Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Tiny Acquisitions

tinyacquisitions.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 178 posts

Re: Tiny Acquisitions

#131

Post by alex_g »

runako wrote: post #111
alex_g wrote: post #68

If you're interested in buying and/or selling small projects, you can typically expect to pay more than $5k for something that's making any consistent amount of money. You're also unlikely to find a great deal on a really special project on a marketplace. People who post on marketplaces like Flippa or MicroAcquire or SideProjectors (there're dozens of them) have either: 1. Realized the time it takes to maintain is no…

There are a lot of reasonable reasons people would list a sub-scale business on a site like those. Some examples: Take an app that makes $500 net monthly and requires 1-2 hours per week of work. Solid hourly rate, why sell? Except: - Sudden change in family responsibilities leaves founder without the small amount of time needed. - The business might net $5k in a sale, and the founder has an urgent need for cash (for…

All valid reasons, but I think my point was moreso if they find themselves posting on MicroAcquire, they will likely end up in my #3, whether they intended to or not, and rightfully so.

Re: Tiny Acquisitions

#132

Post by beambot »

alex_g wrote: post #68

If you're interested in buying and/or selling small projects, you can typically expect to pay more than $5k for something that's making any consistent amount of money. You're also unlikely to find a great deal on a really special project on a marketplace. People who post on marketplaces like Flippa or MicroAcquire or SideProjectors (there're dozens of them) have either: 1. Realized the time it takes to maintain is no…

Best write-up I've seen about selling a small SaaS is HN OG patio11 / Kalzumeus' sale of Bingo Card Creator:

https://training.kalzumeus.com/newsletters/archive/selling_s...

Re: Tiny Acquisitions

#133

Post by selcuka »

IgorPartola wrote: post #114
runako wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a lot of reasonable reasons people would list a sub-scale business on a site like those. Some examples: Take an app that makes $500 net monthly and requires 1-2 hours per week of work. Solid hourly rate, why sell? Except: - Sudden change in family responsibilities leaves founder without the small amount of time needed. - The business might net $5k in a sale, and the founder has an urgent need for cash (for…

I am in that last category myself. I had a really nice and useful budget app that had thousands of daily users and cost all of $20/month to keep going, if that. Was making some money off it too with ads and sales of the ad-free version. Except I built it using Ionic back when it was based on Angular 1. Fast forward to now and that code simply doesn’t compile anymore against modern iOS and Android and I don’t have the…

If you are still making money you may consider outsourcing the v2 development. Even if you still want to exit it'll attract a much higher price.

Re: Tiny Acquisitions

#134

Post by zaphirplane »

rlayton2 wrote: post #118
prawn wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or don't have the time. I have/had profitable projects that don't take much time, but they'd be more profitable under someone who isn't spread as thin.

This is why I sold a website making about $150/mo in ad revenue for $5k. I knew the site could make more, but had other things on the go and I couldn't spend the time on the site to improve it. The person that bought it from me did make those changes and did make more money, but I just didn't have the time to get there. Win-win for me

I was about to post a question about sale prices as a multiple of revenue.

Someone bought it with 2.7 years break even ? Assuming close to zero ongoing cost + labour. That’s surprisingly high I expected a .5-1.5 for micro sized revenue

Re: Tiny Acquisitions

#135

Post by IgorPartola »

selcuka wrote: post #133
IgorPartola wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am in that last category myself. I had a really nice and useful budget app that had thousands of daily users and cost all of $20/month to keep going, if that. Was making some money off it too with ads and sales of the ad-free version. Except I built it using Ionic back when it was based on Angular 1. Fast forward to now and that code simply doesn’t compile anymore against modern iOS and Android and I don’t have the…

If you are still making money you may consider outsourcing the v2 development. Even if you still want to exit it'll attract a much higher price.

Last I checked it was making about $100 every 3 months with the dwindling usage and all. The app took me probably a solid 80 hours of work to put together. I do not know if hiring a developer to work on it would in any way be worth it.

Re: Tiny Acquisitions

#136

Post by IgorPartola »

sail0rm00n wrote: post #124
IgorPartola wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am in that last category myself. I had a really nice and useful budget app that had thousands of daily users and cost all of $20/month to keep going, if that. Was making some money off it too with ads and sales of the ad-free version. Except I built it using Ionic back when it was based on Angular 1. Fast forward to now and that code simply doesn’t compile anymore against modern iOS and Android and I don’t have the…

Want to sell it? :)

Sure. https://family-fortune.ridgebit.com/ Is the promo page. As I said, this is a bit of a lego project with a bunch of pieces spilled on the floor. Email is in my profile if you are actually interested.

Re: Tiny Acquisitions

#138

Post by glangdale »

Weird that anyone would acquire anything for Maybe I have an exaggerated notion of this after having been part of an 8-figure exit to an S&P 100 company, but I would figure you take on anything like this you're potentially buying something with an imminent lawsuit, patent infringement problem, etc. unless you do due diligence, but that said due diligence would be ridiculously expensive relative to the $ involved.

Do they provide any help with this issue, or are they a no-legals as well as a no-code startup?

Re: Tiny Acquisitions

#139

Post by jononor »

hinkley wrote: post #101
propter_hoc wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A friend of mine is doing this as his day job through MicroAcquire. He's bought a few businesses so far and is writing a blog about his experience: https://microangel.so/ So far, it looks like he's having fun but putting in a lot of work. He seems to be doing a lot of little code updates and fixes when apis change or other little things break.

I feel like the trick must be if you can amortize some of the maintenance costs across multiple projects. Maintaining DNS records and SSL keys is not 3x as hard for 3 domains as for one. Probably neither are taxes. Or keeping on top of security fixes for projects using the same tech stacks. There’s a couple groups out there who do something like this for public sector projects, sort of taking over the devops aspects…

Yeah and you can leverage learning across projects also. Find a marketing strategy that works well for one of the projects, then deploy to the rest. And one can share the cost of outsourced labor down the line. For example one customer support agent, software engineer, marketing person could work across all products/businesses, which might together fill near a full time role. It is often terribly hard to hire good part-time workers for many roles. And with a diverse portfolio the risk of high impact business failures should go down also. More tickets for potential buy-outs from bigger companies also, those can often be quite random, so more chances is better chances.

Re: Tiny Acquisitions

#140

Post by rlayton2 »

zaphirplane wrote: post #134
rlayton2 wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why I sold a website making about $150/mo in ad revenue for $5k. I knew the site could make more, but had other things on the go and I couldn't spend the time on the site to improve it. The person that bought it from me did make those changes and did make more money, but I just didn't have the time to get there. Win-win for me

I was about to post a question about sale prices as a multiple of revenue. Someone bought it with 2.7 years break even ? Assuming close to zero ongoing cost + labour. That’s surprisingly high I expected a .5-1.5 for micro sized revenue

I may not have sold at that ratio, not sure. Either way the site definitely had potential.

Also this is the first and only time I have done this so please don't take my experience as representative. I do not know

Post reply on HN