After 16 years, founder Boudewijn Trompert thought it was time to sell his business StudentenMarketing. He posted a sales profile on Brookz, which was viewed 1,155 times and generated 16 responses. Five and a half months later, the sale of his business was complete.
What does your business do?
'StudentenMarketing wants to inform prospective, studying and recently graduated students as well as possible about what there is to do in the city where they are (going to be) studying. We do this in cooperation with education, business and (student) associations. With over 22 websites, multiple social media channels and a database, in sixteen years StudentenMarketing has grown into a medium-sized (online) marketing agency aimed at students.
Why did you want to sell a business?
"I could earn a nice living with Student Marketing. But at a certain point as an entrepreneur you come to a crossroads: do you keep messing around in the margins or do you go full steam ahead for growth? I didn't have enough financial resources of my own and actually wanted to focus on something else. That's why I decided to sell my business.
How did you end up at Brookz?
"Through an acquaintance I got the tip to contact Chris Denneboom, several years ago named Business Valuator of the Year by Brookz. I told Chris about my situation and he advised me to start working on my business sale myself and use Brookz to do so.'
What is your experience with posting a sales profile on Brookz yourself?
"I found posting a sales profile on Brookz relatively easy. If you know what you want to sell, filling out the profile doesn't have to take long. In addition, I found it convenient that on Brookz there are a lot of businesses for sale, so I could see how other sellers present their businesses. I deliberately made no secret of my revenue, database and visitor numbers. Much more importantly, I felt I could publish the profile completely anonymously, without mentioning the domain names. That way, my competitors didn't know that my business was for sale, but they could make a good assessment based on figures as to whether the business would be interesting for them to take over.
How did the sales process go?
"First of all, I received many more responses to my sales profile than I had expected, sixteen of them. After I sent my sales memorandum to them, eventually four buyers remained who had a serious interest in my business. The buyer ended up being Xebic, a software company that operates between educational institutions, students and the field. The sales process - from posting the sales profile on Brookz to signing the contracts - all in all took five and a half months.
Do you have any tips for other selling entrepreneurs?
"That as an entrepreneur you can do a lot yourself to sell your business. I handled almost everything myself during the sales process. From writing a sales memorandum to calculating the value of my business. In addition, I can definitely recommend Brookz as a platform to showcase your business as they have a very large reach. I had never heard of the company Xebic before, but they became the buyer of my business. So Brookz is a good way to anonymously pitch your business to buyers outside your own field of vision.
This is what Boudewijn's sales profile on Brookz looked like:
Largest and fast-growing online student platform
Specializing in content marketing and online advertising
REVENUE
€ 150.000
EBITDA
EBIT € 50,000
NUMBER OF EMPLOYEES
1
REGION
Not site-specific
SECTOR
IT, online & e-commerce
Media, advertising & communication
TYPE OF CUSTOMERS
B2B and B2C
PROFILE NUMBER
#26020
RIGHT FORCE
Sole proprietorship
Online student platform specialized in reaching (prospective) HBO and WO students. The platform consists of about 20 websites including websites for all major student cities. It informs the target group on the topics of studying, living, working, entrepreneurship, money matters, leisure, health care and lifestyle.
Target group
The platform reaches prospective, studying and recently graduated college and university students in the 18 - 28 age group.
Details
The websites are managed behind the scenes from an open source CMS in which everything is automated. Third parties can easily supply content, place advertisements or request listings themselves. The platform is already set up to scale up to foreign countries and the necessary domains are in place.
The platform has strong SEO positions with student relevant searches, bringing a lot of organic traffic to the platform. Current revenue is achieved without acquisition.
What is being sold
- Platform including 22 actively used websites with a combined reach of 1,000,000 students per year. (incl. associated social media channels);
- The entire customer base;
- Database of 15,000 students (n.a.w., field of study, year of study, interests);
- Nearly 100 student-related domains to build out platform (internationally)
Business
The business is run from a sole proprietorship. The work is performed by 1 FTE of young and committed highly skilled employees and a group of over 20 active student bloggers who are not employees. The owner collaborates in the business.
Interesting for
The platform is interesting for all businesses that want to connect with future "high potentials" during the different years of their student life such as:
- (Student) housing providers
- Knowledge institutions
- Businesses with a focus on students
- (Student) employment agencies
- (Online) marketing agencies
- Investors
Reason for sale
The owner has built the company into what it is today in a few years, which means the business has outgrown the start-up phase and is ready for (international) scale-up. The owner has the desire to focus on other activities and to transfer the business to a party who wants to further develop the growth and the potential and scalability or wants to integrate it into an existing company. The owner is open to join the new organization for the time being.
Possible reasons for buying
- Strategic expansion of business
- Strategic deepening in the business chain
Offered interest
The seller wishes to sell the platform and associated domains (100%).
Transaction form
The selling entrepreneur prefers an asset transaction, where you buy the platform 100%.
Visitor numbers
- Visitors 2017: 285,000
- Visitors 2018: 645,000
- Visitors 2019: 1,000,000 (expected)
Database
- Database 2017: 6,000 students
- Database 2018: 10,500 students
- Database 2019: 15,000 students (expected)
Revenue
- Revenue 2017: € 60.000 EBIT: € 20,000
- Revenue 2018: € 85.500 EBIT: € 18,000
- Revenue 2019: € 150,000 (expected) EBIT: € 50,000
