Buy and Build in eCommerce - Acquiring the Price Dip

Executive Summary

Learn how to acquire competitive advantages in your eCommerce ventures with a buy & build strategy, unlock potential growth and add new capabilities: In this episode, Joe, interviews Peter, the founder of an AI startup called Pythia. Peter discusses his company’s buy-and-build strategy for acquiring e-commerce startups, which involves integrating them into their standardized processes and assigning brand managers or CEOs to oversee them. He also talks about the challenges facing companies in the current market, including rising prices, tighter financing, and more restrictive customers. Peter’s company is looking for profitable e-commerce companies with solid earnings and adjusted earnings, and they plan to continue buying until late 2027, with the goal of reaching €80 million in revenue and €20 million in profit. 

There has been a kind of Bermuda triangle created by external forces for e-commerce companies recently. Financing becomes more expensive, inflation increases production prices and consumers are more restrictive with their purchases

Peter Hart — Founder and CEO DIPQ and Pythia

At the day of the publication of this interview, we celebrate in Germany Father’s Day. In Germany, the day is always celebrated on a Thursday, Ascension Day, also a public holiday in Germany, which gives fathers time to celebrate.

Happy Father’s Day!

Note: Mother’s Day is always celebrated on the second Sunday in May in Germany, where we do not publish, so no Mother’s Day episodes exist. Sorry to all mothers, and belated happy Mother’s Day as well! 

Over the last 12 months, we looked at the demand for consumer products and made a buy or build decision, which always ended up to be a buying decision, due to the lower multiples.

Peter Hart — Founder and CEO DIPQ and Pythia

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We usually look at Shopify stores. If they are not, we move them over time to Shopify.

Peter Hart — Founder and CEO DIPQ and Pythia

Peter Hart is a young and exceptional entrepreneur. He appeared in Germany’s version of Shark Tank and got a deal for 200.000 Euros as a 25-year-old. Currently, he is not even 35 and already runs 12 brands simultaneously. You can learn more about how he achieves this in the Starting Y interview in the links on the blog post.

He started with a body aftershave brand called Dr. Severin and then went on to develop the software he used to forecast consumer trend tools into the AI startup Pythia. With this, he built and bought several consumer brands and now logically continues this approach by buying up profitable e-commerce shops with Dipq (no website).

Currently there are not many investors active. For all of our acquisitions we have been the only ones bidding.

Peter Hart — Founder and CEO DIPQ and Pythia

Peter has with Pythia a competitive advantage in predicting trends and uses his knowledge of the market, as well as the cash flow of the existing businesses to buy up smaller ecommerce brands, to build them up further. The company has already many functions in place e.g. SEO, website design, logistics, and many more… using economies of scale and scope. So far they have acquired three companies.

They are taking advantage of the lower multiples for ecommerce brands which have come down almost 75% compared to pre-corona. The strategy is similar to the amazon shop consolidation plays.

They plan to continue buying until late 2027, to reach€80 million in revenue and €20 million in profit. Peter sees the most likely final goal at an IPO of the consolidated entity.

For the company we are buying we can offer the founder a “mic drop” if they want to get out with the closing of the deal.

Peter Hart — Founder and CEO DIPQ and Pythia

Peter is open to talk to external investors, they are currently considering to build a private equity like fund to make more and larger acquisitions. You can reach out if you want to learn more.

Currently we get 30–40 pitch decks a month from companies that are up for sale, without

requesting them.

Peter Hart — Founder and CEO DIPQ and Pythia

Dipq is looking for profitable companies. They are looking at their definition of adjusted earnings, especially for companies that are suffering from management mistakes that are easy to correct.

Here is our blog post: https://medium.com/startuprad-io/exclusive-buy-and-build-in-ecommerce-acquiring-the-price-dip-startuprad-io-e-383-20a8ba37da14

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