What Buyers Look for Before Acquiring a Company | Eugene Levin (ex-Semrush)

“You never wanna be looking to sell. You wanna have a plan.”

Eugene Levin drove most of Semrush's ten acquisitions and was its President when Adobe bought it for $1.9 billion. Now he's building what he calls an applied-AI holding company to buy MarTech businesses, and he's the first person from Semrush to come on the Ahrefs Podcast. From the buyer's side, a business is worth what keeps running once the founder steps back. If you run a $3–10M ARR MarTech company and might sell one day, you'll learn what a buyer checks first and what lowers your price.

He shares:

Why Adobe bought Semrush, and who else it could have consideredWhy a small, founder-run company is riskier to buy than a big oneHow Semrush bought companies as capital allocation, from Ryte to BacklinkoThe one deal that missed: a good business bought at 7x ARR in 2021What he looks for now: $3–10M ARR, 10% growth or more, and why he asks for your billing data

Would a buyer still want your business if you weren't in it?

Connect with us:

Eugene Levin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eugeniylevin/Tim Soulo: https://www.linkedin.com/in/timsoulo/Ahrefs: https://ahrefs.com/

Chapters

00:00 Intro01:32 Why Did Adobe Buy Semrush?16:30 What to Look for in an Acquisition33:04 What Earns a Higher Multiple37:47 Criteria for Buying a Company45:47 Bootstrapped vs. VC-Backed Sellers50:54 Why a Portfolio, Not One Company57:37 How to Structure a Founder Deal