Most SaaS acquisitions close in 3–8 weeks end-to-end. Sub-$25k cash deals with motivated sellers close in 1–2 weeks. Deals with SBA financing add 4–6 weeks for lender diligence. Deals with attorney-led APA negotiation add 1–2 weeks for revisions. The core buyer work — MRR verification, cost reconstruction, technical review, and customer sampling — takes 3–4 weeks regardless of ticket size.
Inquire on the listing, book a 30-minute call with the seller, ask them to screen-share Stripe / Paddle / RevenueCat to reconcile the TrustMRR number. Ask for last 12 months of revenue history and the top-line churn number. If those three don't line up cleanly, walk. If they do, express interest in an LOI.
Send a written LOI with a proposed asking price, 21–30 day exclusivity, deposit terms if any, and diligence conditions. Once signed, request the diligence data room: financials (P&L reconstruction inputs), tech stack (repo access, infra list), customers (top-20 list with MRR), and any legal contracts. Start reviewing while APA drafting begins in parallel.
Reconstruct margin from hosting + tooling + contractor invoices. Verify no customer over 15% of MRR. Read the code (or hire someone for 5 hours to review), confirm it deploys on a clean machine, check for critical third-party dependencies. Sample 5–10 customer calls if possible. This is where deals die or firm up.
Attorney finalizes the asset purchase agreement — what's included, what's excluded, reps and warranties, transition support terms, non-compete clauses, escrow terms. Buyer + seller sign. If SBA financed, lender's final approval lands this week.
Escrow.com holds funds. Seller transfers domain (2–7 days), GitHub organization, Stripe account (3–5 business days), database, third-party API accounts. Buyer confirms each handoff. Escrow releases funds once transfer is complete. Customer notification email goes out from both parties.
Seller provides 30–60 days of transition support per APA. First full billing cycle runs in the buyer's Stripe account. Buyer answers first customer support tickets. Expect 5–15% MRR haircut from ownership-change churn. By end of week 8, the acquisition is fully in your hands.
Sub-$25k cash deal, 10 days. Buyer sees listing Monday. Reconciles MRR Wednesday. LOI signed Friday. APA (template) signed Monday of week 2. Wire sent, Escrow.com holds. Transfer completes by Thursday. Escrow releases Friday. 10 calendar days.
$120k self-funded deal, 5 weeks. Standard diligence flow, small-transaction attorney drafts APA in week 3, transfer executes week 4, first billing cycle lands week 5. Buyer keeps day job through weeks 6–8 while transition support runs down.
$400k SBA-financed deal, 12 weeks. LOI signed week 1, lender engaged week 2, financial + technical diligence weeks 3–5, lender's final diligence weeks 6–8, APA + escrow week 9, transfer week 10, first cycle weeks 11–12. Longer but reliable — SBA does much of the underwriting for you.
The first 3–5 days of most SaaS acquisitions is spent verifying that the seller's revenue claim is real. TrustMRR compresses that to a 15-minute Stripe screen-share because the MRR shown on the listing card was pulled live from the seller's payment processor. You still need to reconstruct cost and margin, but revenue is a check-mark on day one instead of a week-long back-and-forth.
7–14 days for sub-$25k deals with a motivated seller. Cash payment, one-page APA, direct wire, no lawyer, no financing contingency. Domain and Stripe transfer complete within 48 hours of payment. Only viable when both sides have transacted before and know what to check.
SBA financing (add 4–6 weeks for lender diligence), attorney back-and-forth (add 1–2 weeks for APA revisions), messy seller financials (add 2–3 weeks for reconstruction), and technical complexity (multi-service infrastructure adds a week for handover planning). Every one of these is worth the time if the deal is otherwise clean.
Yes, standard for signed LOIs above $25k asking price. Some sellers offer 21 days for fast movers; some ask for 45 days on complex deals. Sub-$25k deals often skip formal exclusivity — the buyer moves fast enough that no other bidder emerges before close.
Cost reconstruction to verify the seller-reported margin. Every SaaS has 5–15 tools, contractors, or infrastructure line items, and the seller's memory of what everything costs is usually optimistic by 10–25%. Rebuilding the P&L from bank statements and invoices takes 4–10 hours and finds most of the surprises.
Yes, and you should. Waiting for APA signing to start diligence adds 2 weeks to the timeline. Standard flow: LOI signed → diligence starts immediately, APA drafting starts in parallel → both complete around the same time → close. Just carve out the exclusivity window in the LOI so you can walk if diligence surfaces something bad.
Domain: 2–7 days via registrar push. Stripe: 3–5 business days for ownership transfer. Code (GitHub): instant via org transfer. Database: 1–2 days for dump + restore into new infra. Third-party APIs (Auth0, OpenAI, etc.): 1–3 days depending on their transfer process. Practical total: 5–10 days if run in parallel.
Escrow.com releases when both parties confirm the transfer is complete — typically 3–7 days after the seller initiates transfer. Some structures release in tranches (50% at code transfer, 50% at customer notification). Startup Index doesn't run escrow — you set it up directly with Escrow.com or your closing attorney.
30–60 days typical, longer for complex SaaS. Terms go in the APA: hours per week, response time expectations, what's included (bug fixes, DNS help, customer questions) and what's not (new features, marketing). Most sellers underprice this in the deal and end up over-supporting for reputation reasons.
First full billing cycle in your account (usually 30 days). Month one usually surprises with 5–15% MRR drop from customers who noticed the ownership change and churned. Month two normalizes. Month three is the first month you can extrapolate from confidently. Plan cashflow assuming a 10% haircut in month one.
On Startup Index, sellers control their own inquiry response. Most respond within 24–48 hours. If a seller hasn't responded in 5 days, the listing is usually stale or the seller has lost interest — move on rather than chasing.