Waterglass - Bernhard Hauser

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Waterglass

A collection of 17 posts

How Our Latest Acquisition Is Rebuilt From Scratch

How Our Latest Acquisition Is Rebuilt From Scratch

In Summer this year, we made our second acquisition. You can read more about it at The Second Acquisition: Notehouse. However, during the due diligence process, it became increasingly clear that the product’s foundation needed to be rebuilt from scratch. The application had been passed between several external engineering

The Second Acquisition: Notehouse

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The Second Acquisition: Notehouse

I'm excited to announce that over July and August, we closed the second acquisition in Waterglass's history. Notehouse (getNotehouse.com), which originated as note-taking software that eventually transformed into a lightweight, HIPAA-compliant CRM for nonprofit leaders, social workers and counselors, is a $100k ARR business that

A New Partner at Waterglass

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A New Partner at Waterglass

I'm excited to share that Nemanja Zarkovic and I are now official partners at Waterglass.io. Here's how we connected and what's coming next. Buy, not build I started Waterglass in January 2024 with a simple idea: instead of building software from scratch and

Why The Responder.cx Experiment Failed (And Why I'm Not Surprised)

Why The Responder.cx Experiment Failed (And Why I'm Not Surprised)

Do you happen to run a business and handle customer support requests through email? Four months ago, we created an internal tool called Reply•AI to manage customer support emails for our portfolio company Pxl. Reply•AI was soon renamed to Responder.cx and launched to the public. We got

The AI Agent We Use to Book Meetings from Emails

The AI Agent We Use to Book Meetings from Emails

How does the saying go? If you do it once, you learn from it. If you do it twice, automate it. We spend quite a bit of time in video calls at Waterglass, and finding an efficient way to automate meeting scheduling is crucial. Depending on the context, we usually

The AI Agent We Use to Handle Support Requests in Gmail

The AI Agent We Use to Handle Support Requests in Gmail

One of our core principles at Waterglass is to automate repetitive processes to increase efficiencies across our ventures. At our portfolio company Pxl, we provide customer support via email. We also have an extensive knowledge base at help.pxl.to that answers about 60% of all support requests, but guess

The AI Agent We Use to Create SEO Content for Pxl

The AI Agent We Use to Create SEO Content for Pxl

Following this LinkedIn post from Monday (are we connected on LinkedIn yet?) I want to show you in more detail how I built the Pxl Content Agent, which creates high-quality SEO-optimized content for our portfolio company, Pxl. Why build an AI agent anyway? Let's be honest, LLMs are

How I build Pxl's SEO Strategy with Mini Tools and Directories

How I build Pxl's SEO Strategy with Mini Tools and Directories

The first couple of months after I acquired Pxl in May, I spent most of my time talking to existing customers understanding how happy they are with the product and what they are still missing. I'm happy to say that Pxl is growing and has been growing steadily

1 Billion Requests: The Attack on Pxl

1 Billion Requests: The Attack on Pxl

Last weekend, Pxl was attacked through a series of high-traffic requests. We are still not entirely sure whether this was a targeted DDoS attack on some of the links of a specific Pxl team or whether it was actual traffic. In any case, what we do know is that the

Pxl, the 🔒 Privacy-friendly Bitly alternative?

Pxl, the 🔒 Privacy-friendly Bitly alternative?

Have you been thinking about acquiring an early-stage business? Or are you running one yourself right now? Chances are high that you are working on your product's USP, growth channels, and ideal customer segment then. Let's say, the basics. In my opinion, there is a general

Add an AI Feature and They Will Come

Add an AI Feature and They Will Come

As you probably know by now, Pxl is all about helping you become a better marketer. We do that by providing you with short links, dynamic QR codes, and Microsites (‘micro websites’ or link-in-bio pages). Our users especially like Microsites, but when I looked closer at the overall UX and

How Pxl’s SaaS Pricing Strategy is Evolving

How Pxl’s SaaS Pricing Strategy is Evolving

Lately, I have been thinking a lot about pricing strategies for Pxl, the first acquisition in the Waterglass portfolio I made earlier this year. Throughout the last 1.5 years, a few pricing experiments have been conducted by the previous owner, mostly around custom packages and lifetime deals. These experiments

55 Questions I Ask Before I Buy a Business

55 Questions I Ask Before I Buy a Business

When evaluating a new acquisition opportunity at Waterglass, I follow a simple process: asking lots of questions. First, when I check out a listing like the one in the video below, I try to ask myself high-level questions about the business, such as... * What is the opportunity with this business?

The First Acquisition: Pixel

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The First Acquisition: Pixel

It's done. The first acquisition has been finalized this week! I'm very excited to welcome Pixel (pxl.to) to the Waterglass portfolio. Pixel is a leading short link, QR code and microsite builder for marketers, based in Great Britain (UK). The founder of Pixel will remain

The Basics of Micro PE: The Right Price and The Right Terms

The Basics of Micro PE: The Right Price and The Right Terms

The market is a wonderful imaginary thing, especially in micro PE. I mean, any deal is about finding the right price for which the seller is willing to sell and the buyer is willing to buy. But between these two prices lies a pretty broad area in which the terms

The Basics of Micro PE: Where and What to Buy

The Basics of Micro PE: Where and What to Buy

In this edition, you will learn where a micro PE fund looks for opportunities and what criteria they have to meet. I will also dive deeper into some of your most frequent questions, such as: * Who would even sell a company so early? * What do you really get for such

The Independent 'Micro PE' Entrepreneur

The Independent 'Micro PE' Entrepreneur

For the past 10+ years, I have been working with startups, and B2B SaaS in particular, across different settings: I bootstrapped a startup, At Meta I started and operated a startup accelerator in Berlin, I 'corporate ventured' a startup and I consulted companies in Germany & Austria. With