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Fleaflicker (solo founder) Acquired by AOL

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Re: Fleaflicker (solo founder) Acquired by AOL

#41
post #7

Solo Founder? I demand you scuttle the acquisition and stop violating pg's pet theories. congrats!!! http://www.paulgraham.com/startupmistakes.html

Ironically, he got an invite from YC despite being a single founder -- and then turned them down.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=173759

Apparently they will "take a chance" on you as a solo founder if you have an already-established profitable business you've built up over several years to the point where an M&A event is imminent.

Re: Fleaflicker (solo founder) Acquired by AOL

#42
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great, thanks. Hope you don't mind, but the questions are "gushing" out right now. Your story is very compelling to me (and probably quite a few others, too): 1. Did you have personal savings before you got started? 2. In that 3.5 years, how much time did you spend on other jobs? Employee or contractor? 3. Which month (of the 42) did you see your first revenue? 4. Did you do all of the hacking, hosting, and marketing…

1. Yes but not much. I lived at home at first. Telling people I lived with my parents so I could develop a "fantasy game" elicited some fantastic reactions. 2. I tried to work part-time the first year. It's a bad idea. You can't do two things at once. 3. It's difficult to measure this because the site is seasonal. The first year was OK but I had to wait 8 months to see the improvement. I started making a non-negligib…

10. At what point did you incorporate, and what entity type did you use?

11. Can you give us a ballpark on the acquisition price? Even just a "6-figures", "7-figures", "first half of 8-figures", "2nd half of 8-figures" range?

12. How long did it take you to launch?

13. Did you ever have scaling difficulties?

Re: Fleaflicker (solo founder) Acquired by AOL

#44
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great, thanks. Hope you don't mind, but the questions are "gushing" out right now. Your story is very compelling to me (and probably quite a few others, too): 1. Did you have personal savings before you got started? 2. In that 3.5 years, how much time did you spend on other jobs? Employee or contractor? 3. Which month (of the 42) did you see your first revenue? 4. Did you do all of the hacking, hosting, and marketing…

1. Yes but not much. I lived at home at first. Telling people I lived with my parents so I could develop a "fantasy game" elicited some fantastic reactions. 2. I tried to work part-time the first year. It's a bad idea. You can't do two things at once. 3. It's difficult to measure this because the site is seasonal. The first year was OK but I had to wait 8 months to see the improvement. I started making a non-negligib…

Congrats!

Re: Fleaflicker (solo founder) Acquired by AOL

#46
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's true. Nobody took me up on it. I got one applicant and it went nowhere.

Just for nostalgia, here is the reddit comment thread: http://reddit.com/info/p8nv/comments/

ha! yep I remember that post, and remember being really dissapointed when you said it was in Java.

Congrats

Re: Fleaflicker (solo founder) Acquired by AOL

#49

Congratulations. You're an inspiration to all of us. If you dont mind me asking, did you take on investment money or was the decision to sell solely yours?

Zero outside investment. Zero other employees (I've been doing this full-time for ~3.5 years). I hired an artist for the illustrations. And used a lot of open source projects.

I've heard the live feeds are expensive. How did you pay for them?
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