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Cheddar is For Sale

cheddarapp.com

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Re: Cheddar is For Sale

#41

Post by whalesalad »

You're batshit crazy to try selling for this price. The most recent reviews suggest it loses data and isn't very innovative. I tend to agree. It's yet another fish in a sea of todo apps.

Your craftsmanship and attention to detail on the UI and experience are great. I'll give you that. But this is a todo application. Not only that, but it's open source. Hell, I've built it and run the iOS app myself.

The only thing you're selling is 33,000 free users (rather, a list of them, not necessarily 33k active pekple) and a Ruby on Rails app. You also said it requires 4 dynos to operate, plus a Postgres db. I'd imagine the reason you're selling this is that it's costing you $200 per month and not making anywhere near that.

While I'm grateful for everything you have done with cheddar in terms of transparency and sharing with the community: I think you shot yourself in the foot. Reverse engineering the back end (from the app and api docs) and rebranding the iOS app would take me 2 weeks tops.

$125,000? Good luck man. If you can get that.. You're an even better magician than you are a developer.

Re: Cheddar is For Sale

#42

Post by Ives »

ricardobeat wrote: post #27

Does he really charge $1000/hour or is it a joke I didn't get? http://hire.samsoff.es/ edit: explanation http://soff.es/one-thousand-dollars-an-hour By that rate and the 800-hour figure, Cheddar would be one of the most expensive apps ever (utility vs cost).

The best sentences on that page are

> This rate is designed to weed out less serious clients. Serious clients generally have more exciting projects. I'd rather not freelance. I need to focus on Cheddar.

I guess now that he's no longer focussing on Cheddar he can lower his rate.

Re: Cheddar is For Sale

#43

Post by drudru11 »

Perspective.

When I read the original announcement for this app. It sounded cheery. The design is really pretty good.

Over time, though, I've learned to keep an eye on these announcements. Not just cheddar, but all of the 'check us out' posts. Sure enough, a lot of these do not succeed. Some even blog during their process, to share some epiphany. Building a successful product is hard. Filtering the noise on HN is hard as well. When I see a new announcement, I look at the 'good' in the product, but only time will tell if the founders have hit the right mix.

Sam, the OP, is not one to hold back from backlash. He doesn't have too much pride. He shows his product on HN to ask for users. He isn't afraid to admit failure when it happens. He needs the money, so he asks for it. I'm sure there are hundreds in a similar spot. Yet, they will not make a similar post.

It is super important to see the lifecycle of projects here. It adds a good perspective to this community.

Back to Cheddar. Without a passionate founder, a product like this will die. It isn't a turnkey business. It will require much more product work to become a success.

Re: Cheddar is For Sale

#44

Post by josephlord »

PanMan wrote: post #10

To answer a question on the page: "I'm not sure how transferring apps from one Apple ID to another works. We can figure it out though." I'm fairly sure this is impossible. I know people (with large apps and the right contacts) that have tried, and never heard of it being possible. Unless something changed recently. You could transfer the account (unless other apps are also on it).

From what I've read you can convert individual developer accounts to company ones and transfer ownership of them with a company sale but you can't split them or transfer apps between accounts. I would be really interested if anyone has experience that is different to this.

Re: Cheddar is For Sale

#45

Post by ricardobeat »

campnic wrote: post #34
ricardobeat wrote: post #27

Does he really charge $1000/hour or is it a joke I didn't get? http://hire.samsoff.es/ edit: explanation http://soff.es/one-thousand-dollars-an-hour By that rate and the 800-hour figure, Cheddar would be one of the most expensive apps ever (utility vs cost).

Thats funny. You must not work in the 'apps for government agencies' space. :)

I imagine in that space most of the money evaporates into the machine, instead of going to a single person.

Re: Cheddar is For Sale

#46

Post by [deleted] »

1123581321 wrote: post #20
fearless wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would set the minimum bid on Flippa far lower than the $125,000 asking price if you want to get any interest on there. People on Flippa are not startup guys and are a lot more realistic about valuation. I for one would be interested in exploring buying this, but it's not worth anywhere near what you're asking, so it's a non starter for me.

Two separate points there. On Flippa, you want to start lower to generate interest and start bidding, but you want the bidding to build up to a higher amount. But it's also true that Flippa users tend to be "value investors" not ones who buy high potential. They also are not developers.

[deleted]

Re: Cheddar is For Sale

#48

Post by benguild »

mgkimsal wrote: post #7

33503 users, 2.61% are paying 'plus' customers, at, say $20/year = ~$18k in revenue. You'd need to grow and monetize that base a lot more to get back $125k purchase price. I'm guessing someone might buy it, but there's a heck of a lot more ways you could spend $125k building a similar company to get to profitability faster. There's even more ways to spend $125k to make $18k/year. I'll happily let you invest in my com…

"a lot more ways you could spend $125k building a similar company to get to profitability faster"

... Not necessarily. It's actually pretty difficult to start something that's consistently driving revenue at all or even into the 5-figure range. That said, $18k/year isn't super high and he's looking for roughly 5x the revenue to acquire the business, which someone would obviously only do in hopes of growth.

Re: Cheddar is For Sale

#49

Post by czbond »

Talk to the guys at Asana or similar. If you could transition your 33k users to Asana or similar (through an upsell, conversion, etc) then they would be paying (roughly) $3.73 per acquiried user.

With an email address worth .60-.90 per month or more, they should be able to easily justify it. Just a thought

Re: Cheddar is For Sale

#50

Post by benguild »

Codhisattva wrote: post #17
samsoffes wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what I was thinking I'd have to do. The only other app on the account is Shares - http://getsharesapp.com . Thanks for the info!

I've heard anecdotally that you can transfer apps but you'll need App Store support involved. It's not immediate though.

They will only merge accounts if a government documented merger takes place between multiple corporations.
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