How itrinity Hit $25M ARR With a 56% EBITDA Margin by Acquiring SaaS Companies

In ten seconds, you're gonna meet a CEO that did $25,000,000 of revenue last year and profited $14,000,000 bottom line right to his bank account. He wants to use those profits to buy your software company. In fact, he's done it eight times already in other deals. He typically pays two to eight x ARR, and it's always a 100% cash upfront. Over the next twenty minutes, you're gonna learn how to build a multimillion dollar software company and then

exit and become a millionaire selling to somebody like Mike. Let's jump in. My guest today is Mike Aftanas. He is building a company called iTrinity. Today, their portfolio of SaaS companies make... Is made up of one bootstrap company. Seven have been acquired. The total ARR is over $25,000,000. We'll get into how he thinks about acquisitions, the last deal he did, valuations, multiples, and how he's building in the SEO space over the next twenty minutes. Mike, you ready to take us to the top?

Fantastic. I am ready.

I want to talk about the total portfolio today, and then we'll go back to your first deal and build the backstory. So the company today, how much total revenue does the combined firm do? And is there a particular product that you acquired that makes up the majority of that revenue?

So in total, it is right now approximately about 25,000,000 USD in ARR. There is not the one that would be like majority. A little bit strong is uptime robot, but there are also like seven and other products.

Which one... Is there anyone that makes up... You know, you you have Topic Ranker, Deadline Funnel, TouchDay, others. Which one of these had the most revenue when you acquired it?

That's a hard question. Most probably the Deadline Funnel.

Deadline Funnel. And and you did that deal in July 2024. Right?

Yes. Yes.

Okay. Well, we'll jump into that in a second, but you have 25,000,000 of revenue today. And just so can get a growth rate, so you ended, call it, 2024 with 25,000,000. Where did you end 2023 in terms of revenue? Do you remember?

I think the last, like, twenty four to twenty three revenue growth is around, like, 46%.

Okay. So you're doing something like 18,000,000 of revenue at the end of twenty twenty three and grew 46%?

Very close. Okay. At the end of twenty twenty one, was around $77,500,000.

7,000,000. Okay.

In the last three years, increased the ARR approximately a little bit more than three times.

And Mike, let's just keep working backwards here. When did you launch this business, this idea? What year?

We really started or actually it wasn't me. It was the original founder of the of the Mangles, Petr Herbacek. He started it ten years ago by the keywordfinder.com, then made the, let's say, SEO tool set called the Mangles. This was approximately ten years ago. Yeah. And then we started approximately

at the year two thousand eighteen eighteen by acquiring the email list verified, then the uptime robot. It's it's really famous one. I love it. Warm up inbox in 2021, and then in '23 and '24, another four products, Geotarget, LeadTouchState, Deadline Funnel, and the last one, Topic Ranker.

And so what year did you guys pass a million of revenue? Do you remember?

First 1,000,000 in the revenue was approximately in in 2000

And what's your context here? You mentioned an original founder built Keyword Finder plus an SEO toolset in 2014. Did you buy that from him or what's your role?

No, no, no. The original founder, Petr Verbacek, still part of the company. I'm just the CEO, you know. So he's just like, don't want to do the execution anymore. So practically, but still extremely active, still very like on the daily, daily, daily way, trying to help us with another product.

Okay. So we got going in 2014. You guys passed a million of revenue 2016, 2017 with the tools that he built himself. Right? When did you get the idea that instead of can you just keep building and, you know, going, you know, one, two, three month of revenue in 2018, you wanted to get really aggressive with acquisitions? What what flipped that switch? And what year did you join the company as CEO?

Yeah. So at that time, when the first idea was here, okay, so what about to make the new some acquisitions? There was the Pelfare Capital coming into the seed scene. Pelfare Capital is the private equity fund in in The Czech Republic. And practically, the original founders of the Mangus have a deal that, okay, let's acquire the email list verify. Let's acquire it fifty fifty. And it somehow works like it was it was really like not bad,

working fantastically. One year later, we acquired another product, Uptime Robot, and again it was fifty fifty together with Alpha Capital. And practically, step by step, we acquired all another products fifty fifty by Palfrac Capital. So today, all products are, let's say, somehow by 50% owned by the Palfrac Capital private equity fund. By the way, they're open quite reasonable amount of the

groupon.com in The US, quite famous. One of the founders or the partners of the Palfair Capital, Dushan Shenkypel, is right now the CEO of the Groupon.

So, yeah, looking... I'm I'm sharing the screen right now. You know, you guys can see palefirecapital.com. They list Uptime Robot here as part of their portfolio. But if we go to iTrinity here on Crunchbase, you guys also have Uptime Robot here in 2019. Does Palefire own 50 of the entire iTrinity portfolio, or is each deal an individual LLC under the parent company iTrinity, and you split the equity in each of the child brands with, you know, an equity investor like Palefire?

The second option is the exact license.

Okay, got it. So basically, if I go to your SaaS portfolio here, every single one of these, Mangles, Email List, these are all individual companies that are wholly owned by iTrinity. But Uptime Robot might be 50% iTrinity and 50% owned by Palefire.

No, no. Every product is owned by the iTrinity and iTrinity is owned by 50% Palfracapital, 50% original Mongols founders. And by the way, Palfour Capital is owning like a lot of another businesses.

Mhmm. Mhmm. Much total capital has Palfire put into iTrinity?

Actually, it wasn't done in the way that that they are putting some, let's say, capital. It was just done in the way of of making the acquisitions. So practically, the valuation was was paid by 50% by the original itrinity founders and the 50% by the Palfa Capital.

I see. Okay. Well, let's go to the sort of the the whole reason that this got started, which was I've been close with this gentleman here, Dmitry. He's came on my podcast before and talked about the growth of one of his SEO tools. And he said, hey. We've just acquired... We we just have been acquired by Mike and his group. So why don't you tell that story? We can jump into the deal. What How did you meet Dmitry and what tool did you acquire?

So, you know, the topic ranker is practically the SEO tool, and we had the experience with the Mangles. I don't even remember how the communication started, but I think that Dmitry just outreach us. Like, hey, guys, I have this tool. I know that you have Mangles. I know it for ten years. What do you think about this? And then we simply discuss, discuss, and, yeah, at the end, we acquired it.

Let's dig in a little bit more to the details here. So if you want to check out, it's topicranker.com, correct?

Yes, exactly.

And if we go look, let me just go look up what Dmitry told me really quick. Topic ranker. Let's see if it pops up here. Topic topic topic ranker. Okay. Don't see it popping up, but maybe you can give us some context here. So when he reached out to you, obviously, this deal, it sounds like it just closed. Right? When did the deal close?

It was like several months ago, think, or three, four months ago.

Okay. So like November 2024, you guys acquired this company?

I think September, October, something like this.

Okay. And how much revenue was the company doing when you bought it?

Actually, the Topganker is the smallest company from our portfolio. So the revenue is not like the really huge one. But the fantastic thing was that it was like extremely, extremely growing practically in the 2024, growed up three times already. And also, we really laughed at the

knowledge of Dmitry. So practically, we heavily thought about this acquisition in the way that, okay, so if we would have the Dmitry here, maybe he can help us also with the Mangals, because Dmitry stayed with us still developing and growing the Topic Ranker. How

low was the revenue then? Are we talking like 500,000, a 250,000, 1,000,000?

It was somewhere between quarter and 500,000.

Okay. And when you say growing, you know, 3x year over year, obviously it's easy to grow a dollar of revenue to $3 of revenue and call it 3x growth. What else did you like about the business where you thought Dmitry could be applied to your other brands to grow them significantly?

Yeah. So practically, we have seen some basic ideas behind the

similar ideas behind behind the Mangals and Topic Ranker and the SEO space. And actually, have seen the entrepreneur mindset of Dmitry. And also he's really good, let's say, corporations with all other, let's say, influencers in the SEO market. This is something that we are right now using on both of these products.

And so how did you negotiate the deal? It sounds like the most important thing to you was keeping Dmitry for a long time. So what was the sort of total price you paid and how long does Dmitry have to stay at iTrinity?

So Topic Ranker is the only one, let's say, deal that we have done in the way that it's not 100% buyout. Dmitry still opens, I think 35% of the Topic Ranker, we own 65. All other products, iTrinity owns exactly 100% of the product or let's say of the company. So this is like the best motivation to stay. We spent some time together, like talking with Dmitry about all of this, and we find out that just the

cooperation between us, we would be definitely enjoying from both sides. I think we learned quite a lot from Dmitry and he's learning from us. It's really fantastic.

That's helpful. So what, Mike, I understand this was your smallest deal, but what was the total deal price? Did you pay 1x revenue, 5x revenue, something else?

I just don't remember right now. Sorry, I would be guessing. The price was a little bit low, so I I was not that much in, like, concentrated on the on the multiplier at this deal.

Well, when you... There are a lot of people listening right now that have tools doing $200, $300 of revenue. So the more detail you can give them, the more helpful it is. Maybe they come to you in the future because they know you structure your deals. I find it hard to believe you don't remember anything at all because this was your most recent acquisition. You've only done eight over the past ten years. So what can you share about even if it was a low multiple, what did you pay like total deal price for the business?

Yeah. So maybe in overall, practically, our typical multipliers are something like between 2.0 to eight point eight point zero. I think all seven acquisitions were somewhere in this range. And it was really like... We we even bought some product before the 2.0 ARR multiplier, but also something close, like 7.6, I think, or 7.7 multiplying. Which was

the 7.7?

I would keep this for me, if not a big deal for you. And what is really important for us that we are trying to make super simple and super easy deals. You know, we are entrepreneurs. I hate like much of, you know, lawyers things and all of this stuff. So practically, we are trying to make it completely all cash. No earn outs. Super simple, super easy. Practically, we are paying 80% of the valuation immediately at the

closing and the 20% within maybe three months after. Okay. So just to clear, on

the past seven acquisitions, they've all been 80% cash at close, 20% in escrow that gets released within, call it, six months.

Three to six months after some asset transfer, know how transfer or... Yeah. And we are really open also to like the asset deal only if the founder do not want to sell the whole company or like really the share deal, that means like legally buy the whole entity. Depends. Sometimes even we are just buying the companies without employees. It's also in some special cases, it's not like super often, but some of the deals we also have

done in the way that simply we just bought the assets Typically from the solo founder, you know. If there is a solo founder and he just don't want to spend like more of his life with this product, we just buy the assets and try to make it working.

Let's go back. You said the biggest deal was Uptime Robot?

Biggest deal, not even from the, like, valuation point of view, but today it's the biggest. We growed him from...

Biggest by what? Like, do mean big... It's it's a total deal price with the biggest, or it was the most revenue you bought, or the biggest team size? What do you mean it was the biggest?

Today ARR is the biggest.

Okay. Okay, got it. So of the $25,000,000 that the combined company does today, the biggest chunk of that comes from the Uptime Robot product?

Sorry once again.

Of all the 25,000,000 of total revenue the business does today, you're saying the majority of that revenue, the biggest chunk of that revenue comes from the uptime robot product?

Approximately one third. Like, maybe 35%, something like that.

Okay. Well, why don't you tell me about that story? Why did you guys like the deal? So it's a free website monitoring service here. How did you meet the founder, and did the deal follow your standard terms of 80% cash and 20% escrow?

Yes. Uptime Robot was a very fantastic deal because it was very close to the nature of most of the funders, and that is like the development of the DevOps. And what was really cool about the Uptime Robot and still is that it has the huge free freemium user base. There are like over 2,000,000 free users using the UpTime Robot. So there is the the... I would say fantastic, let's say, discussions about the UpTime Robot on the forums. The

people are really loving it, because we offering fantastic free plan. Most of our users, of course, are on the free plan. So the mark... From the marketing point of view, the word-of-mouth is the most strongest marketing that is working here. And I would say, like, this is exactly what we loved on on this product.

What do you consider a good current conversion rate from the free plan over here on the left to the $7 per month plan or a paid plan?

Let me check. I can't tell you exactly.

Because I mean, if it makes up one third of current revenue and it's 25,000,000 is total revenue, so one third would be something like $7,000,000. I mean, 7,000,000 divided by $7 a month would be a million, you know, a million folks paying $7 a month, for example. That's a lot.

Yeah. Yeah. But I think we have something around 35, 40,000 paying customers, something like this.

Okay. Got it. So if we take 7,000,000 divided by 35,000, the average one's paying maybe $200 a month. So you're you're doing a lot of enterprise upselling here.

The 20, not 200.

ARPU.

A $20 ARPU?

Something like that.

Okay. From 35,000 paying customers?

Yes.

Yeah. Yeah. I see what you're saying. Annualized it. Yeah, that's exactly right. Got it. So they're in between the solo and sort of the team plan here. So are you happy with that conversion rate? 35,000 paid on 2,000,000 free. Are you guys testing things to improve that?

Of course, we are always testing, but also we just don't want to be too much aggressive. Actually, you know, there is a huge value in the in these free users. It's it's... As I said, they are making marketing for us. It's it's unbelievable. And this community is huge. We have, like, really, really fantastic people here. So, you know, you can try to like push it and squeeze it. But practically, like from the long term EBITDA point

of view, it doesn't make much sense because if you are just make like make happy these free users,

Very typical case is that there is some, you know, young developer that is using the Updiameter bot for their... For his hobbies, then he's getting simply hired into some company, And then he simply convince the the company that, hey, guys, let's let's use the UpTemper bot because it's it's fantastic. And then they are paying because of this. Practically, you know, all of this conversion channel, it's it's it's fantastic. And, yeah, we are just happy with even having like 2,000,000 of the free users and try to...

How much revenue are you paying out every month to Uptime Robot Affiliates? Is it significant?

Let me check the actual numbers. But I think it's just like several tens of thousands. It's it's it's not a per month. It's it's nothing nothing.

Okay. What would you say what would you say is the is the number one growth tactic you're using at Uptime Robot?

Well, we are the leader on the market. If you paste like the website monitoring into the Google, we are the third number one in the organic, at least shall be. And this is like bringing a lot of traffic.

So practically, idea behind is to have the big enough, let's say, user base, even the free user base and generate quite a lot of organic traffic from the point of view of of some content generation.

Practically, we are not paying much PPCs practically, maybe just, you know, protecting the the brand keywords. Anyway, the most of the...

I mean, we can quantify this here. You're paying for nine keywords. It's getting very little traffic. You're protecting the brand. But the flip side of that is you're getting about 77,000 organic traffic per month. This is as of 02/07/2025. There was also a huge spike recently on the number of keywords you guys are ranking for. Are you guys what's your... Are you guys running an intentional SEO play there, or is this happening by accident?

We are generating quite a lot of nice articles, very typically, like heavily technically deep articles. It's not just like some marketing blah blah blah, but it's very close to some technical server related things. And yes, they are generating the traffic. That's really fantastic.

Mhmm. Yeah. It looks like your knowledge hub here is where you're posting some of that stuff. Is it fair to say this is this is where you're getting most of your SEO traffic from?

It's also this one. Definitely. Knowledge hub is quite new.

I mean, I look here though, Knowledge hub is the number one number one place that you're getting traffic, organic traffic per month. You're also using a free tool strategy. That also seems to be working.

We have a lot of lot of free tool strategy, not only for the Optimer, but for practically most of the most of our products.

Well, tell me more about that. Why is that working so well? Do you have any other examples of free tools on other products that really convert well for you?

Definitely. On the warm up inbox, there are... On the warm up inbox, if you will look...

Sorry. Which one is it? Warm up inbox?

Yeah. Yeah. There are several like the placement free tools. Yeah. There is the list of free tools even in top menu.

Oh, at the top menu. Yeah. Wow. Okay. So and... So how many how much traffic do you get from these per month? Like, do you have a guess?

I have, but it would take me maybe three, four minutes to find it out. Anyway, first of all, it's getting a lot of traffic. But second of all, it's really generating the backlinks. Because free tools that are useful get the organic backlinks. And then this backlink simply improves, you know, the domain authority and practically increasing your organic traffic even to the main

page.

Yep. Yeah. Your domain authority here for Warmly, you know, has gone from, you know, call it, you know, 39 back in 2022 up to, you know, 59, 60 now, actually 60 as of today. So got it. So this free tool is really for you are more it's not necessarily about direct traffic. It's a lot more about a backlink profile.

Also, but also we are working quite nicely even with this traffic that is there are coming to these free tools, trying to convert them step by step. But yeah, I think we are trying like both. There are like both usage. First of all, this one and second one to to to generate the backlink magnet.

So what else? Free tools, it sounds like it's the top growth strategy across the user base. What's maybe the second most powerful growth tactic you guys have used?

I think what is really working quite nice is the email marketing. We are trying to have like some very nice onboarding sequences for the free users. Practically all of our products have the free plan for seven, ten days or for fourteen days, and then trying to to convert them into the paying customers. This works really, really great. On the products where it makes sense, we are trying also to push a little bit PPC, but not much.

This is like typically for for protecting the banked keyboards. We are not that good on the social media, I would say. It's generating some nice traffic, but this traffic is is barely very... Not not much converting.

This makes a lot of sense. Well, Mike here, as we get closer to wrapping up here, just to summarize again, 25,000,000 in total revenue in 2024. How much did you guys profit that year? Do you remember?

Practically our like in total EBITDA margin is around like, I think this year it was 56%. So yeah, it's 56%. And we're

recording here in February. So when you say this year, you're referring to 2024?

Yes, exactly.

So 56% profits of $14,000,000 on 25,000,000 top line. What do you Mike, what do you do with all that extra money? Pay it out as dividends or you save it in your bank, what do you do?

This is exactly the way how we are making the acquisitions. So practically this free cash we are using for the next acquisition. So we are completely like bootstrapped, like no debt at all. So...

But not bootstrapped. Right? Because you have raised a big chunk of money from the firm that helped that buy from PaleFire Capital. Right?

Could be like taken this way. I wouldn't call it this way exactly, but practically this free cash that is generating generating for also the Pelfare Capital, they are investing back to to make next acquisitions.

I see. And last question, you're doing this all with a team of 90 people. Do you have a shared services org at the top, like, you know, the SEO team is at the top and they sort of parachute into the eight brands once a month, Or does each of the eight brands have their own full time teams?

This depends. For example, for the marketing team, we have like really the one that is matured for for the all eight products. But for example, for the development team, typically, we have like a very separated development teams. Regarding the product, we have maybe two or three teams together and some like completely standalone. So it depends. Customer support also typically one customer support guy is taking care about two or three products that is like close to each

other. Yes. Sales guys typically for one or two products. So it depends.

Are you worried about people churning off your SEO tools? Because many people are arguing the conversational agents is where all the future traffic is gonna come from. Like, do you show up in chat GPT? Who cares about the first page of Google anymore? Do you worry about that?

Of course. And this is the reason why on Domingos, we just released the AI search grader. So practically, we are trying to make a full full featured, let's say, SEO from the point of view of the AI tools. You can try it. It looks fantastic.

What's the website on that if people wanna give it a try?

Just the mangos.com. I'm sure you will find it here.

Mangotools.com?

Yeah, mangos.com. It's of the... Yes, exactly. Yeah.

It. Very cool. So people can use this to figure out if they're gonna show and chat GPT results or things like that.

Yeah. Try it. It's really fantastic. It's unbelievable. It's very, very new.

Awesome. Alright, Mike. Anything else before we wrap up? You want people to know where can they find you online if they wanna learn more?

Just the itrinity.com. Practically, are searching for two kinds of people. First off are the founders who might be maybe willing to sell their business to us or grow with us together. And the second thing is we are always hiring. We are growing quite a lot. So we are searching for some people who have like full of anti anism and are ready to join on the boat. Itrinity.com, there are the contact.

Guys, you just met Mike back in 2014. His partner started building keyword tools, boot... Bootstrapped it to about a million bucks of revenue in 2016, 2017. And in 2018, they started acquiring businesses. Fast forward to today they've acquired eight businesses. In 2024 they did $25,000,000 of top line revenue with $14,000,000 of bottom line, that's cash, EBITDA margin. They're using that money now looking for their next acquisition. They're paying on average between two and eight x of

ARR, it just depends. But the nice thing is is Mike will give you a clean simple deal. They're typically paying all cash upfront, about 80% cash upfront, and then holding 20% in escrow for call it three to six months while the knowledge transfer happens. There's no stock thing. There's no eight year earn out that, you know, you don't have to work there for the next ten years or anything like that. Nice, clean deal. They've got 90 people on the team today running these eight tools, the biggest one being a tool called Uptime Robot, which makes it about one third of the total revenue. Mike, thanks for taking us to the top.

Nathan, thank you very much.

Now folks, there are hundreds of firms like Mike's firm that love bootstrapping, and they love bootstrap founders. They'll acquire your business, you know, once you hit $23.04, $5,000,000 for anywhere from two to eight x, but only if you control your destiny. You know, if you if you go to 4 or 5,000,000 of revenue, but you've raised $10,000,000, it's really hard to make money as a founder because you're underwater. That's why at Founderpath, you know, I'm operating

out of our out of our third fund. It's a $180,000,000 fund. We like backing bootstrapped or capital efficient founders that that can scale and eventually sell to somebody like Mike. You know, Mike makes millionaires overnight, SaaS millionaires overnight. If you're looking to grow your business and keep control, avoid, you know, a board, avoid selling equity, I would love to back you out of our third fund. Again, we've deployed about a 180,000,000 total dollars today into 518

software founders. We would love to get behind you as well. Go to founderpath.com to get your offer in under sixty seconds. Again, that's founderpath.com. I'll see you there.