Best place to sell an early SaaS product?

What a coincidence! I started paying attention to shopify apps about 3 years ago, when tyler tringas started writing about storemapepr, I went trough every single app in the store looking for "the one", after a lot of research I discovered "local delivery" app and thought this is it, I am building it, I have my app idea.

Back then I was still in "I dont have time phase" so ended up doing nothing, but I kept an eye one the platform.

I came back after a while, just in time when "pickup + delivery" app lunched, and I though to myself, not only did they improve upon idea but they also published polished app, got featured on the front page "new apps section", collected great reviews, and so I thought opportunity has passed by

Now why does all of this matter? For those who are not familiar with platform shopify apps went trough few phases

1. You build app, set price to 19/month, and you are in business, there is simply no enough apps

2. Race to the bottom, few companies emerge in the ecosystem, each has multiple apps, they cross promote one app from another. Price goes to 0/month for basic to 19/month for advance features (per app)

3. Race to the bottom continued. With few companies in space doing exact same thing there is only one thing that is certain, prices have to keep going down, new pricing model is 0/month for basic features to 19/month for advance features and you get all apps for one 19/month subscription

4. Ok, we need to learn how to market these apps, we cant keep lowering the prices, well maybe we could just publish these same apps on other platforms (wordpress, wix, squarespace) -> this I would say is current phase

5. Since non of these companies have marketing expertise beyond publishing app in the app store I dont think they will ever reach this phase, but this would be becoming sumo of ecommerce, the only problem is that a lot of the apps in their ecosystem are the ones sumo has, but with a bit of focus on ecommerce and savvy marketing opportunity is still there.

Back to your app. I did quick search for shopify apps, and it seems like only one of these companies has built its own "pickup/delivery" app, which is a bit unexpected considering the fact that "pickup + delivery" app is featured in tools section, and has unusually high starting price for shopify apps.

I dont think "pickup + delivery" will manage to avoid 4 phases above, but if you play it right you could make a decent profit.

I would make a guess that some (not insignificant) number of your signups comes from people who would like to use "pickup + delivery" but dont really need all the features so opted for your app at half the price.

This is something you need to find out before you sell, try to talk to people who signed up, ask them why they picked your app, talk to those who became paying customers and try to figure out why your app? Try experimenting with higher price, say 14, next best price is 20 so I dont think you will experience any drop in conversion rates even if they went for it just for the price, you cant compete with free option anyway.

Try to see how many pickups paying customer are getting vs non paying, try to offer 30% of that number for free (if it is significant enough), if you average paying customer gets only 5 pickups a month you dont want to advertise that, shopify users dont understand percentages, the idea is get them to use the app, as they grow there is a decent chance they might convert to customer, though be aware this may increase you support load.

Lets say you keep getting 30 leads a month and convert 10 of them and you increase price to 14, you also wait for the last minute to sell, you keep riding this wave for at least 5 months and then sell last minute.

Now lets do the numbers 10 * 14 * 5 * 12 = 8400 ARR -> at 3x multiple you are looking at 25k selling price, and since there are a lot of buyers in this range and you are in growth phase you might get it, worst case scenario you are looking at 2x so 17k, not that bad for just 5 months of waiting and doing nothing.

As I mentioned in my first post brokers are unlikely to take such a small up with no earning track record, you will also have to pay them their fees, it might be worth contacting them but I would opt for direct sale. Go too meetup.com and try to find groups where a lot of developers hang out, try to get a word out, someone will most certainly be interested in buying, start negotiating with them, but negotiate exclusively on ARR multiple of last months revenue, if they complain play "App is still in the growth phase" card.

If you decide to sell right now, at 100 MRR, I dont think you will get much, I wold make a guess that you could make more money by selling it as a "it would cost you this much to build" then at a multiple.

If you decide to sell it right away I would say go for marketers and sell them on it would cost you this much to build and you get revenue "for free", if you are willing to wait 5 months (which is what I would do), sell it to developer as they can build integrations for other platforms at "no cost" and thus perceived value is likely to be higher.

I dont think anyone will accept partnering at this early stage, marketer might but at such a low subscription price and such a niche app they cant bring almost any value to the table, as for a developer it is not worth taking risk, they would still have to get paperwork done so you dont sue them latter, they might as well just build it them self at half the time zero price and zero legal risk.

So I would say go for a cash upfront but wait few months for revenue to grow at least a bit.

How much are you looking to get for this? Probably some interested buyers on the forum.