Famous-deal teardown · 2020
Baremetrics sold for $4M a year after a $4.95M deal fell apart
Short answer: A textbook mid-size SaaS sale at a revenue multiple. The failed 2019 deal is the lesson most buyers miss: a signed offer is not a closed deal, and price can fall between LOI and close.
Based on public figures only. This page applies our published rules to numbers the seller or press reported publicly, linked below. We had no access to the business's accounts. A flag here means a number was not published or points to a risk worth asking about; it is not a claim that anything was wrong with the business or the deal. Figures may be rounded or out of date. Spotted an error? Email [email protected] and we will correct it.
The publicly reported numbers
| Price | $4,000,000 cash, paid in three instalments (close, 12 and 18 months)1 |
|---|---|
| Multiple | About 2.65× ARR at the time of the offer1 |
| Buyer | Xenon Partners (tech private equity)1 |
| Customers | About 1,0002 |
| Founded | 2013 (about 7 years before the sale)2 |
| Earlier deal | A 2019 offer of $4.95M (about 3.75× revenue) collapsed before closing3 |
What follows from them
| Implied ARR | About $1.5M ($4.0M ÷ 2.65) |
|---|---|
| Average revenue per customer | About $1,500 a year, roughly $125 a month (implied ARR ÷ ~1,000) |
Our arithmetic on the public figures. Revenue multiples, not profit multiples, unless stated.
Flags the public numbers raise
- MEDIUM No profit figure: The public reports give revenue multiples, not profit. A buyer would need the P&L; a revenue multiple says nothing about payback.
- MEDIUM No churn figure: No churn figure is in the public reports. For a subscription analytics tool, churn decides how much of the ARR survives the first year.
- MEDIUM Platform dependence: The product analyses its customers' billing data from payment platforms such as Stripe, so changes in those platforms' APIs or features are a dependency to ask about.
What looks clean
- Long history: about 7 years of revenue at sale.
- Diversified base: about 1,000 customers, so no single customer is likely to dominate (still worth confirming).
- The structure was disclosed: cash, no earnout, three instalments.
The buyer's lesson
A textbook mid-size SaaS sale at a revenue multiple. The failed 2019 deal is the lesson most buyers miss: a signed offer is not a closed deal, and price can fall between LOI and close. Run the same rules on a listing you are looking at with the free checker.
FAQ
Do these flags mean the Baremetrics deal was bad?
No. They show which questions the public numbers leave open. The buyer had access we did not, and may well have answered each one.
Where do the figures come from?
Only from the public sources listed below, mostly the seller's own announcement. We did not contact either party.
Sources
- Josh Pigford, “I sold Baremetrics”, baremetrics.com, 10 Nov 2020, https://baremetrics.com/blog/i-sold-baremetrics, read 16 October 2026.
- They Got Acquired, Baremetrics acquired by Xenon Partners, https://theygotacquired.com/saas/baremetrics-acquired-by-xenon-partners/, read 16 October 2026.
- Indie Lessons, Baremetrics, https://indielessons.com/product/baremetrics/, read 16 October 2026.
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