[HN Gopher] Selling Tiny Internet Projects for Fun and Profit
___________________________________________________________________
Selling Tiny Internet Projects for Fun and Profit
Author : tinyprojects
Score : 430 points
Date : 2021-05-18 11:37 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (tinyprojects.dev)
(TXT) w3m dump (tinyprojects.dev)
| Spinosaurus wrote:
| I wonder how viable a sort of "micro PE" firm would be, basically
| a company that just buys many of these micro indie projects with
| positive cash flow with the goal of holding on to them for profit
| or investing into their operations and eventually reselling them.
|
| There's been this trend of new firms popping up that acquire
| small ecommerce brands (in fact, there was one on HN just the
| other day). I'm wondering if the same model can (or has) been
| applied to small "indie" companies and projects.
| edmundsauto wrote:
| I think it's going to be more common than it is. Or, maybe its
| already super common and we just don't hear about it.
|
| My reasoning is as follows: small products/companies have de-
| risked the initial PMF exploration, but aren't at a scale where
| they can hire specialists. Sure, maybe you can find a 10 hours
| / week data engineer who can build your analytics infra MVP.
| It's more likely you don't find someone good, IMO.
|
| Building a portfolio of these means you can hire a specialist
| who can focus on the low hanging fruit of 3-4+ companies at a
| time. That's a huge advantage over the small companies.
| ezekg wrote:
| I do remember seeing one, actually, aimed at smaller
| bootstrapped SaaS products doing >10k/MRR. But I can't for the
| life of me remember what it was called.
| noodle wrote:
| I've also thought about this a lot wrt microsaas projects.
| Specifically, looking to acquire projects that are small but
| match my tech expertise such that I can consolidate certain
| aspects of them easily. Ultimately maintenance will probably be
| the biggest problem with acquiring numerous small projects, so
| making that as easy as possible is important.
|
| It would probably not be "viable" in the sense of it becoming a
| unicorn, but it probably is a viable small business or side
| project. I get the feeling that once you become a medium sized
| business, you kind of necessarily outgrow the "micro" part of
| the monicker.
| [deleted]
| stevehawk wrote:
| congrats on the emoji sale!
| andersource wrote:
| A little OT but for anyone with experience - is the negotiation
| depicted realistic / typical? The final selling price is over
| twice the buyer's initial offer and almost 150% of what they said
| at one point is their max. I know it's a textbook negotiation but
| (obviously not having too much experience negotiating) I never
| thought that's _really_ how they work in real life.
| clairity wrote:
| think of negotiations as a price discovery mechanism (auctions
| as another example) with severe information asymmetries. the
| point of the process is to learn what each side values and what
| exactly is on offer (and can be potentially offered) and how
| much value each side places on those things. price is used as
| the primary signal of value, and you learn about value as
| prices and information is exchanged in an iterated fashion.
| andersource wrote:
| Thanks! Yeah that's my idea, I guess what surprised me is the
| ranges involved. In the few times I had to negotiate (always
| as a "seller" as in salary negotiation), I would state around
| 110% of my minimum, and I was really prepared to walk away if
| the offer was below that. That worked but I guess it
| conditioned me to treat buyers' offers as 90% of their
| maximum while in reality it doesn't make sense for them to
| start there...
| clairity wrote:
| yes, i should have mentioned trust earlier, as that's even
| more important than information in negotiations. two
| parties who don't know each other will start with
| relatively low trust, so highly divergent bids are a signal
| of that. as information is shared, and assuming trust
| signals trend positive, the bids converge. also, you want
| to know early if the other party is a sucker or
| unreasonable, and to weed out lemons. all that's a direct
| consequence of our intuitive sense of fairness and value.
|
| salary negotiations are a little fraught because they're
| low trust and information-asymmetrical to start but because
| jobs are a longer term relationship, you don't want to
| trigger distrust. one of the reasons employers like to keep
| salaries/comp private is that it gives them an significant
| information advantage in negotiations. they know every comp
| package they're paying and that they've offered, as well as
| comp packages at various other companies and industry
| average info that they subscribe to. it's often
| prohibitively expensive for each worker to gather similar
| data, which creates a real disadvantage.
|
| in light of that, i'd suggest starting at 110% of what
| you'd consider a _reasonable_ maximum, not minimum, and
| have 3 justifications ready (based on value you've
| generated for other companies, your overall experience
| level, specific skills /relationships/resources you bring
| to bear, public salary/comp information, etc.) to counter
| the obvious first objections (usually on experience or
| comparative comp data). anchoring high, but not
| unreasonably so, and then negotiating with justification
| should get you a higher comp package while not triggering
| distrust. you'll also learn some important bits about the
| company which may give you reason to forego the offer
| (happened to me a couple times actually).
| SamBam wrote:
| I'm no expert, but salary negotiations may be different. If
| the rough range you're expecting is $100k, and you start
| the negotiations at $200k, they might actually take it as
| "this person has completely unrealistic opinions of
| themselves" and/or "this person is going to walk out on us
| the moment they get a better offer, so there's no point
| hiring them."
| qixxiq wrote:
| Yes.
|
| The buyer would might have been willing to pay $15,000+, but
| wanted to anchor (and start low) so went $4,500. The real max
| was introduced when the seller gave the $15,000 number...
| buyers never want to or will reveal their number (i.e. the
| $7500 was a lie.)
| andersource wrote:
| Thanks! So basically (typically, of course depending on
| circumstances) any number explicitly stated by the buyer is
| less than the true maximum and you can expect to converge on
| a higher price?
| borepop wrote:
| Normally, yes, and as was mentioned higher in the thread
| this initial figure is referred to as an "anchor," meaning
| that it has the psychological effect of implying that
| anything higher than that number is somehow a real
| concession on the buyer's part, when the reality is that
| the opening number could have just been higher. It's rather
| like when a store says "this is normally $500 but now it's
| on sale for only $250" instead of just pricing something at
| $250 in the first place. Getting to Yes, also mentioned
| above, is a useful book on negotiation.
| roofwellhams wrote:
| This looks like an ad for microacquire.com - quite shady in my
| opinion: to see any listing you need to sign up (even give
| linkedin), then you can't see any details... You got to pay
| premium, which is 290 usd a year. He says will refund if not
| happy. But to me seems more like a shady business.
| sideproject wrote:
| I do see an increasing number of projects being posted on my
| little website too
|
| https://www.sideprojectors.com
|
| The original premise of SideProjectors was to buy and sell small
| indie projects. Over the years, I've seen many many of these
| small projects (often ecommerce shops, dropshipping businesses,
| but at times quite interesting ones too) being submitted.
|
| As a side note (pun intended) - I've been also watching out for
| off-the-shelf template softwares that are being posted and making
| sure they are filtered out. As an example, you can buy a "Privacy
| respecting Google Analytics Alternative, launch your own SaaS"
| from themeforest for $49, repackaged and being sold in many
| places. Their pitches are usually similar.. "hey, I developed
| this, but haven't had time to do marketing, it has so much
| potential, just need someone to take over and start making that
| passive income".
| giarc wrote:
| I listed a project on your site, I can't remember if we found
| the seller there or not.
|
| However, good point about the pre-packaged apps. If someone
| describes it more honest, would you feel better about them? For
| example, if someone was upfront and said "I've done the work of
| putting together this site, you don't need to know the
| mechanics, you just need to run it."
| admissionsguy wrote:
| > Giving your project to a stranger on the internet is risky, so
| we used escrow.com to make the transfer.
|
| I sold a website on Flippa once. The buyer put the money on
| Escrow.com, I transferred everything over, and they went AWOL.
| What I found out is that there is no straightforward way to
| obtain the funds when it happens. Apparently there is no way at
| all except via the court system. Which would mean the only real
| protection Escrow gives is against the buyer going bankrupt (or
| using false identity, I suppose).
|
| Fortunately, they came back several weeks later with some
| nonsensical excuse and closed the transaction, but I will never
| use Escrow.com again.
| JacKTrocinskI wrote:
| Would a smart contract help avoid this kind of situation?
| x4e wrote:
| Yes, if you had an oracle [1] that was able to provide
| information on whether the transaction had completed.
|
| [1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockchain_oracle
| ericjang wrote:
| How would oracles verify semi-private business deals?
| lobocinza wrote:
| In the end its the same problem. A human has to verify.
| tzekid wrote:
| Yup. Just need to specify the conditions of what "done" or
| "delivered" looks like. After that it's basically:
| if (delivered) pay();
| avinassh wrote:
| Ha ha. This reminds me of an old project / library [0] I
| built based on a Quora answer. I wrote libraries for
| Android and iOS, also wrote a simple server component which
| could be installed on Heroku with a single click. At the
| start of the app, it would contact the server for payment
| status. If server indicated that payment has been made, it
| would function like normal. If not, it would just crash.
|
| I never used it in any of my projects nor I know anyone
| using it. I just had an itch of learning Clojure and
| building libraries for android, and iOS, so I made them.
|
| [0] - https://github.com/avinassh/little-finger
| o___ wrote:
| > Just need to specify the conditions of what "done" or
| "delivered" looks like
|
| Since it's "just" so simple, can you better explain what
| those done/delivered conditions might look like? And
| preferably how that would also be more secure than
| Escrow.com?
| calpaterson wrote:
| How do you encode that a website and assets have been
| delivered? It doesn't seem so obvious.
| hobo_mark wrote:
| _wooosh_
| calpaterson wrote:
| Ha, I see it now. Too dry and too early (in the morning)
| sashimi-houdini wrote:
| The funny thing is that a couple of comments up 2 sibling
| comments basically gave the exact same answer, but one in
| jest and one seriously. The cryptosphere really is beyond
| parody
| shaicoleman wrote:
| According to their FAQ, funds are automatically released after
| the inspection period.
|
| The inspection period can last for up to 30 days, and is agreed
| upon by all parties at the beginning of the transaction.
|
| https://www.escrow.com/support/faqs/what-if-the-buyer-forget...
|
| https://www.escrow.com/support/faqs/what-is-an-inspection-pe...
| admissionsguy wrote:
| The buyer has to mark the items as received for the
| inspection period to start.
| Quarrel wrote:
| escrow.com is a licensed escrow operator.
|
| This is how it works, they don't get to just decide the outcome
| or they'll get shutdown during their audits.
|
| This is a _good_ thing in transacting on the internet.
| [deleted]
| ambicapter wrote:
| Does escrow licensing not allow for a "transaction closed in
| 3 months or assets released to original owner" contracts?
| admissionsguy wrote:
| Should release by default when there is no dispute.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| probably the 'licensed' in licensed escrow operator
| disallows this.
| stefandesu wrote:
| Germany's biggest Craigslist-like service recently added a
| service like this for purchases that are shipped. I sold my
| previous MacBook using the system and found it really stressful
| to wait for the buyer to confirm the item. In my case, it was
| just someone who was a little bit slow and just forgot, but I
| can imagine abuse in the system. Same thing happens with PayPal
| buyer's protection.
|
| I can't think of a better system though, to be honest.
| ratww wrote:
| Yeah, other than having someone manually inspecting the
| transfer, that's kind of the best way.
|
| I've noticed that most sites end up implementing "automatic
| confirmation", but after a while they shorten the
| confirmation deadline because lots of buyers just "forget" to
| approve.
|
| I've also seen others (MercadoLibre) who have a "reputation"
| for sellers where they can get the money even before
| confirmation.
| axaxs wrote:
| A better system would have some agreed upon holding period.
| Two weeks perhaps? Enough time at least that the buyer has
| received the goods. As much as I hate Paypal, that's
| essentially what they do. They hold the funds until they've
| confirmed the item was delivered.
| bdcravens wrote:
| Mercari and Poshmark work the same way (they do release funds
| after a default amount of time if there's no response)
| ivanche wrote:
| What's the name of the service? I suppose you're not thinking
| of ebay kleinanzeigen, or?
| CallMeMarc wrote:
| Not the parent, but I think they do actually mean eBay
| Kleinanzeigen. A few months ago they added a service like
| this but afaik it's still in beta and also not available
| for all categories yet.
| artificial wrote:
| Can you post a password protected zip then?
| admissionsguy wrote:
| Might as well have them pay in advance, no? It's not a way to
| transfer a whole operational web application, in any case.
| randymonday wrote:
| For relatively "small" amount of money, I totally agree.
| However, from my experience selling a tiny project [1],
| buyers were reluctant to transfer in advance even sums that
| are below $10K. Therefore we also used Escrow.com..
|
| [1] I wrote more about my experience in my ebook -
| https://gum.co/side-project
| bendtb wrote:
| The way you deal with this in international trade is by putting
| up a irrevocable letter of credit, which against documentary
| proof (I.e. proof of quality and shipment) will release the
| sums. This have worked for millennia.
| edwinyzh wrote:
| So this issue implies that there is a startup idea? I think
| there is a technical approach to solve the issue, by providing
| a system to let the escrow service provider to inspect and
| confirm the transferring of the source code, something like
| using a remote desktop (something like a temporary VPS) to
| where both the seller and the buyer have access, and during the
| delivering of the source code, the seller upload the code,
| compile it and run the result, and all the process is recorded.
| That way, if the buyer don't mark as 'received' in a given
| period, the platform staff can check and confirm the delivery
| and close the transaction.
| adventured wrote:
| > So this issue implies that there is a startup idea?
|
| It's definitely a do things that don't scale idea. You need
| humans in the transaction confirming what's actually
| occurring. That tends to be expensive, because you also need
| them to know what they're doing, understand the broad details
| of the exchange and be trustworthy. That cost and difficulty
| of scaling is exactly why Escrow.com doesn't try to do it for
| every transaction across their system.
| bluedevil2k wrote:
| https://codekeeper.co/
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| gnopgnip wrote:
| That is how escrow works in other contexts, like real estate.
| Either both parties agree, or the escrow service holds it until
| it is resolved through the courts.
| ianhawes wrote:
| Thats how it's supposed to work.
|
| I was in a similar situation to the parent commenter. The
| buyer had deposited the funds into Escrow.com and received
| their assets. I notified Escrow.com that the business assets
| had been handed over and they awaited the response from the
| buyer - which never came.
|
| Escrow.com sends notices after 3, 7, and 10 days of
| inactivity.
|
| After 15 days the buyer requested a cancellation and
| Escrow.com notified me via email that I had 48 hours to
| provide proof that "the domain" had been transferred or the
| transaction would be cancelled and the buyer would received
| their funds back.
|
| My issue was that there was no domain transfer associated
| with this purchase. The buyer was receiving software that
| they intended to use under a new brand and thus had no use
| for the domain.
|
| I raised hell with Escrow.com. Calls, emails, assurances that
| someone would get back to me. The cancellation came on a
| Friday and no one contacted me until Tuesday. They called to
| ask if I had spoke to the buyer and then politely explained
| that they couldn't do anything because there was no domain
| attached to the sale.
| CGamesPlay wrote:
| > Which would mean the only real protection Escrow gives is
| against the buyer going bankrupt (or using false identity, I
| suppose).
|
| Well, the buyer is out of the money in any case, which is a
| pretty big protection.
| rrishi wrote:
| have to agree here
| sly010 wrote:
| No. The buyer got his assets. You are out of money.
| bena wrote:
| The buyer as well. But the buyer technically has "paid" so
| they may not be as concerned with closing out the
| transaction. If only the assets could be held in escrow as
| well, then when both elements are held by the escrow group,
| they can release to the appropriate parties.
| runako wrote:
| Domain names can be held in escrow by escrow.com. So
| theoretically it's possible to at least get that part
| back if the transaction goes south.
| bena wrote:
| I should have been more clear.
|
| It's not a matter of whether it's possible but whether
| the seller had the foresight to use the service in such a
| capacity.
|
| Because at the end of the day, an escrow is a trusted
| third party used to facilitate a trade. We typically
| think of them in terms of money because that's typically
| what they hold, but there's no good reason they can't be
| trusted with any good.
| ismayilzadan wrote:
| Any advice on actually finding the idea that is worth doing? I
| have a notion page with 20+ tiny ideas, but I still don't find
| any of them encouraging enough to spend time on. How to overcome
| this very first step?
| codingdave wrote:
| It is the same advice you hear for any other project - solve a
| problem.
|
| The projects that work are the ones that solve people's
| problems. The ones that fail are the ones that try to create
| solutions for problems people do not have.
| PUSH_AX wrote:
| To add to this, advice from people successful in this area
| really recommend solving a problem *you* have and avoid
| trying to solve problems you know exist but aren't a problem
| for you.
| cestith wrote:
| This is good advice. Problems you have yourself you
| understand better and have probably already had some
| thoughts on how to solve them. Even idle thoughts in the
| past can be really handy when it comes time to think deeper
| about solving it in code.
| hypertele-Xii wrote:
| 20 is a very small amount of ideas. Keep coming up with more,
| and they keep getting better. It's a skill like any other.
| giarc wrote:
| The real learning comes from executing on even those dumb
| ideas. I learned more from 2 dumb Shopify sites I built and
| ran then listing out ideas.
| allenu wrote:
| I don't think you'll ever know off the bat if an idea is worth
| doing. A lot of ideas sound good to you, but there are so many
| unknowns, like whether you have a suitable audience and whether
| there's a good ROI.
|
| As an exercise, you could try doing a rough design of a working
| system to get a feel for how much work it would be. On top of
| that, you could try imagining all the things that could go
| wrong and try to predict the likelihood of each. That's what I
| would do, anyway.
| samsquire wrote:
| I publish all my ideas online if you are interested. They're
| not really startup ideas though. They're just computer ideas I
| wish existed. Links in profile.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| Reading your ideas now. You are a fascinating fellow.
| Rastonbury wrote:
| If the idea is tiny, they literally should take no longer than
| 2 weeks. Just start an hour a day at night or in the morning
| and chip away an hour by hour. Managed to get a tiny idea I had
| live in 2 months doing it like this
| geomark wrote:
| I've had some luck building toy websites for the main purpose
| of trying out or practicing some tools or skills. Most
| recently was a site where I was semi-automatically collecting
| stock price data, creating and posting stock charts and
| attempting (unsuccessfully) to identify buy opportunities. It
| was on the domain BuyTheDip.com. After I was done dabbling
| the site just sat for a few years until a buyer approached
| with an attractive offer. It was during the Wall Street Bets
| frenzy so I think it might have been related. Now the domain
| redirects to a Discord group, so I guess they just liked the
| domain name.
|
| Point being, you might just keep building and dabbling and
| score a winner now and then.
| almostarockstar wrote:
| I have two solutions for you that have served me well.
|
| 1. Don't wait for the right idea. Just build a less than ideal
| idea and iterate. More than likely you will gain insight that
| leads to a better idea along the way.
|
| 2. Copy somebody else's idea. Nobody executes perfectly, and no
| two founders will execute the same way. There is always room
| for competition.
| notJim wrote:
| I have a theory that once you get something out there, it
| establishes you as a person who can ship stuff independently.
| Even if it's not a success, it'll introduce you to people who
| may help you discover better ideas. If you can build a bit of a
| brand, some people will follow you around and help promote your
| projects just because they like you.
|
| I haven't tested this yet, because I haven't shipped my
| 90%-complete project from 2 years ago yet...
| showHNshow wrote:
| Is this list of ideas public? I would be interested in reading
| them.
| codeisawesome wrote:
| I appreciate how open the dev is being and I like the article!
| But I have a moral annoyance towards username squatting,
| especially by folks who don't actually participate in the
| network...
| HighlandSpring wrote:
| As far as sensitivities go, moral an annoyance is pretty good,
| no?
| manapause wrote:
| Is the Utility to users of the service worth a possibility of
| annoyance to [dont_know_yet] down the road?
|
| Does this business model not make it easier for the little
| guys to squat themselves for a small price?
|
| I have gone on a weird rollercoaster of liking the article,
| but initially disliking the tinybusiness.
|
| My own non-involvement in social media as a person is one
| thing; but I can't help but really like the idea of creating
| a little service that could be a tinythorn in a domain
| squatters operation.
|
| Terrific work!
| mtc010170 wrote:
| I'm not sure about this, but my assumption was that the service
| provided information on the _availability_ of names.. not
| squatting. Which to me is different.
| mtc010170 wrote:
| Though I suppose one leads to the other
| jfoutz wrote:
| Totally respect this. I'm curious about your thoughts about
| pizza/pizza on infogami:reddit. Is it better to make them
| public, till someone steals them? should they be disallowed?
|
| early on, it's a free for all. grabbing the special names feels
| scummy, but I get why they're grabbed. Silent, ghost accounts,
| I don't feel are detrimental to the community. (but I'm totally
| open to education about why that sucks)
| VWWHFSfQ wrote:
| I think twitter has nearly completely de-emphasized the actual
| "@Username" handle in favor of the display name. I recently
| went to create a twitter account for an app/service that I
| launched and when I inputted my desired username "@MyCoolApp"
| it gave me basically no indication that it was already in use,
| and just silently used "@AppMyCool" and set the account display
| name to the name that I chose.
|
| It's kind of annoying since I would like to have chosen
| something different, but I'm not bothered that much about it.
| nileshtrivedi wrote:
| This is exactly why I end up making usernames non-unique in
| many of my online projects (such as learnawesome.org). It makes
| things more complex to implement, but at least nobody has to
| compromise on the online nicknames they want.
| clairity wrote:
| besides the technical implementation, duplicate usernames
| seems confusing to users, which is why i've never given it
| too much consideration. is there a reliable and obvious way
| you differentiate users in the ui? i assume the primary key
| of the user on the backend moves to something like email or
| phone number (or just a unique id key i suppose). i've seen
| some projects use a randomly generated image/sprite for this,
| which isn't as reliably obvious as i'd like (not to mention
| not as broadly accessible).
| eropple wrote:
| Discord, game platforms, etc. do this with a discriminator.
| You're not Bob, even though that's what everyone sees -
| you're Bob#1337 internal to the system, and people need
| your "full name" to locate you if you aren't already
| friends.
| clairity wrote:
| yah, have seen that too. not a fan since it really
| doesn't reduce cognitive load or complexity.
| eropple wrote:
| I don't think it practically matters. I never add people
| by it. I'm in games or in Discord servers with them and
| just right click -> add.
| aphextron wrote:
| So you've discovered domain squatting.
| rishabhkaul1 wrote:
| It's definitely not a novel idea, but given that newer social
| networks are coming up every day, there ofcourse enough takers
| for it. However, the part that I find worth questioning is, how
| much of the revenue is really recurring revenue. Why'd someone
| subscribe for more than a few months on such a service.
| Quarrel wrote:
| Interesting that microacquire was used.
|
| I struggle to take seriously a site that lists "Our team" as
| characters from Silicon Valley.
| jiofih wrote:
| Pretty sure it's a one man operation, that's just a harmless
| joke.
| giarc wrote:
| If you follow Andrew on Twitter it would probably make more
| sense. He's an interesting guy and very active on social media
| which brings a ton of traffic to his site I'm sure.
| mraza007 wrote:
| Just curious how do you find the market for your projects
| corobo wrote:
| > Could I pump out tiny SaaS starter projects and sell them at
| $10k+ a pop?
|
| Honestly I'd probably never trust a business doing this. From my
| POV they're probably just after cash from a buyer, not a good
| place for my data.
|
| I know I'm probably an outlier though, I don't think I've seen
| anyone else note a lack of privacy policy on the names one for
| example
| onlyfortoday2 wrote:
| Honestly I'd probably never trust a business doing this
|
| you would. you do it everyday....
| giarc wrote:
| I've sold a few small tiny businesses and some of the potential
| buyers are just students in their dorms with extra time on
| their hands. They have a bit of cash they can part with and
| just want to run a tiny site or Saas as a hobby more than
| anything. It's also a great way to get feet wet before they
| finally execute on that "great idea" they have :)
| dboreham wrote:
| This thread has an astroturf feel. I wonder who is making the
| money here and how?
| petercooper wrote:
| _Buyer: I think I could come up to maybe $7500 but that's about
| it._ .. then later: _Buyer: Ok at $10,500 we have a deal._
|
| I've sold a few projects in my time, but this conversation makes
| me think I should really look at having an agent represent me in
| future. The whole "I can only offer $7500" but then that turned
| into a $10500 sale just goes over my head - the communications
| skills needed are next level, and I've read _Getting to Yes_ and
| such books :-) Maybe having someone less emotionally attached to
| a project could work in negotiations to increase the price to far
| more than cover their fee?
| danvoell wrote:
| Never Split the Difference is another good book to read.
| twobitshifter wrote:
| This negotiation as written was just moving down by the same
| amount offered by the buyer, is that what the book would
| recommend as a technique? It gave a gain of $750 over
| splitting the difference from the start.
| Aken wrote:
| > This negotiation as written was just moving down by the
| same amount offered by the buyer
|
| Huh, didn't even notice. Thanks for pointing that out!
| twobitshifter wrote:
| If you continued to play it out with computers you'd run
| into Zeno's paradox. At some point the buyer stopped
| going to lower increase amount,s but it could happen in
| which case I guess you'd end up in the middle and
| quibbling over pennies.
| SamBam wrote:
| I haven't read the book, but, in general, it's not a good
| move to split the difference from the start, because there
| is usually at least one more round of back-and-forth. So
| once you've split the difference, you're already going to
| end up closer to the other person's initial bid.
|
| e.g. "I want 10,000" -> "I'll offer 5000" -> "Let's spilt
| the difference and say 7500" -> "How about 6000?" -> ...
| now you're already between 6000 and 7500.
| a1369209993 wrote:
| > "I want 10,000" -> "I'll offer 5000" -> "Let's spilt
| the difference and say 7500" -> "How about 6000?" ->
|
| "Okay, spliting the difference on that works out to 8000.
| Sounds good."
| estaseuropano wrote:
| Great book, would recommend. Not surr how often it has
| been useful for me still it is a very pleasant read. The
| main idea is to not give in so easily and to find mutual
| wins, e.g. he gives the example that he could help the
| other party get an article in a magazine - barely related
| to the deal, cost nothing for him, but was worth a lot to
| the other party.
| JohnCurran wrote:
| The book does not recommend it as a technique for starting
| a negotiation but does include a chapter on the final
| barter/haggle over price and how best to handle it
| avinoth wrote:
| In reality it's much easier. I've sold couple of my projects
| before via different mediums (one is through microacquire - the
| one OP mentioned, and one was through a connect), and the best
| way i found to go about it is to be ready to walk away from the
| deal.
|
| I know this is negotiations 101, but it's tough to put it in
| practice most of the time if one person wants a little bit more
| to see the transaction through. Surprisingly, communications
| skill doesn't play that big of a role, unless you really want
| to "sell it" most of the conversations goes the same way OP
| mentioned.
| surfsvammel wrote:
| Another great way is to make sure there are multiple prospect
| buyers and have them bid against each other.
| giarc wrote:
| On the flip side, an agent is motivated to close the deal not
| necessarily get the highest price. If the agent gets 10% cut,
| they get $750 or $1050. Is $300 worth potentially souring the
| deal?
| snovv_crash wrote:
| That means you need a better incentive structure for the
| agent. Like 30% above a certain bar, for example.
| SamBam wrote:
| That's a common complaint about seller's agents in real
| estate.
|
| Unsure what the solution is. A seller can, of course, say
| that they refuse to sell for under $X, though that could
| potentially still be leaving money on the table if the buyer
| might have been willing to offer $X+Y.
| giarc wrote:
| A reserve price just sets a target for the agent and they
| negotiate to that target. I'm sure there are some
| commission based structures out there that address this
| inbalance.
| jjeaff wrote:
| I think one better way to handle commissions for home sales
| is to have no commission for the first $x of the price. X
| being a price that it would be very easy to sell at, a
| price low enough that the property would just immediately
| sell without much effort because it is too low. Then apply
| a much larger commission percentage to the amount it sells
| for above that "easy sale" price. That way, the seller and
| the agent actually have more closely aligned incentives and
| thus motivation for the agent to try and get that last $5k,
| or whatever.
| robocat wrote:
| Have you negotiated this?
|
| Or have you ever seen an agent offer this?
|
| To explain the issue in detail for others that don't
| understand the dynamics:
|
| A flat percentage is the standard where I live. Selling
| agents are only incentivised to get as many sales through
| as quickly as possible, and the agent will deceive and
| cheat to achieve that goal. Selling 20 homes at 5%
| discount is almost double the earnings (commissions) for
| the agent than selling 10 homes.
|
| Agents make wayyyy more by selling more houses quickly
| than they ever could by spending more time selling each
| home to get a few percent more.
|
| Yet the person selling the home really really cares about
| that few percent because their home is often highly
| leveraged: if they have paid 20% of principal and get 1%
| more from the sale, that is actually 5% extra return
| (which can easily be equivalent to avoiding many extra
| years of work before a home is paid off).
| ijustwanttovote wrote:
| We have a similar background. I do tiny projects on the side and
| I did ice cream for retail and wholesale. Pretty cool to find
| like minded individuals.
| ZephyrBlu wrote:
| 10k for that app seems insane.
| shash7 wrote:
| Usually, the price is for the email list, backlinks to the
| domain name, various social accounts with followers, etc. The
| price for the actual app is a small part of the equation.
| ZephyrBlu wrote:
| They have ~2500 emails, no socials and seemingly only a few
| backlinks to startup listing websites.
|
| That does not seem worth 10k to me. What do you think?
| duiker101 wrote:
| if it's making $350/month, that's $12.6k for 3 years. I
| think a general rule of thumb for website valuations is 3
| years of ARR so seems about right. That's assuming that the
| website will never grow and will never has any other
| possible income source.
| sombremesa wrote:
| Never grow? It will shrink. The buyer got robbed. Churn
| is one the numbers investors watch like a hawk in a SaaS,
| and I can't imagine this service retaining more than 30%
| of their users over several months.
| randymonday wrote:
| My side-project only had ~500 email subscribers, no MRR,
| but pretty good domain authority because it marketed
| itself. And still it got acquired only after 3 months!
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| for how much?
| fuzzylama wrote:
| Is that insane? I'm not willing to put in more than 1-2 months
| of work for that price. Can you really make an interesting app
| in less time than that?
| onlyfortoday2 wrote:
| nah its really not.
| meheleventyone wrote:
| You'd be amazed at how much projects with a little more effort
| put into them go for then! There's a level of companies with
| niche products and potentially no revenue being sold for tens
| of millions. Granted this is partly aqui-hire but 10k is very
| little money in the grand scheme.
| tomlagier wrote:
| Seems like a pretty low ROI to me.
|
| Generously, we're talking about ~$100/hour, my guess is it was
| actually a lot less than that, maybe as low as half or a third,
| and this is for an idea that got some traction.
|
| That could be a good wage for some groups of people, but my guess
| is you'd find a much better one either a) growing something to a
| larger size or b) working for someone else.
|
| If you're really interested in building these tiny products
| though, then it could be a way to support yourself doing what
| you're interested in. I just wouldn't generalize this strategy to
| "this is a good way to make a living".
|
| On the flip side, I bet doing this sort of thing really sharpens
| the entrepreneurs skillset - identifying good ideas, quickly
| bootstrapping a product, and negotiating for funding, so I bet
| you're getting some pretty big personal levelups as you go.
| j45 wrote:
| Building something that people want and will pay for has a
| compounding effect far beyond trading time for an hourly rate.
|
| Sometimes what you build can be early, and it needs to simmer
| for a while or flesh out. There is a real opportunity time cost
| for sitting on things to ripen that someone else may be in a
| place to work.
|
| It's really shouldn't be worded as a backhanded compliment that
| if it's really what you want to do. There are people who have
| built and scaled things and have decided what's good for them,
| and how it's good for them.
|
| Having 10m on a 100m exit or 10m on a 30m exit, or 1m of 1-2m
| exit is all the same to the bank account, maybe not ones self
| image.
|
| Being an exited founder at any dollar amount puts a person in
| very small company, and learning to exit small deals can also
| teach one to be prepared on what to look out for on the bigger
| deals. This is probably the biggest thing, if entrepreneurship
| is in your blood you want to make sure you're well rounded and
| prepped for those biggest outcomes of your life.
|
| Still, it's fun to see what you're made of and see how much you
| can make of nothing. One can imagine what is possible with $
| efficiency.
| leodriesch wrote:
| This is very interesting. I only really heard about these billion
| dollar aquisitions like Slack, I didn't know that there is an
| online marketplace for buying startups in the range of a few
| thousand dollars. That's awesome!
| kijin wrote:
| It might be a stretch to call them startups. Often it's just a
| domain name with an idea attached to it. It might come with a
| proof-of-concept weekend project if you're lucky, but you'll
| probably need to rewrite that app anyway.
|
| A few thousand dollars doesn't sound bad for a decent domain
| name and an interesting idea into which someone has put a few
| days' worth of time and effort. A functional webapp would be
| nice but not strictly necessary.
| giarc wrote:
| I've sold a few projects like this, ranging from $1,000 to
| $20,000. Some were a week or two of my time, versus the $20,000
| exit was 3 years that I'm sure in this market would have been
| worth 3x that amount (such is life).
|
| I don't have time to devout 40 hrs/week to projects, but can
| spend a few hours here and there. So for me, if I can turn some
| free time into cash and scratch that itch, all the better.
| SamBam wrote:
| Everything I've seen around here has been from the seller's
| perspective.
|
| Has anyone here bought a tiny startup/project like that?
|
| If not, is there some demographic not represented on HN who is
| buying these?
| jraby3 wrote:
| I've purchased several websites on empireflippers.com in the
| $10-30k range. Happy to answer any questions.
| n4bz0r wrote:
| What kind of projects are these?
|
| I'd say that $10-30k range is blogs with high search
| positions and established affiliate partnerships, but
| that's just my uneducated guess.
|
| BTW: empireflippers.com seems to be down right now,
| possibly due to all the hype caused by HN audience.
| randymonday wrote:
| I sold my tiny project on microacquire marketplace, last time I
| checked there were even more low priced projects there, indeed
| it's an awesome way to experience an "EXIT" on a smaller scale
| :)
| codingdave wrote:
| Something feels off if I need an account to even see their
| listings. I cannot tell if they are legit, or just a landing
| page for someone trying to get rolling.
| gregn610 wrote:
| not just an email, your linkedin profile is required too.
| randymonday wrote:
| I also looked on indiemaker and flippa, but microacquire
| was the only one where you dont need to pay to list your
| project and talk to potential buyers.. big plus
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