What is Smobi?
Smobi is a marketplace that makes it easy for buyers to purchase brick & mortar small businesses. We do this by verifying business listing data and managing deal-flow on our platform.
Website: smobi.com
Questions: hello@smobi.com
We are backed by YCombinator, the same incubator that created companies such as AirBnB, DoorDash, and InstaCart.
The Problem:
Buyers have to go through numerous listings to find quality businesses because most listings are incomplete and misrepresented
Business brokers and owners who are looking to sell, waste their time working with buyers who aren’t qualified to purchase their business
In the past 30 years, technology has only changed the business for sale market in two ways:
Listings have moved online instead of being in the local newspaper
Financial documents are emailed instead of being sent via mail
The baby boomer generation is retiring over the next decade, who owns 1.4 million businesses that will close their doors unless they are sold to someone willing to buy them
The Solution:
For those looking to buy, we only allow listings to be uploaded that have a wide array of information so that buyers are looking at complete listings. Buyers can keep track of the state of each of the listings they are interested in and manage deal flow on the platform.
Additionally, we create NDA protected data rooms with more in-depth documents for each listing on our website. If the broker / seller of the business thinks you’re a good match for buying the business, we send the data room to the buyer.
For those looking to sell their business, we create a comprehensive profile for each buyer that is interested in a listing that the seller has created. Using data that the buyer has provided and our internal business logic, we classify how well of a match a person is for your business, ultimately saving time in your search for a buyer.
Who Are We?
Hi everyone, we are Kunal and Michael, and we are building Smobi. Our mission is to make small business ownership attainable by everyone.
Kunal formerly worked in Amazon Advertising, where he built several notification delivery channels that supported 10B+ communications annually. Kunal spent 6 months in 2022 looking to purchase multiple SMBs and found the process of finding and purchasing a business to be extremely complex, especially for a first time buyer.
Before Smobi, Michael worked at another YCombinator startup, Dover, as an early engineer where he worked closely on their growth initiatives.
Kunal and Michael grew up together, have known each other for 10 years, and now both reside in NYC. Together, we are attempting to simplify the small business acquisition process for all parties involved.
Our Asks
Thank you for reading about Smobi! We are looking to connect with business brokers and people who have bought SMBs before. Additionally, we welcome any feedback for our platform as we are just beginning! If you belong in any of the categories below, or know someone who does, please get in touch with us at hello@smobi.com, thanks :)
People looking to buy a SMB and business brokers
Owners of SMBs who are looking to sell or will want to sell in the future
SMB acquisition experts