Acquire.com's own multiples report describes its deals, not the market

The workload

Preparing a SaaS business for a listing on Acquire.com is unpaid work the marketplace expects a seller to complete before any buyer sees a valuation. Verified: the marketplace's own January 2024 multiples report tells founders to "list your business at any multiple you can justify" to its curation team, and ties higher offers to documented profit margins — meaning the seller's task is assembling the financial record, profit-and-loss history, churn figures, margin data, that the curation process and prospective buyers will check line by line. The report frames this as ongoing work through the sale, not a one-time submission: "you also need a great listing, preparation, and ongoing attention."

What the documents show

Verified: Acquire.com's own January 2024 edition of its biannual multiples report states that, across confirmed sales on its own marketplace, "SaaS startups got Acquire'd at a 4.3x TTM profit multiple" on average, with a documented range from "as little as 0.63x" to "as much as 34x TTM profit," restricted to deals where trailing-twelve-month profit exceeded $1,000 and total enterprise value stayed under $10 million. The same report states most submitted SaaS businesses ran at "a 50 percent profit margin or higher." This is Acquire.com's own reporting on its own closed deals, not an independent audit of the wider micro-SaaS market, and it frames the figures that way — what happened on its platform in the stated period, not a market-wide average. A separate 2025 annual report landing page confirms the company continues publishing this data as a downloadable, gated report rather than posting every figure on the open page, limiting what can be verified without that document in hand.

The operating cost

Verified: Acquire.com's own pricing page states sellers pay no listing fee, while buyers pay for a paid membership "starting at $390." The multiples themselves are the documented outcome that matters here: a founder pricing an exit off this report is working from a stated average of roughly 4.3x trailing-twelve-month profit, with wide documented variance on either side, for deals closed in the period the report covers.

The stop condition

The report does not say when to stop pushing for a higher multiple; it states a founder "can list your business at any multiple you can justify" to the platform's curation team. Editorial: the practical stop condition is when a listing fails that check or draws no qualified offers at the asked multiple, since the report ties buyer interest to pricing at or below documented fair value.

• What was this business's actual trailing-twelve-month profit margin over the last full year, checked against the same standard Acquire.com applies?
• Does this deal's size and structure fall inside the sub-$10 million enterprise value band the cited report actually covers?
• What does the current, gated 2025 annual report say about more recent activity, and does it change the 4.3x reference point?

A profit multiple from one marketplace's confirmed sales is a useful anchor and nothing more. It describes what happened on Acquire.com in a stated period, not what a given business is worth, and the report's own range, 0.63x to 34x, is wide enough that the average alone settles nothing.