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…
Those issues though generally scale with the amount of money your company is making. The likely worst case is shutting down and being out the $5k.
Tiny Acquisitions
171–178 of 178 posts
Re: Tiny Acquisitions
#172Similar marketplaces: https://flippa.com/ https://microacquire.com/
https://www.sideprojectors.com Disclaimer : I run it. :)
That's why curating, reviewing, examining real projects is needed in order to keep the quality and not quantity.
Re: Tiny Acquisitions
#173Re: Tiny Acquisitions
#174Earlier 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…
Those are good reasons to motivate a seller. But the main problem with small transactions is that the buyer's costs/risks in making an investment can eclipse the "inherent" value of the project. Consider that theoretical 2h -> $500 / month project: - Would those 2h for the founder be 2h for the buyer, or much more? - How much initial training would it take for the buyer to sustain those economics? - Are those 2h suff…
But you are obviously correct that there are no risk-free transactions.
> It might even be cheaper (incorporating risk) to build a $500 / month business than to verify the purchase of one.
Here I want to point out that I know a number of talented people who want to launch a business, but for whatever reason cannot get to the "launched, accepting money" phase of their projects. These people have no problem improving an existing business, but have trouble going from 0 to 1. (I believe this population is as much as 100x the population of people who have successfully launched & gotten revenue in an app.) For these people, it might be entirely worth knowingly overpaying for a working SaaS because it gets them past the launch phase. Putting it bluntly, would they rather spend $10k on an app with revenue that you can grow or another $50k of nights and weekends over the year with no launch to show for it?
Edit: I also forgot that there's the entire category of buyers who just want to keep the app as-is and either integrate it into a bigger suite, use its traffic for lead gen, or otherwise leverage it for some other purpose. If the buyer considers the purchase as part of its marketing budget, $5k is not very much at all. (Plus the bar is low as most marketing spend is wasted, see the adage.)
Re: Tiny Acquisitions
#175Earlier 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…
Not just javascript, I built an app in Objective C. It stopped working after IOS 8 (I think) and I no longer had access to a Mac to update it. I too am in the stage of just replying to customers to explain why it isn't available.
Re: Tiny Acquisitions
#176Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not just javascript, I built an app in Objective C. It stopped working after IOS 8 (I think) and I no longer had access to a Mac to update it. I too am in the stage of just replying to customers to explain why it isn't available.
What is the app?
Re: Tiny Acquisitions
#177If somebody is selling something it's because it's not making them money, and that's the end of it. Nobody would sell you a project for 5k that's generating 1k per month. People sell when either the writing is on the wall, or they can't finish the project and don't care anymore. Just expect that.
Not at all. Plenty of people get to the point where: - they've just had enough and can't be bothered - they know the business needs investment of money and/or time to go to the next level - they've identified some more lucrative business elsewhere and want to concentrate on that.
Re: Tiny Acquisitions
#178Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not at all. Plenty of people get to the point where: - they've just had enough and can't be bothered - they know the business needs investment of money and/or time to go to the next level - they've identified some more lucrative business elsewhere and want to concentrate on that.
Of course, there are no absolutes. But how common are projects like that? Exceedingly rare in my experience. The great majority of projects (especially web and tech) are no longer profitable or decreasing majorly by the time of sell. That's been my personal experience from extensive study and searching for profitable projects for sale. But one could always get lucky I suppose.