I almost sold Baremetrics for $5M • Hacker News Board

Re: I almost sold Baremetrics for $5M

#241

Post by Shpigford » Mon, Jan 13, 2020, 4:20 PM UTC

socalnate1 wrote: post #3

Two quick thoughts on this. 1) The amount of transparency that this company shows is insane. I have a hard time imagining any one else in this situation sharing the way they do. I hope it works out for them long term. 2) The due diligence work they did for this deal was absolutely not a waste (even if they never sell the company). Having gone through this process once will make it orders of magnitude easier if they s…

Thanks so much for the kind words!

Totally agree the diligence work, in the long run, wasn't a waste. At the very least, we organized a lot of documents I'd forgotten about.

Re: I almost sold Baremetrics for $5M

#242

Post by Shpigford » Mon, Jan 13, 2020, 4:21 PM UTC

zyang wrote: post #45

socalnate1 wrote: post #3

Two quick thoughts on this. 1) The amount of transparency that this company shows is insane. I have a hard time imagining any one else in this situation sharing the way they do. I hope it works out for them long term. 2) The due diligence work they did for this deal was absolutely not a waste (even if they never sell the company). Having gone through this process once will make it orders of magnitude easier if they s…

It wouldn't feel great seeing this as an employee of the company. The only reason you are not sold to the highest bidder was because the ceo got played.

I think it's a company culture thing. I mean, I could have kept it buried and just hope nobody at the company found out but that's not how we roll. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Re: I almost sold Baremetrics for $5M

#243

Post by Shpigford » Mon, Jan 13, 2020, 4:24 PM UTC

rajacombinator wrote: post #144

5mm is just too low for a web based SaaS business. You’ve already done the hard work of getting some PMF validation. Why not double down and try to scale the business? Going from 5mm to 15mm is way easier than 0mm to 5mm.

That's the route we're going down now! As I mentioned in the article:

> For me, this came at a time where, personally, life was…draining. Outside of work I wasn’t in a great place mentally. I was dealing with some family issues that were consuming every ounce of my mental energy. I was depressed, anxious and the most stressed I’ve ever been and the prospect of being able to sell the company and give myself and my brain a break was very appealing.

Re: I almost sold Baremetrics for $5M

#244

Post by Shpigford » Mon, Jan 13, 2020, 4:25 PM UTC

YPCrumble wrote: post #216

One of the best parts of Baremetrics is that it's an "Open Startup". I can't help but think that the acquisition is clearly not open if he didn't talk about it during the acquisition and doesn't name names here. I think he's right not to dox the company, but perhaps in the future having an "open acquisition process" could have avoided some of the headache.

I threw around the idea but the reality was I wasn't in a strong position to try to negotiate that with a potential buyer.

Acquisitions are incredibly closed-door and so finding a buyer who was willing to be open about the process would have been nearly impossible.