Author here. I'm happy to answer any questions about this post, the sale process, or my time running TinyPilot.
did you have a salary?
I sold TinyPilot, my first successful business
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Re: I sold TinyPilot, my first successful business
#32Congrats! Extremely impressive and inspiring. I always enjoy your posts.
Re: I sold TinyPilot, my first successful business
#33Author here. I'm happy to answer any questions about this post, the sale process, or my time running TinyPilot.
I would be interesting in reading the ,,buying process'' part of the same deal from the buyers. BTW tinypilot.com is down: https://www.isitdownrightnow.com/tinypilot.com.html
Re: I sold TinyPilot, my first successful business
#34 Broker commission: $88,900
Legal fees: $18,297
Most people don't realize how much get eaten up in deal/closing costs.
Congrats to him for the successful exit. Reading his blog post over the years should be eye opening to anyone just how hard starting/running a business is.
Re: I sold TinyPilot, my first successful business
#35Wild. I vaguely remember this founder spending an obscene amount of money on some boutique firm to give homepage a small update.
Seems he exited the Google grind about 6 years ago. I guess salaries were between $180-250K during that time frame.
Google grinder for 6 years: $1,080,000-$1,500,000
Entrepreneur: “$920k over four years (with sale)”, but doesn’t include the 2 bombs he had prior to successful exit.
(None of these figures taken into account taxes or benefits)
Seems like he took an L, but in the end at least he didn’t end up in the salt mines. The education of learning as you go is truly underrated though.
Re: I sold TinyPilot, my first successful business
#36Broker commission: $88,900 Legal fees: $18,297 This equates to ~18% of total sale price. Most people don't realize how much get eaten up in deal/closing costs. Congrats to him for the successful exit. Reading his blog post over the years should be eye opening to anyone just how hard starting/running a business is.
A broker is just a middleman between the seller and buyer. What’s the value add for sales like this?
Re: I sold TinyPilot, my first successful business
#37Well congratulations! That's awesome!
Re: I sold TinyPilot, my first successful business
#38Really interesting read, thank you for sharing!
You mentioned that building tinypilot suddenly sparked way more interest than your other attempts. Do you have a plan for your next product? Try out different things and hope you find something that gains similar traction? Or do you have some sort of evaluation criteria for your ideas?
Re: I sold TinyPilot, my first successful business
#39You know it must have been stressful when you were compelled to list your desserts in order.
Now that we're almost in June, does it feel like the deal happened a million years ago? I know when stressful things happen and time passes, it always feels like it was so long ago even when it was only a month or 2 back.
It was a pleasure having you on a few years ago in the Running in Production podcast: https://runninginproduction.com/podcast/105-tinypilotkvm-let...
Re: I sold TinyPilot, my first successful business
#40I must have missed this product, it seems incredibly useful, especially for providing remote access to legacy devices like NVRs, or random other gear that is a big hassle to remotely administer.