Diary of a Startup: Acquirent

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It's 4:15am on Friday the 15th and the average day in the life of an entrepreneur at Acquirent has begun: For the past eighteen months, we have worked endless days attempting to build a worthy company. It has been a struggle every step of the way, but we knew that would be the case when we started the company.

Acquirent first launched in late 2003 and was completely bootstrapped by the savings of two individuals: me and my former partner. Acquirent is a company that exists to serve a significant purpose (at least we feel this way): We work with lower to middle market companies to produce more sales at a lower cost. We are an outsourced sales execution business and our clients hire us to deploy and manage dedicated sales professionals that work on their behalf to close business with either their end users, or in some case their channel partners.

We started out of an apartment with two guys and one tiny client. As each month progressed, we learned the business and began to move upstream with our client base. Today our client base includes several large companies and we have built a name for ourselves to a certain extent.

But it hasn't been easy. Over the last eighteen months, we have endured the dissolution of a partnership because my partner and I shared different visions on the future of the company; one rounds of layoffs; and several more emotional ups and downs. The good news is that we have endured and persevered to this point. We run a profitable business, but our business is hampered by cash flow issues. Since Acquirent does not process any payments for our clients, we often become the third (sometimes last) party to get paid and that can translate in to a "Days Sales Outstanding" figure of as much as 150 days.

So today we lie at a significant crossroads in the future of Acquirent. On paper we are profitable, but due to our cash flow woes we need capital to sustain the business as a going concern. We have companies all over the world that have expressed interest in working with us (over 300 companies), but we do not have the financial stability or capital infrastructure to engage in a partnership with them at this juncture. An infusion of cash would allow us to hire more quality people (including a chief operating officer); help us purchase better technology to better service our clients; and most importantly, it will help us meet payroll and pay our vendors on time even when our cash flow is struggling.

We also have a team of visionaries who truly believe that we can build a powerful entity with our model. The hurdle is that we are undercapitalized. We are now embarking on our journey to raise $250,000 to $500,000 in a first round of financing. If we do not find this money in the next six weeks we will be in serious danger of failing due to poor cash flow. Wish us luck!