Selling my startup - freescreencast.com • Hacker News Board

Selling my startup - freescreencast.com

#1

Post by jaskew » Thu, Jul 02, 2009, 5:29 AM UTC

I have given it a good run. I have a business partner with money, many great developers and testers on my side, and a some-what successful go of it.

But I no longer have the time. I'm ready to pass on this torch and give it up to someone. The primary reason is family. The other is I have found several other excellent sources of income and I can't justify spending the time to over come the bump on freescreencast.com.

So I want to sell: buyer gets several items: source code for both client software and for the website, and the domain.

Most importantly, however, is the buyer inherits the userbase, the user accounts, and the content created by the users.

Search is primarily long tail, but we're top ten in many, many searches.

So... any takers? Any advice?

The alternative is a shutdown, which I just don't want to do.

Selling my startup - freescreencast.com
freescreencast.com

Re: Selling my startup - freescreencast.com

#2

Post by jaskew » Thu, Jul 02, 2009, 5:29 AM UTC

I have given it a good run. I have a business partner with money, many great developers and testers on my side, and a some-what successful go of it.

But I no longer have the time. I'm ready to pass on this torch and give it up to someone. The primary reason is family. The other is I have found several other excellent sources of income and I can't justify spending the time to over come the bump on freescreencast.com.

So I want to sell: buyer gets several items: source code for both client software and for the website, and the domain.

Most importantly, however, is the buyer inherits the userbase, the user accounts, and the content created by the users.

Search is primarily long tail, but we're top ten in many, many searches.

So... any takers? Any advice?

The alternative is a shutdown, which I just don't want to do.

I will gladly answer any questions.

Re: Selling my startup - freescreencast.com

#3

Post by mahmud » Thu, Jul 02, 2009, 6:11 AM UTC

jaskew wrote: post #2

I have given it a good run. I have a business partner with money, many great developers and testers on my side, and a some-what successful go of it. But I no longer have the time. I'm ready to pass on this torch and give it up to someone. The primary reason is family. The other is I have found several other excellent sources of income and I can't justify spending the time to over come the bump on freescreencast.com.…

A potential buyer might be interested in knowing how many users you have as well.

Re: Selling my startup - freescreencast.com

#4

Post by imajes » Thu, Jul 02, 2009, 6:34 AM UTC

jaskew wrote: post #2

I have given it a good run. I have a business partner with money, many great developers and testers on my side, and a some-what successful go of it. But I no longer have the time. I'm ready to pass on this torch and give it up to someone. The primary reason is family. The other is I have found several other excellent sources of income and I can't justify spending the time to over come the bump on freescreencast.com.…

and what language/platform, hosting costs, etc...

Re: Selling my startup - freescreencast.com

#5

Post by fallentimes » Thu, Jul 02, 2009, 7:02 AM UTC

jaskew wrote: post #2

I have given it a good run. I have a business partner with money, many great developers and testers on my side, and a some-what successful go of it. But I no longer have the time. I'm ready to pass on this torch and give it up to someone. The primary reason is family. The other is I have found several other excellent sources of income and I can't justify spending the time to over come the bump on freescreencast.com.…

You might be better served doing this on the Digital Point forums or Flippa.com.

Re: Selling my startup - freescreencast.com

#6

Post by mahmud » Thu, Jul 02, 2009, 8:05 AM UTC

imajes wrote: post #4

jaskew wrote: post #2

I have given it a good run. I have a business partner with money, many great developers and testers on my side, and a some-what successful go of it. But I no longer have the time. I'm ready to pass on this torch and give it up to someone. The primary reason is family. The other is I have found several other excellent sources of income and I can't justify spending the time to over come the bump on freescreencast.com.…

and what language/platform, hosting costs, etc...

I would say those are actually not very important. Domain name recognition, page rank, user base, organic traffic and database are what matters in "websites".

Any pasionate bastard can port it to the host and infrastructure of his or her choice in the proverbial "weekend" ;-)

Re: Selling my startup - freescreencast.com

#7

Post by jacquesm » Thu, Jul 02, 2009, 9:22 AM UTC

http://alexa.com/siteinfo/freescreencast.com

how about some hard data then ?

It looks like the site has very little traffic, a few hundred users / day at best. What is the businessmodel ? Revenues ? Expenses ?

If you really want to sell it wouldn't take more than 10 minutes to collect the most important metrics.

Re: Selling my startup - freescreencast.com

#8

Post by sho » Thu, Jul 02, 2009, 9:44 AM UTC

imajes wrote: post #4

jaskew wrote: post #2

I have given it a good run. I have a business partner with money, many great developers and testers on my side, and a some-what successful go of it. But I no longer have the time. I'm ready to pass on this torch and give it up to someone. The primary reason is family. The other is I have found several other excellent sources of income and I can't justify spending the time to over come the bump on freescreencast.com.…

and what language/platform, hosting costs, etc...

It's PHP, for what it's worth. I know because the first thing I do at any site is look at their error handling. Here's theirs, trying to load http://freescreencast.com/screencasts2:

  Missing controller
  
  You are seeing this error because controller Screencasts2Controller could not be found.
  
  Notice: If you want to customize this error message, create app/views/errors/missing_controller.thtml.
  
  Fatal: Create the class below in file : app/controllers/screencasts2_controller.php

Not a very professional effort IMO.

Here is the server string:

  Apache/2.0.63 (Unix) PHP/4.4.7 mod_ssl/2.0.63 OpenSSL/0.9.7e mod_fastcgi/2.4.2

And it's on a Dreamhost IP so probably debian (if I remember correctly?)

update: Man, I really don't like CakePHP's error messages. Check this one out:

   Fatal: Confirm you have created the file : /home/.quintuplet/prodfsc/freescreencast.com/app/views/pages/getstarteds.thtml

Great, now we know the dir structure. This is something that just should never be displayed. Doesn't CakePHP have "production mode"?

Re: Selling my startup - freescreencast.com

#9

Post by rythie » Thu, Jul 02, 2009, 9:58 AM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #7

http://alexa.com/siteinfo/freescreencast.com how about some hard data then ? It looks like the site has very little traffic, a few hundred users / day at best. What is the businessmodel ? Revenues ? Expenses ? If you really want to sell it wouldn't take more than 10 minutes to collect the most important metrics.

Sounds about right, there is a graph here...

http://siteanalytics.compete.com/freescreencast.com/

Re: Selling my startup - freescreencast.com

#10

Post by drp » Thu, Jul 02, 2009, 12:25 PM UTC

mahmud wrote: post #3

jaskew wrote: post #2

I have given it a good run. I have a business partner with money, many great developers and testers on my side, and a some-what successful go of it. But I no longer have the time. I'm ready to pass on this torch and give it up to someone. The primary reason is family. The other is I have found several other excellent sources of income and I can't justify spending the time to over come the bump on freescreencast.com.…

A potential buyer might be interested in knowing how many users you have as well.

From http://blog.freescreencast.com/2008/08/28/update-on-the-stat... "8000 downloads, over 2500 accounts"