So entrepreneur slash business owner would get a valuation. We then take them through a consultation, and that's essentially a discovery call to understand their business as well as articulate what Flippa does. We'll then show them the platform and how the platform works, and they'll move through to onboarding. Now, onboarding is essentially creating a digital IM. So we have 15 different data integrations, Stripe, PayPal, Shopify, Amazon, AdSense, QuickBooks Online, Xero, et cetera. And we're going to pull in as much data about the business as we can. so that we can rationalize that information and present it in the most beneficial fashion for an acquirer. That then forms the basis of a flipper listing, which is the digital IM, and that's presented in a way that we know the buyers are most interested in consuming it. So you've got the data integrations there with all the financials, as well as operational data, and then you've got a general overview for how the business works, how it makes money, any other pertinent information, perhaps marketing information, etc. A buyer can then create a mandate and profile and inquire. That's where the broker comes in. So the broker is organizing the deal room and then there's some data being applied to that as well because the average deal room's got a couple of hundred buyers in it. So the data science takes over and says, based on intent signals, based on historical purchasing behavior, based on other information we have at our disposal, these are the buyers that we think are most relevant. The broker's then responsible for triaging those buyers, making sure that those buyers are legit, the real deal, they've got funds verified, and that they are good quality buyer that we would like to then begin a negotiation process with. Negotiation can either go one of two ways. It could be that they go straight into a call with their entrepreneur and have a chat, or it could be that they actually submit an LOI, come to terms before they start to dig in. Now, let's take a more typical example. A more typical example is that your broker slash M&A advisor would put you on the phone with that particular acquirer. You would come to sort of verbal terms, you would do some preliminary due diligence, and then you'd go to a non-exclusive LOI. Most typically, there are some exclusive LOIs, but most of them are non-exclusive. After you go to non-exclusive LOI, you'll go into D-Day. At that point in time, albeit we've got ambitions and plans to build programmatic due diligence, at that particular time, most institutional investors will now go and conduct their own due diligence, either in-house or going and acquiring a firm. At that point in time, they can issue an asset purchase agreement and or share purchase agreement through the platform. And we've got Dropbox Sign integrated there. They can also buy a reps and warranties insurance product right off the platform. and comes at 1% of enterprise value. And that will essentially protect for false disclosure or non-disclosure. And the entrepreneur can also buy that same reps and warranties insurance product. And then ultimately they'll use our integrated escrow and or trust accounts to transact. So it's designed to be end-to-end to make the process efficiently. But we also don't put strict guardrails around it because we know that different buyers have different methodologies for doing it. And that will tend to take, in all honesty, it tends to take about six months. So it's not a short sale.
Ryan Kolden: Now, let's take that exercise one step further. And let's say that I'm now someone who's interested in selling my business, but I don't think I'm going to do it for maybe another you know, two, three years, what would you say are some of the most important characteristics of a good digital asset transaction? And I'm assuming a lot of these things are gonna be very similar to traditional business, but just as an example, I know like in the past with like an Amazon business, there's a lot of these Amazon businesses where Amazon will, you know, they have all the data that they have on the back end and they'll step in kind of create their own product when something's looking hot. So I'm assuming it's different based on the type of business that's being transacted, but I'm sure you've probably seen some common things that make businesses particularly risky, or you see things that they all have in common that de-risk them and make them more attractive to a potential buyer.
Blake Hutchison: Yeah, 100%. I mean, the commonalities are, as you would expect, so financial best practices, having clean and organized books, having a very clear understanding for the metrics that matter. And of course, the metrics that matter are different for a SaaS business, e-com, app, or online publisher. But for example, if you're a SaaS business, you want to have a sense of your LTV, you want to have a sense of your CAC, you'll then have a sense of LTV to CAC ratio. Your churn rates, those net retention rates, those things are really, really important. Growth trends, so from top to bottom of funnel. Is your top of funnel growing? Is your bottom of funnel converting top of funnel well? Those things are really critical to understand. And a lot of that data we pulled down from the platforms themselves make it a lot easier for small business owners to be able to do that. But it's still critical that you understand it because you're likely to get questions around it. And that's what a good M&A advisor will do. And we've got 20 in-house here at Flippa across Austin, Texas, Amsterdam, London, and here in Australia. So we've got plenty of help for people. Operational excellence, so comprehensive SOPs. And so if you're 12 to 18 months out from planning an exit. It's really important to start to put some time into creating comprehensive SOPs for how your business works. So that's standard operating procedures. Cross-trained staff, we're talking about small businesses, typically sub 10 mil turnover and more realistically, mid six figures, low seven figures. So do you have cross-trained staff because you want an acquirer to know that you've de-risked the asset in such a way that you're not, the key man risk has been removed from on the acquisition process. Documented vendor relationships, who are you actually partnering with? You mentioned Amazon. A lot of Amazon buyers, sorry, Amazon FBA operators have pretty loose relationships with the providers of product. So documented vendor relationships are really important. But then finally, Ryan, the reality is sales solves everything. Do you have a very, very consistent, repeatable, predictable approach to winning and retaining customers? And that's still going to become the most important thing that the average acquirer will look at. So, commonalities for sure. The nuances are really in the metrics that matter for each of the business types.
Ryan Kolden: Got it. Now, we're getting near the end of the show here and I kind of want to wrap it up with more of a couple fun questions. Not that this hasn't been great, but more of your opinion. Other than your personal transaction on Flippa, what has been your favorite deal, regardless of the size?
Blake Hutchison: like the stories where entrepreneurs have put a lot of blood, sweat and tears into building a company and are obviously therefore, and it happens a lot, but truly thankful for the ability that Flippa has to connect them with the relevant buyer. I mean, my favorite just because he's had so many great experiences with Flippa. So when I first took my CEO role here at Flippa, which is now six and a half years ago, I reached out to the community. I said, I'm flying over to the US, I'm based here in Melbourne, and I'd love to meet as many Flippa customers as possible. Would anyone be willing to have a coffee with me? I got a note back from a gentleman by the name of John. John Chen is his name. And he had bought a small asset on Flippa and it was tiny, tiny Ryan, far smaller than the average listener on your show wants to even hear about, but it was a $7,500. So tiny five-figure deal or four-figure deal, I should say. And so long story short, he built that up and 18 months later, We had a chat at a barbecue joint up near Columbia University in New York. And he said, well, look, I'm going to put it on the platform and can you give me some help? And we, of course, said yes. And he sold that for $550,000. He was highly emotional. He was incredibly thankful. The business was a good business. It was called Blush and Bar. It's still operating today. It's gone on to bigger and better things. And since that time, he's gone to do another three transactions with Flipper on the buy side. And so, he was an entrepreneur. cut his teeth learning the ins and outs of building a small e-commerce business. And since that time, he's been able to buy and then scale multiple businesses. His biggest business is now doing $5 million turnover. So that's a story that has set him up for the future. And we're proud of that. And we like stories like that.
Ryan Kolden: Yeah, that's incredible. The last question I have for you, Blake, is it can be either business related or it could be personally, but what's one thing that you're working on right now that excites you?
Blake Hutchison: So I love how efficient I believe we can become with the benefit of AI. So one of the things that we have been able to do a bunch of research around, and the accuracy is crazy good, is there's too many buyers interested in any given deal on Flippa. So we've been able to predict using our data set, and we've taken all the historical sales data, and we've put our data science team to work. And they've been able to, on 75% of occasions, create small cohorts of buyers where the eventual buyer ends up in that preferred cohort. So we believe that we can substantially better predict who the likely buyer is, or at least the likely cohort of buyers is for every given asset, and therefore speed up the pathway to liquidity for business owners across the world, but also make life easier for M&A advisors who are dealing with too many buyers per asset. So that's kind of excitement project number one, and the research around that's been in depth and the results are phenomenal. So that's predicting which buyer will buy or at least getting closer to that. The second one is what I might call programmatic supply side replenishment. So Flippa is a marketplace where supply constrained, the average business owner has never heard of Flippa, but we sit on a crazy amount of data and have done for a long time. And so we believe that based on what buyers want, we're able to essentially digitally network with business owners out there and essentially predict their value. alert them of that value and then introduce them almost one-on-one Tinder style with a buyer who is highly likely to buy their business. That's wild. We would say, hey Ryan, we predict that your asset based on the following characteristics is worth between X and Y, and we have three buyers right now who we believe will buy your asset for this price. If you are interested in this, just click this button, you'll land in the Flippa deal room. And so they would then land in the deal room, which already exists today. The deal room is where all the deals take place. And there's a lot of information in there about the asset as well as the actual service layer at the click of a button that the buyer and seller can leverage. So we're really excited by that because we've got the same problems as every other business in the world. Customer acquisition is expensive. So if we can do that at scale, and we've been testing it, and it's pretty wild what you can achieve here. So, yeah. We're only a couple of months away from having programmatic replenishment.
Ryan Kolden: That's very crazy. I, that I'm just kind of like at a loss for words, but that's, that's a very, very cool program or design you guys are coming up with. Well, Blake, I really appreciate your time coming on the show today. Do you have any last words that you want to leave the audience with before we close things out?
Blake Hutchison: Well, look, only that an exit is a highly emotional process for people to go through and we respect that. You should respect that yourself. And then as a function of respecting it, a business owner needs to get their head around the sales cycle themselves. And so we tell people to plan for about 12 months out. So start to think where you think your business will be 12 months out and hopefully the numbers therefore make you excited and you can start to think about what the exit opportunity looks like at that size.
Ryan Kolden: Perfect. Well, what I will do is I'll put Flippa's website in the show notes if anyone wants to check out the platform or learn more. Blake, what's the best way for people to potentially get in touch with you? Is it LinkedIn? Is it just to reach out through Flippa's platform? Yeah, I'd love to.
Blake Hutchison: Yeah, thank you so much, Ryan. I'd love to hear from anyone who's heard the show today, so just reach out on LinkedIn and say hello. Let me know where you heard about the show so I can let Ryan know, too, and say hello, and I'd love to engage.
Ryan Kolden: Perfect. Well, that's a wrap for today. Thanks again, Blake, for coming on, and until next time, talk to you then. Take care. Thanks, Ron. The opinions and views expressed here are for informational purposes only and is not tax, legal, financial, investment, or accounting advice. This material is educational in nature and should not be deemed as solicitation of any specific product or service. All investments involve risk and a potential for a loss of principal. Should you need such advice, please consult with a licensed financial, tax, or legal professional. Neither host nor guest can be held responsible for any direct or incidental loss incurred by applying any of the information offered.
