A high sale multiple isn’t luck. It’s the result of deliberate business-building choices—and a little timing.
Every now and then, a business commands a multiple that makes even seasoned M&A advisors raise an eyebrow.
When that happens, it’s worth asking: what made buyers willing to pay so much?
Below, we review five deals with crazy-high sale multiples. We talk about why each one commanded such an impressive multiple, so we can all learn lessons from these acquisitions.
Lessons from high-multiple deals
What do these high-multiple deals have in common?
We looked closely to find out. Before we get into the details of each one, here are a few lessons we can learn from them:
1. Recurring revenue matters. Four of the five businesses below were SaaS companies with subscription models. Predictable, recurring revenue is what buyers are really paying for when they’re willing to pay high multiples.
2. Lean teams drive higher multiples. Less overhead means more scalable economics—and buyers notice.
3. Scarcity commands a premium. When a buyer can’t get what you have anywhere else, they pay for it.
4. Competition among buyers changes everything. When a seller has options, the price goes up. One of the best ways to drive up your sale price is to have multiple buyers who want your business.
5. Strategic fit unlocks above-market pricing. Sometimes a buyer needs your specific asset so badly that your revenue figures almost become a footnote.
Plus, a note on timing: some of these deals took place during or just after the pandemic, when software sale multiples reached historic highs. Multiples have normalized since then.
But the fundamentals that drove these outcomes—strong recurring revenue, lean operations, niche dominance, and competitive buyer processes—are timeless. Build the right business, and a strong multiple follows.
5 companies that sold for high sale multiples
Here’s a summary of each deal, plus a link to the full story if you want more details.
1. Userflow: 13x revenue ($60M deal)
The company: A no-code customer onboarding platform that helped SaaS companies create in-app guides, checklists, and surveys.
The multiple: 13x revenue, based on a reported $60M sale price and $4.6M ARR.
Bootstrapped co-founders Esben Friis-Jensen and Sebastian Seilund ran Userflow with a team of three—themselves plus one product designer. That leanness paid off at exit.
“Besides growing at a consistently good rate, our revenue per employee was high,” Friis-Jensen told They Got Acquired. “Revenue per employee is an increasingly important metric when it comes to showing the scalability for software.”
Userflow wasn’t looking to sell, but they were approached by Beamer through persistent outreach that eventually led to a conference conversation. The founders had the luxury of walking away, and that leverage helped them get the deal they wanted.
Read the full Userflow story →
2. HiddenLevers: 16x revenue (low 9-figure deal)
The company: Financial risk management and portfolio stress-testing software for financial advisors.
The multiple: 16x revenue, on approximately $8M ARR.
HiddenLevers took 18 months to find product-market fit, then grew at 60% annually for nine consecutive years before selling to Orion Advisor Solutions in 2021.
What made the outcome extraordinary wasn’t just the business—it was the sale process.
Co-founders Praveen Ghanta and Raj Udeshi worked with M&A advisor PJT Partners, who ran a competitive bidding process among roughly six to eight potential buyers, resulting in around three term sheets. Competition drives price.
Ghanta’s advice to sellers navigating due diligence: “Expect buyers to lower the price until you are willing to walk. You have to have the courage to take a stand and say ‘no’ when your line has been reached.”
They held their line. It worked.
Read the full HiddenLevers story →
3. WaudWare: 10x EBITDA (Price not disclosed)
The company: Produce industry inventory management and accounting software, serving wholesalers, distributors, and farmers across North America.
The multiple: 10x EBITDA and 1.5x revenue.
WaudWare is a reminder that niche dominance commands a premium.
Founder F. Charles Waud spent more than three decades building software specifically for the produce industry—and in a slow-moving market where trust takes years to earn, that deep specialization was a moat competitors couldn’t easily breach.
When two buyers approached him simultaneously in 2022, he used the competitive dynamic to his advantage—letting each know he was in discussions with the other. “It did cause both of them to ‘sweeten’ the offer,” he said.
His advice: “Don’t allow the buyer to pressure you. If they are interested, others will be, too.”
Read the full WaudWare story →
4. Really Good Emails: 26x revenue ($6.6M deal)
The company: A curated email design inspiration platform for email marketers, with 100 million annual pageviews and 220,000 newsletter subscribers.
The multiple: More than 26x annual revenue, on $250,000 in annual revenue at sale, with a $6.6M deal.
Really Good Emails was a content company, not a SaaS—and its $250,000 in annual revenue was modest.
What justified the $6.6M price tag was the audience: 100 million annual pageviews and 220,000 engaged newsletter subscribers made up almost entirely of email marketers.
That was a near-perfect match for acquirer Beefree, a drag-and-drop email builder whose software powered many of the emails featured on the site.
“We knew that if we sold to someone, they would need to solve the ‘creation’ side of the workflow, as we brought the ‘inspiration’ side,” co-founder Mike Nelson said. “Beefree met those criteria.” This is what a strategic multiple looks like in practice.
Read the full Really Good Emails story →
5. Labber: 100x revenue (Price not disclosed)
The company: Lab automation and instrument control software for quantum computing researchers, sold to Keysight Technologies.
The multiple: 100x annual revenue—the founder’s own description of the deal.
Labber is a case study in scarcity. Founder Simon Gustavsson bootstrapped the niche software from a part-time project at MIT, serving around 40 research customers who paid $1,000 per license per year. The product had no real competitors.
When multiple large corporations were looking to enter the quantum computing space, Labber had what they needed—and there was nowhere else to get it.
“The company was desirable,” Gustavsson explained, “because there weren’t many other software options like it available, plus they had relevant product know-how within the team.”
The sale process took over 10 months due to the size and complexity of the buyer—but the result was a number most founders only dream about.
How sale multiples typically work
The multiples in this story are extraordinary. If you want to understand how sale multiples typically work, here’s our explainer on sale multiples.
Plus, here’s a two-page sale multiple guide that shows what multiple you might expect for your type of business. If you can beat that and end up in this extraordinary category—kudos to you.
For most companies, several factors influence how high a sale multiple can go:
- Type of business. Some types of companies tend to sell for higher multiples than others. SaaS companies, for example, command premium multiples because their revenue is predictable and recurring, and their margins are high. High demand for SaaS also drives up sale multiples.
- EBITDA. Strong profitability signals a well-run business and gives buyers confidence in future returns. The healthier your margins, the more a buyer is willing to pay. That’s why buyers tend to look heavily at EBITDA when deciding how much to offer.
- Multiple interested buyers. When multiple buyers want your company, the price goes up. A competitive bidding process is one of the most reliable ways to maximize your multiple.
- Timing. Market conditions matter. Software multiples during the pandemic years, for example, reached historic highs. Selling when buyer appetite is strong—and when your own business is performing well—can make a meaningful difference, so be smart about timing for your sale.
- Size of the business. Bigger businesses tend to command higher multiples. More revenue means more institutional buyers at the table, and more buyers means more competition.
- Whether the buyer is strategic. A strategic buyer—one who sees your company as a piece of a larger puzzle—will often pay significantly more than a financial buyer. When your business fills a specific gap in a buyer’s portfolio, the math changes in your favor.
