I remember seeing your blog posts. Glad to see you ended up in the black with this business!
I sold TinyPilot, my first successful business
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Re: I sold TinyPilot, my first successful business
#12Wow, 15% broker fee! Didn’t know brokers charge that much
Re: I sold TinyPilot, my first successful business
#13Do you ever calculate your GOOG salary and multiply it by the number of years you've been bootstrapping and have any regrets?
Re: I sold TinyPilot, my first successful business
#14Congratulations. I've been through the DD process and it is a seemingly infinite loop of Q & A that is so exhausting it's almost difficult to celebrate the funds finally hitting! Glad you made time for plenty of desserts.
All the best to you and your pending addition to the family.
Re: I sold TinyPilot, my first successful business
#15Do you ever calculate your GOOG salary and multiply it by the number of years you've been bootstrapping and have any regrets?
His full compensation was probably between 300k-500k at Google, so I don't think money was what motivated him...
Re: I sold TinyPilot, my first successful business
#16This was such an enjoyable read, thank you for taking us through your process. And congrats!!
Re: I sold TinyPilot, my first successful business
#17Congrats Michael!
Re: I sold TinyPilot, my first successful business
#18Author here. I'm happy to answer any questions about this post, the sale process, or my time running TinyPilot.
Well done on the sale and congratulations to you and your wife. Best of luck to both of you.
I have a question about this part:
> I’d also risk TinyPilot’s sales slipping after so many months being distracted from the business.
What was the time split between the sale process and running day-to-day operations? I know bigger companies have dedicated teams for that, but I'm curious how does it look like in smaller ones.
Re: I sold TinyPilot, my first successful business
#19Do you ever calculate your GOOG salary and multiply it by the number of years you've been bootstrapping and have any regrets?
OP learned the skill of starting up, running and selling a business while taking 30% paycut (and a huge risk tbh). He now has much bigger career paths open to him than "Senior Software Engineer".
Re: I sold TinyPilot, my first successful business
#20> I wanted a buyer who would keep investing in the company, not a competitor who would just axe the product or bleed it dry.
God, I hope the buyer lives up to your expectations.