I've thought about selling my side business, but I want to sell it to the right person. I'm in Austin. Lemme know if you want to meet. My email is HN username + gmail.
What is your side business?
Send me an email.
Ask HN: Where can I buy real software companies?
41–50 of 171 posts
Re: Ask HN: Where can I buy real software companies?
#42If you are (or any other investor/buyer) interested in WordPress/Advertising and looking either to buy or invest, email me and maybe we can have a short-talk to exchange information, knowledge and who-knows.
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While I'm not sure what I think of the policy myself, here it is:
> Resist commenting about being downvoted. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.
From https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
EDIT: I'm not sure why your original comment would have been downvoted, but this is probably why your self-reply is getting downed.
Re: Ask HN: Where can I buy real software companies?
#43I think this is going to be important now and in the future. Systems are getting so complex nobody can build something complete from scratch. I see people making high quality components and then merging or being acquired to create a whole end user product. Prior to that point, you'd have something that's not very profitable unless lots of companies license your component and do integration themselves.
"Systems are getting so complex nobody can build something complete from scratch."
I would claim there is still a large chunk of areas that have very poor service from the software field and would find tremendous value of a trivial software product that is just applied correctly. So it's more about service design rather than hightech, if one is just looking to make a profit.
Re: Ask HN: Where can I buy real software companies?
#44Why are the answers here so coy?
"Send me an email, we'll talk"
Is it a secret to be shopping your website/product to a new management? Why?
Re: Ask HN: Where can I buy real software companies?
#45(slightly OT) I don't understand Flippa; I've search several times for a regular web site making a bit of money and all of them look like scams, even the ones that are sold, with no PageRank since all the incoming links are spam.
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Re: Ask HN: Where can I buy real software companies?
#46Would you like to purchase yipgo.com? Feel free to email me.
Re: Ask HN: Where can I buy real software companies?
#47I would like to sell my business. You'll need to know C++ and care about the Windows desktop market. I get about 8K downloads every month. I want $225K which is 5x revenue.
I don't know if I'm entirely serious. It just makes money and I don't work it properly. It should make $90K-$110K if someone cared about it.
Re: Ask HN: Where can I buy real software companies?
#48Why are the answers here so coy? "Send me an email, we'll talk" Is it a secret to be shopping your website/product to a new management? Why?
Personally, it's kind of self-advertising. you can find my products/things if you fly over to my site. Otherwise, some people might be afraid of the competition and are gathering some low-hanging fruit that not a lot are aware of their worth.
Re: Ask HN: Where can I buy real software companies?
#49I sold Bingo Card Creator through FEI ( http://feinternational.com ) and have nothing but good things to say about them. Something like 20% of their listings are SaaS businesses. The going rate for a SaaS business is roughly 3X yearly SDC ("seller discretionary cashflow" -- revenue minus costs required to run the business as opposed to e.g. the owner's salary, distributions, interest expense, etc). It is closer to 2X…
Could just be me but it feels like feinternational always show a very inflated price. 3x seems too much specially for companies that are barely 1 year old.
Also, it is extremely difficult to sign an NDA just to inquire more about a sale as feinternational does not give any details upfront. Totally understandable that the company in question wants to maintain its privacy, secrets etc but this is a difficult situation. How do we move forward without knowing more about a company but they want you to sign NDA even without giving any details.
Re: Ask HN: Where can I buy real software companies?
#50I don't think it's a good idea to buy a software company for the aim of making money. First, it'd be little difficult to understand the schema of a company which is already running and further it's even more difficult to analyse such company from outside or by just looking at the statistics.
I must say, it's better to invest in a start-up because they are little bit flexible and simple at the beginning to understand. Also, you get more chance to hit the jackpot.
Any good already running software company might be not interested to sell unless there's some problem. So, just stick to the start-ups.