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When Shan Sundaram tried to acquire a boutique consultancy shop, he was disappointed at how inefficient and outdated the process was.

Similarly, when Aravind Namasivayam tried to buy a restaurant. He found that existing online platforms were not up to the job; sending buyers and sellers to Craigslist was not built for this kind of deal. This process is slow and lacks transparency.

In the role of Aimee Zhang helping to find and launch a snack company, she met numerous business owners with thriving companies and product lines who did not know how to sell their businesses or take them to the next level.

This year, the trio came together to launch BizPappa, a Bellevue, Washington-based startup trying to help people buy and sell their small businesses.

In addition to these experiences, Sundaram and Namasivayam have both worked at Microsoft as program managers; Namasivayam is currently a senior program Manager at the company. Zhang works as a real estate broker with experience in commercial real estate.

“All three founders are from different backgrounds,” said Sundaram, who is BizPappa’s CEO. “It makes us very unique to fulfill our vision.”

“We don’t want to be just a platform for a broker to just upload a listing,” Sundaram said.

Ultimately, the site can provide additional information and services to meet the set of needs faced by new small business owners. This Concierge-type service can differentiate BizPappa from existing platforms including Craigslist, BizBuySell and Tresle.

The startup generates revenue by charging merchants 7 to 8 percent per transaction, with the goal of lowering that level to about 5 percent as the company grows. Sundaram would also like to offer some sort of discounts for shoppers to encourage them to use the platform.

The company’s biggest problem, Sundaram said, is the long time it takes to complete a sale. Often mom-and-pop stores have less than perfect bookkeeping, and it takes time to share business information.

“We see a potential opportunity there,” he said. “We’re trying to help sellers put all the information together.”

We caught up with Sundaram for this spotlight launch, a regular GeekWire feature. Continue reading for his answers to our questionnaire.

What does your company do? We are building a marketplace to help people buy and sell small local businesses such as restaurants and salons, and we plan to eventually provide Concierge services such as food safety licenses, business licenses, insurance, CPA search and other areas. We want to be Redfin in the local small business market plus Zenefits (a company providing support in HR and other business operational needs for startups).

Inspiration hit us when: We realized that buying and selling small businesses followed an outdated model that has not changed over time. Given the availability of new technologies and a rapidly developing market, this process needs a new platform that is friendly to entrepreneurs. There are many improvements in residential real estate, but there are not the same kind of resources for small business owners pursuing their dreams of becoming entrepreneurs. We can launch more entrepreneurs using the latest tools and technology because our platform was created with problem solving in mind for small businesses.

VC, angel or Bootstrap: Bootstrap. We are self-financing and focusing on getting traction before we raise any seed funding.

Our founders are from the technology sector, commercial real estate, restaurants and the food and beverage industry. This is the perfect combo to solve this problem.

The smartest move we’ve made so far: the First thing we’ve done is break the problem down into one block and solve our problems according to the philosophy of solving them one by one. As part of this event, we decided to focus exclusively on the fast-moving, restaurant buy and sell categories. We have partnered with the CBA (Commercial business Association) and integrated their listings to discover local businesses available for sale.

Given that last year Forbes ranked Seattle e-1 in the U.S. for doing business, we are launching with restaurants in Seattle and more Puget Sound areas to prove our business model before expanding into other markets and categories.

The biggest mistake we’ve made so far: we were waiting to start MVP kick start our content strategy, which includes informational messages on how to start a business, the pros and cons of buying a business versus starting from scratch, etc.we quickly realized We could start producing content while simultaneously communicating with customers and building a platform.

Which leading entrepreneur or Executive do you most want to work in your corner? Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. Amazon started out as an e-Commerce company, but has diversified into areas such as Amazon Web Services( AWS), echo Personal assistants, etc.the Company is failing fast and is quickly moving into new areas to become the first in this field. We follow the same concept to move quickly and test the market quickly – while using strong data points-along with conversations with customers.

Our favorite team building activity: Frequent coffee meetings

The biggest thing we look for when hiring: Passion, honesty, being a go-to person, and looking for opportunities with every problem rather than whining about problems.

That one piece of advice you would give to other entrepreneurs just starting out: Don’t rush to build technology. Have a thorough customer research, talking to potential customers to understand the landscape before creating a product.

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