Starting a SaaS Company and Selling for a 7-Figure Sum

Hosted by Simon Bedard, founder and managing director of Exit Advisory Group and author of Exit Like an Expert. Buy Grow Sell EP54. Published July 2022.

The short answer

Anna Maste shares how she and her co-founder built Boondockers Welcome from idea to a seven-figure exit, including the valuation realities and exit strategy decisions that define a niche community-based product.

Key takeaways

The core components of launching a membership model business
Understanding who your strategic acquirers would be
How to plan your exit to be at the top of the market

Listen to the podcast

37 min

Watch the full interview

About this episode

A computer engineer by trade, Anna Maste was on maternity leave when her mother came to her with a grand business idea.

While her mum played with her son, Anna slowly but surely built a SaaS company dedicated to connecting hosts with North America’s friendly community of RVers.

Boondockers Welcome was completely bootstrapped and self-funded, propelled into existence by about 200 community members who were connected to Anna’s mother. Yet over nine years, the duo grew the platform to over 2,800 hosts and 12,000 annual guest members before selling for a mid-seven figure sum.

Chapters

1:52Anna and her mother teamed up to create a business equivalent to couch surfing for RVers and grew it to almost 3,000 hosts and over 12,000 guests before deciding to exit
5:40The MVP took around two years to develop, considering the bulk of the work was done while Anna was on maternity leave with her first child. But after launching in 2012, they had over 200 hosts initially sign up
14:39In early 2019, the business had around $100,000 in ARR when she was approached by a potential acquirer who offered 3.9 times ARR. Anna thought long and hard about it before turning down the offer to focus on growing the business
20:30During COVID-19, the appeal of travelling in RVs went gangbusters and the growth of Boondockers Welcome drastically increased for the next year before selling in May 2021
30:07Harvest Hosts acquired Anna’s company for a seven-figure sum, requiring her to stay on for six months as they integrated her system into theirs before she closed the door on RV’ing and moved onto MarTech

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About Anna Maste

In 2012, Anna Maste and her mother Marianne Edwards co-founded Boondockers Welcome, a platform for RVers to connect and share camping on each other’s property.

With Anna’s background as a computer engineer and Marianne’s audience writing travel guides for budget-conscious Rivers experience, they were able to create a community that provides unique camping opportunities for RVers while creating connections that last a lifetime.

They grew the platform to over 2,800 hosts and 12,000 annual guest members before selling in 2021 to Harvest Hosts, another company in the alternative RV camping space.

Anna is now the Founder of Subscribe Sense, a marketing technology SaaS that helps marketers ensure more leads complete the signup for their email lists.

Connect with Anna Maste

About the show

Buy Grow Sell is hosted by Simon Bedard, founder and managing director of Exit Advisory Group, a boutique mergers and acquisitions advisory firm that helps Australian business owners value, prepare for and navigate a sale. Every conversation draws on real deals and the patterns behind them.