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Sortfolio: Going once, going twice...

37signals.com

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Re: Sortfolio: Going once, going twice...

#91

Post by saluki »

Since you're thinking about closing it anyway why not choose a 2 person rails team that you could mentor to take over sortfolio.

Then it goes to a good home and you provide two rails developers a great opportunity and create two jobs.

Initially they can migrate the site to their own hosting.

You maintain links to sortfolio from 37 signals and continue to support and recommend sortfolio.

You maintain the existing billing system for them while they setup stripe for new signups and renewals.

Once a majority of the customers are on their stripe account then unplug your billing system.

Continuing to link to sortfolio and recommend it could be phased out over time.

Maybe they could pay a percentage of their revenue back to you over time.

Good luck finding sortfolio a new home.

Re: Sortfolio: Going once, going twice...

#92

Post by kriro »

Have you considered simply hireing someone to maintain the site/keep it afloat? Seems like this could be done remotely for the most part.

In fact this could be a decent idea for a "not so great dev->good dev" training project on your part. I guess you can afford to just hire really good people but maybe the forward thinking move would be to develop some training program for people fresh out of HS.

Pay them a comperatively low sum X/month but throw in a bit of mentoring. I'm sure you could get plenty of motivated people if you just ran a "37S got talent" type casting show here on HN.

Would cost you some valuable time for the mentoring but in return you'd get to keep that site's revenue and potentially gain a good employee for your core business down the line (which is the real value here imo)

This way you could keep the site connected to 37S and the credit processing stuff (which makes up a bunch of the value I'd guess) + generate some excitement as a nice side effect.

The idea seems pretty 37S-bootstrap like.

Re: Sortfolio: Going once, going twice...

#93

Post by cbsmith »

cncool wrote: post #57
cbsmith wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they aren't focused on it, it is a distraction and can potentially tarnish the brand. Plus, they aren't going to sell for nothing, so they get immediate capital they can invest in areas where they expect a higher rate of return.

They are shutting it down for no money on July 1st. There is no immediate capital in that situation.

Yup, that's more about the brand issue. You have to shut it down eventually, and they've been awfully patient (likely because of the incoming capital).

Re: Sortfolio: Going once, going twice...

#94

Post by cbsmith »

moe wrote: post #64
cbsmith wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they aren't focused on it, it is a distraction and can potentially tarnish the brand. Plus, they aren't going to sell for nothing, so they get immediate capital they can invest in areas where they expect a higher rate of return.

In other words: decadence. I'm assuming in their favor that they really believe $480k would be fair deal - which means they've simply lost touch with reality and can no longer discern how much of their revenue stems from the brand and how much from actual product value. The rational move would be to hire an admin for $100k (remember we're in alternate reality), tell him to keep the site up, go about his life and not…

> In other words: decadence.

Lols. Yeah, that's it.

> The rational move would be to hire an admin for $100k (remember we're in alternate reality), tell him to keep the site up, go about his life and not call. And collect the remaining $100k until the product fizzles out.

That's what any prospective buyer could do, and they haven't exactly been coming out of the wood work. Heck, if it's so easy, you could do it.

Re: Sortfolio: Going once, going twice...

#95

Post by ericclemmons »

I don't have 480k, but I'd love to just work on the site and attempt some ideas with perhaps a rev-share agreement.

The site needs some TLC, but I'd hope that it could find some sort of home rather than completely die if no one buys for that price. (Besides, it has already been stated the two major hurdles are loss of the 37signals brand and billing switch)

Re: Sortfolio: Going once, going twice...

#97

Post by Flippa_com »

Sortfolio is listed for auction on Flippa - https://flippa.com/2739829-sortfolio-com-web-design-marketpl...

Opening bid is $250K. Buy It Now is $480K.

Listing includes traffic/revenue claims. Check out the site details page to see incredibly strong keyword ranking: https://flippa.com/auctions/2739829/due-diligence . No prize for guessing which language its written in! ;-))

Re: Sortfolio: Going once, going twice...

#98

Post by pbreit »

tg3 wrote: post #82
pbreit wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you think the buyer would need a new billing solution?

Because it mentions it directly in the link that this discussion is about. "Since Sortfolio is hooked up to our centralized billing system, you’ll need to write your own code to charge customers."

Oh, I see. I missed that. I suspect they wouldn't turn over the credit card information. Yes, that would be a big problem for the new buyer.
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