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- 💼 How Do Brokers Value AI Ops?
💼 How Do Brokers Value AI Ops?
Top brokers weighed in on how to value AI-powered services, plus the week's news
Richard Patey
May 21, 2025 • Estimated Reading Time: 7 minutes
In partnership with
In this issue...
📝 Patey’s Update
Hey there 👋,
Yesterday I posed a question on LinkedIn to a few of the top minds in website deals:
How do you value a productized service run entirely by AI agents?
I tagged brokers and buyers like Blake Hutchison (Flippa), Thomas Smale (FE International), and Andrew Gazdecki (Acquire).
The replies were revealing and show just how early this model is.
🧾 LetterOperators Metrics
14 newsletters running on beehiiv (+1 since yesterday)
11 paying customers (+1 since yesterday)
$6.5K MRR + $3K setup revenue so far in May (+$500 MRR and +$1K setup since yesterday)
$200 in costs → ~$8.8K monthly profit (to date)
2 churned customers since launch
Zero employees — ops run by our agentic backend
Me, Maciej and Ryan estimate the internal valuation at $234K–$390K, based on 3–5× ARR or 2.5–3.5× profit.
So… what did the brokers think?
💬 Broker & Buyer Insights
Thomas Smale said this kind of business trades on profit multiples, not revenue — and buyers will factor in how replaceable the founders are, especially for customer acquisition.
We’re tackling that already — leads are coming in from beehiiv’s Expert Directory, and we’re prepping our paid channels to scale founder-free.
Blake Hutchison called it a high-margin, low-touch, agent-powered model — and said we could justify 3.5× profit after 18 months of P&L.
We agree — this isn’t a rush play. We’re proving month by month that profit scales without headcount.
Mario Peshev flagged a key issue: profit needs to be transferable. If a buyer has to step in and do the work, they’re just buying a job.
That’s why Ryan’s now building an agentic onboarding layer — to ensure customers are set up and supported by systems, not us.
Andrew Gazdecki confirmed the market’s hot: 2–4× profit is typical for businesses like this right now — especially when churn is low, and delivery is automated.
We’re focused on deepening retention and compounding revenue — without increasing ops cost.
⚙️ What Makes This Different
This isn’t a traditional agency. It’s not just SaaS either.
LetterOperators is a software-service hybrid, purpose-built to scale:
✅ Agentic onboarding
✅ Automated publishing
✅ No people bottlenecks
✅ Flat cost structure
🧠 Why This Matters
Most agency exits stall out when the founders try to step away. That’s the ceiling.
But if the outputs are consistent, valuable, and AI-delivered, that ceiling disappears — and you move closer to software multiples, not service margins.
It’s not just about profitability. It’s about repeatable systems that don’t require people.
📈 What We’re Betting On
That customers will care more about results than who delivers them
That “AI-powered” isn’t enough — workflow ownership is the moat
That productized ops + agentic delivery = the future of services
That in 12–18 months, buyers will pay a premium for businesses like this
We’ll consider selling when we achieve a 7 figure valuation.
Until then it’s heads down.
If you’re running a newsletter (or want one), we’ll set it up and run it for you:
🔁 AI-powered backend
🎯 Fully managed delivery
📬 Beehiiv + custom templates
Thanks to Superhuman for sponsoring this issue.
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📰 Top News Stories
🇪🇸 Flippa launches in Spain to support its booming digital economy - Link
🔚 Ryan Deiss is retiring Digital Marketer due to AI - Link
📘 The Official Lean AI Company Playbook - Link
💵 Sometimes the old ways (paid ads to LP) still work - Link
₿ Bitcoin records highest daily close as it approaches all time high - Link
💰 Is $STRK ( ▲ 1.11% ) the most powerful financial weapon on Wall Street? - Link
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That’s it for this week, until next time, buy my product and catch me in the community!
Cheers!
Richard (@richardpatey)
Disclaimer: This email is for informational and entertainment purposes only. It is not financial advice, and I am not a licensed investment adviser. I share what I’m doing personally in the digital asset space—always do your own research. Some links may be affiliate links, so assume I may earn a commission if you use them.
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