Zhivko Stoychev

I value businesses for a living. A founder tells me what the company earns, I work out what a buyer would pay for it, and the two numbers are rarely the same. The gap is not in the arithmetic because the buyer does not pay for this year's profit. The transaction is for how certain they are that the profit survives the founder walking out, and that certainty is decided one to three years before the sale. It sits in things the profit figure never shows, like a client who is 60% of revenue, or a business that stops moving when the owner takes two weeks off, or books that tell one story in the deck and another in diligence. That is the work I do. I advise founders of online businesses, SaaS, agencies and digital services, in the years before a sale. I run the same diligence a buyer will run, before they do, and hand back a list of what to fix, ranked by what each fix is worth in the final price. I write here about how buyers read these businesses and what the EU market is paying for them. If a sale is anywhere in your plans, even years from now, this is written for you.

@misfitwriter_ Try to tell this to all the BTC bros and be ready for a meltdown...😁

Stop using "It's still early" as an excuse. Some of you have been in "the early stage" for three years. That's not a stage anymore.

@TheGBreaker Short attention span.

What’s the biggest reason most people never become rich?

@jackfriks Rarely can we find real marketing nowadays. Regurgitating the same sh*t or just trying to scream louder than anyone is not marketing (shocker!)

shipping a new project with a buy button is not very difficult anymore but how do you get customers??? MARKETING!!! and what does everyone want to do??? ANYTHING BUT MARKETING!!!

Why do most businesses believe they need to automate and "optimize" their customer service? This is like wearing a clown suit during an important business meeting.

@PascalCaloc I believe positioning will make the rest of the list not so critical.

If you could improve only one thing: • Traffic • Positioning • Sales calls • Follow-up Which one moves revenue the most?

Barking up the wrong tree is the worst activity you can possibly be involved in. The wrong business, wrong audience, wrong Geo, etc... Hustling more won't help, rather, it will force you to feel miserable... Been there, done that, have the T-shirt.

@PascalCaloc Or even don't explain them at all, as if the product is the biggest secret out there. True...

Weird pattern: The companies with the best products often explain them the worst.

@solopribuilds Critical thinking

What's the #1 skill every entrepreneur must have?

@IAmAaronWill "Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted, and the trouble is I don't know which half" - John Wanamaker 😁

Dudes will spend $3k on ads, $500 on outreach, and post daily for 2 months. Then sign a client and have no idea which channel sent them. Next month, they'll spend the same money on the same channels and waste 90% of it. The importance of tagging your lead sources.

@sutevskid Depending on the selling cycle. Anyway, valid advice.

Stop asking if it will work. Run it for 3 days and find out.

@rcmisk Bridge the gap between their current situation and the place they want to go. Of course, you will need to find the gap, but once they are some sort of users, I assume you've figured this out.

You got your first 100 users. Congrats. Now comes the part nobody prepared you for: Getting them to pay. You've got 30 days to convert 10 of them without dropping your price. What's your first move?

@JoinFoundersHub Of course... "Follow your passion"...

What's the most overrated start up advice you've ever received? We'll go first: "Build it and they will come"

@rickycarruth And have a higher tolerance for rejection, maybe?

Real estate agents make more money than most people because they risk more than most people. Simple math.

@DanielSmidstrup Curiosity, definitely. Otherwise, you will always be late for the party...

What is the one skill every entrepreneur MUST have?

@BrandonMDawson And how to manage your ego, perhaps?

Your first million teaches you how to make money. Your next millions teach you how to build people.

@acadictive If you can afford it, couldn't recommend it more💪

@stoychevzh i should steal this from you :)

The first decision you make every morning is: Create or consume?

@KevinSzabo14 Time preference - one of the cognitive biases, unfortunately. This is the main lever of many scammers out there.

A big problem with wealth creation is that people wanna jump from 0->$10,000 in a month. They forget about making their first: $10 $100 $1,000 $10,000 $100,000 - and so on. If you can’t make $1. You ain’t going nowhere.

@hello_code_ "Just get the damn thing out" is the great multiplier for success.

We just crossed $40k MRR 🎉 Honestly, it still does not feel real. There was no big moment that changed everything. It was a lot of small things. Shipping. Talking to customers. Fixing what was not working. Posting what we were learning. Doing it again the next week. We are still a small team. Still figuring things out. Still making mistakes. But the small wins started adding up. Building in public has played a huge part in that. Grateful for everyone following along. #BuildInPublic

@i_mika_el It all depends on the timeline for the 50M and how certain you are about reaching it.

would you rather sell your product for $2M tomorrow or turn it down and bet on it becoming $50M