eCommerce Founders Want Lucrative Exits and Upside —We’re Giving Them Both

Selling my first eCommerce business was one of the most stressful experiences of my life. The goal post kept moving back. Negotiations dragged on then fell through. The payment terms were terrible. I lived with the perpetual fear that I was making the biggest mistake of my life. Would the business I worked so hard to build be sucked dry and spit out as a shell? Or would I miss out on future growth and spend the rest of my days under a cloud of regret? Truth be told, when the deal finally closed, I felt more exhausted than empowered. It wasn't until I sat across from my now co-founder, Craig Isakow, and heard about his similar experience getting acquired that Moonshot Brands started. Since then, we've been building the multi-brand eCommerce platform that we wish existed when we were selling our companies— one that puts founders first and empowers brands to build a future that we can believe in. 

We're excited to announce that we have raised $160M in funding from best-in-class investors, Y Combinator, Liquid 2 Ventures, Garage Capital, Victory Park Capital, N49P and the founders of Hippo.com, to name a few. At Moonshot Brands, we buy Amazon third-party sellers and direct-to-consumer businesses. Our goal is to grow them into the most loved brands of the future by leveraging growth capital, exclusive technology, and the greatest minds in operations, marketing, and product development. 

The reality is that there are thousands of digitally native businesses with the potential to dethrone entrenched leaders. And every day, countless more are born on third-party marketplace platforms like Amazon and direct-to-consumer tech platforms like Shopify. 

Moonshot Brands was born out of the belief that businesses could grow beyond the founder's wildest dreams if given the right circumstances to truly thrive. That's what we're building— a platform that will act as a solar system for innovative eCommerce brands that not only have the potential to redefine their verticals but also improve people's lives in a big way. 

We created Moonshot Brands based on a few simple ideas:

1. Selling your eCommerce business should be a simple process that takes weeks, not years
2. Owner-operators deserve lucrative exits that give them financial freedom
3. Founders deserve upside in the future growth of the brands they created
4. We should invite ambitious entrepreneurs to keep building alongside us
5. We should only invest in enduring brands we truly believe in
   

To date, our thesis has proved true. So far, we have attracted top-tier owner-operators who we're proud to stand beside. We've achieved a $30 million revenue run rate, and we're just getting started. 

Until Now There Was A Major Gap For eCommerce Sellers 

Unlike the tech sector, where buyers flow like the Nile, there weren't many options for eCommerce sellers until recently. There were private equity firms usually myopically focused on short-term profits. For founders, this can be a Faustian bargain as private equity's profit strategy often involves gutting organizations and leaving employees and customers on the hook. Then there were traditional brand aggregators whose deals often involved barring sellers from any gains on future growth. Selling your business at a 3x multiple, only to see it skyrocket to 10x, is a founder's worst nightmare. 

Moonshot Brands is a new and better alternative. We're focused on making money by generating value long-term, not by making deep internal cuts. Unlike other rollups, we offer founder's a piece of the pie— because we believe that when we attract visionary sellers, the pie gets bigger. Once our partners enter the Moonshot solar system, brands are significantly more valuable. We're stronger together because:

• We leverage the wealth of data across our portfolio and proprietary tech to make better decisions. 
• We use our resources and relationships to create greater operational efficiencies. 
• We mobilize growth capital and omnichannel distribution to connect with more customers faster
• We employ a world-class team of specialists that most brands can't afford alone
  

Built By Founders For Founders

As owner-operators ourselves, we understand the challenges that founders face when selling their brand. We've experienced them first hand. Now we have reversed engineered a better way. 

A valuation should never be a black box. Moonshot Brands is upfront about how we arrive at our valuations. We'll share our analysis completely: the good, the bad, and what's needed to move forward. We're currently building a free publicly available valuation tool to help founders understand their worth at any stage in their business journey. 

As a business owner, time is your most valuable asset, and our partnership process respects that. For a formal offer, we provide a valuation within 48 hours, make an offer within 14 days and close the deal in a month. 

For a founder, an exit should be a ticket to financial freedom. Whether it's to fund their next big idea or take a well-earned break, we offer sellers 70-90% up front. This allows sellers to start living life on their own terms sooner. 

We think that founders that have achieved product-market fit are clearly onto something. That is why we always invite founders to continue building alongside us inside Moonshot. While we completely support founders moving onto the next chapter of their lives, as founders ourselves we realize that some operators will want to continue building their legacy with new resources. Many of the brands we have acquired will continue to be led by their founders. Moonshot Brands is built on a decentralized structure, giving operators autonomy and resources that empower growth. This also facilitates the expansion of Moonshot Brands. 

Through the Moonshot Collective, an equity sharing program that makes partners shareholders of Moonshot Brands, founders share in the future success of their brand— and Moonshot Brands at large. 

With this investment of $160 Million we will continue to build a platform that offers a more efficient way for eCommerce entrepreneurs to sell their business and helps grow the brands that will shape the world of tomorrow.