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AthenAI AthenAI Help Center

Buy path

The Buy path is for users who want to acquire an existing small business and modernize it post-close — typically through Empire Flippers or Flippa, sometimes through direct seller-to-buyer deals.

What happens, in one paragraph

Section titled “What happens, in one paragraph”

A 7-step intake collects your buyer profile (capital, skills, target deal size), surfaces matching listings, runs financing analysis, generates an automation plan for your top candidates, reserves a slug for your post-close site, recommends a tier (Free during discovery; Scale at close), and lands you on Free with a deal-pipeline tracker.

What’s specific to Buy

Section titled “What’s specific to Buy”
  • Free during discovery, paid at close. Most acquirers spend weeks (sometimes months) doing diligence before they actually close anything. There’s no point paying for Solo or Scale during that window — Buy users sit on Free until a deal closes, then upgrade.
  • No LOI requirement. The earlier model gated tier upgrade on a signed LOI; that’s been dropped. Buy users can stay on Free indefinitely if a deal doesn’t materialize.
  • Empire Flippers integration for listings. Real listings, scored on user-fit (does this match your goals?) and modernization-fit (how much upside does AthenAI bring to this specific business?).
  • Site is a placeholder. Unlike Create and Grow (which build a fully-rendered site), Buy users get a “coming soon” branded landing page on a reserved slug for their target acquisition. Full site build fires when you close and upgrade.

Read the full path breakdown

Section titled “Read the full path breakdown”

The canonical Buy walkthrough — including the 7-step structure, the Empire Flippers integration details, the financing analysis, and how the deal-pipeline state machine works — lives in the parent article: /help/paths/.

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