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DomainPolish: From MVP To Exit In 6 Months

danshipper.com

61–70 of 72 posts

Re: DomainPolish: From MVP To Exit In 6 Months

#61
Congrats. What was the justification for that price? A certain number of months of earnings?

For something that required little work to maintain and produced consistent revenue, that should be 18 months earnings at an absolute minimum. 36+ months for this probably wouldn't have been difficult at all if you had put it on Flippa or similarly marketed the sale. Not trying to make you feel bad, just giving you some info for the future.

Re: DomainPolish: From MVP To Exit In 6 Months

#62
post #23
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

congratulations on your experience! It really is difficult to name a price, I would have ignored any offers below 10-15k but on the other hand you can now concentrate on a new project and for 6 months from 0 to sale is remarkable.

according to some people a quite common exit is between 12 and 24 months[1] of the net profit. Considering his expenses (1700$) and sales (2500$), and initially ignoring the licensing fee, he had 800$ profit for six months, so let's round it to 150$/month, 3500$ is 24months of this profits. If we want to consider the single licensing fee, let's say he licenses once a year, it's 1500+1800 = 3300$/year, and so 3500 is…

He also could have only spent $150 on hosting and been fine - wasted a lot of $. I imagine since he didn't work on it, sales were declining as well.

Re: DomainPolish: From MVP To Exit In 6 Months

#63
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the comment! Obviously 3 instances were too much. But the point remains that if you're running a low traffic Rails app it's a lot cheaper (free) to host on Heroku than it is on EC2. And if you're running at the scale that DomainPolish was that makes all the difference in terms of take home profit.

Welll.. :) Actually, low traffic EC2 instances are also free (albeit probably harder to set up): http://aws.amazon.com/free/

free for a year

Re: DomainPolish: From MVP To Exit In 6 Months

#64
post #34
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

according to some people a quite common exit is between 12 and 24 months[1] of the net profit. Considering his expenses (1700$) and sales (2500$), and initially ignoring the licensing fee, he had 800$ profit for six months, so let's round it to 150$/month, 3500$ is 24months of this profits. If we want to consider the single licensing fee, let's say he licenses once a year, it's 1500+1800 = 3300$/year, and so 3500 is…

I always assumed the 12-24 month-rule only applied to "content"-sites like a blog or a forum, but Dan built a unique service that cannot be copied with the same effort as a techblog or a bulletin board

the link I posted is about Hittail, that is surely not a "content" site but a service

Re: DomainPolish: From MVP To Exit In 6 Months

#65
post #23
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

congratulations on your experience! It really is difficult to name a price, I would have ignored any offers below 10-15k but on the other hand you can now concentrate on a new project and for 6 months from 0 to sale is remarkable.

according to some people a quite common exit is between 12 and 24 months[1] of the net profit. Considering his expenses (1700$) and sales (2500$), and initially ignoring the licensing fee, he had 800$ profit for six months, so let's round it to 150$/month, 3500$ is 24months of this profits. If we want to consider the single licensing fee, let's say he licenses once a year, it's 1500+1800 = 3300$/year, and so 3500 is…

Start-ups are not judged by the same metrics as brick-and-mortar companies or established service companies.

When you're starting out everybody knows that the first couple of years will likely (but not always!) be a time when money is tight if you want to maximize your growth and hence profits will likely be depressed. You can reduce your growth to increase your profits but most parties would rather aquire a much larger company with an amazing growth track-record than something that earns a few thousand $ / month on a much more flat growth curve.

Re: DomainPolish: From MVP To Exit In 6 Months

#66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sweet negativity, bro. An exit is an exit. He made something, and sold it FOR PROFIT in 6 months, while being in college. Pretty impressive.

If you're going to use that definition, then everything becomes an exit... Work 12 months to make $2500, less than you would make in 3 months working part time job at Wal-Mart, must be an exit. Flip a used car for a $300 profit, another exit! Put up a garage sale, exit again! Seriously, it's a lesson learned, experience gained. Not an exit. Edit: to the downvoters, when you use the words "hate", "love", "epic" to val…

except now hes a "serial entrepreneur" and has evidence for building up extremely valuable skills. Its an exit that can springboard him higher.

Re: DomainPolish: From MVP To Exit In 6 Months

#67
post #39
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the comment! Obviously 3 instances were too much. But the point remains that if you're running a low traffic Rails app it's a lot cheaper (free) to host on Heroku than it is on EC2. And if you're running at the scale that DomainPolish was that makes all the difference in terms of take home profit.

I was looking at Heroku as well for hosting some MVPs and I was wondering how good they are for hosting Python. Any ideas ? Naively, I'd hope they're as good as hosting Rails.

I've been using it for Python with Bottle. Been pretty good so far. Anything specific you were looking for?

Re: DomainPolish: From MVP To Exit In 6 Months

#68
Good stuff, keep it up! When I was your age, I was making $200/mth through hard labor, and it was 10 times higher than an average student :-) Since you seem inclined on entrepreneurship, I would highly recommend that you tackle negotiation skills, since those tend to define the financial outcome of idea+implementation. You can start with Jim Camp book "Start with NO...The Negotiating Tools that the Pros Don't Want You to Know" and reading about Richard Branson, and go from there. Good luck.

Re: DomainPolish: From MVP To Exit In 6 Months

#69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're going to use that definition, then everything becomes an exit... Work 12 months to make $2500, less than you would make in 3 months working part time job at Wal-Mart, must be an exit. Flip a used car for a $300 profit, another exit! Put up a garage sale, exit again! Seriously, it's a lesson learned, experience gained. Not an exit. Edit: to the downvoters, when you use the words "hate", "love", "epic" to val…

except now hes a "serial entrepreneur" and has evidence for building up extremely valuable skills. Its an exit that can springboard him higher.

An entrepreneur works full time at an idea. He gave up, managed a meager sell of the domain out of pure luck.

Re: DomainPolish: From MVP To Exit In 6 Months

#70
post #67
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was looking at Heroku as well for hosting some MVPs and I was wondering how good they are for hosting Python. Any ideas ? Naively, I'd hope they're as good as hosting Rails.

I've been using it for Python with Bottle. Been pretty good so far. Anything specific you were looking for?

Just wandering how far you can go on the free plan with Python vs Rails. Looking for that for side projects.
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