How I sold for 250k and why it didn't made me happy

Hello fellow readers of hacking and independence. With this post I‘d like to share my story. I invested a lot to spare time into my StartUp, sold on the beginning of it‘s success for 250k and how it all went down since then.

If it inspires others and one can learn something out of it I am glad to give something back to this incredible community.

Ready for takeoff

It was right after finishing school when I figured out that niche communities are a big deal on the internet. I just started a 9-5 job at a corporate and had to learn how to get things done. Soon I figured out that I was not alone to struggle with certain learnings on how to code with the framework they provided etc. Together with a colleague we came up with the idea to start a discussion board on exactly these „getting started“ topics. At the beginning it was just us ping-ponging questions and answers. But apparently google liked what we had to offer and it attracted more and more guests, which turned out to be productive contributors. The community grew by the hundreds and the topics discussed moved to a more detailed and profound level. Until today I don’t know how, but this attracted companies and out of the sudden we received mail with inquiries like „can we place ads for our products on our community“. It felt like low hanging fruits to take the money.

This was the time when we took it to the next level. We persuaded friends to jump on board and got started with some heavy lifting. We reinvested all money we earned and a lot of our time and adding services like job postings, project postings, company profiles. On the marketing side we pushed our network and I found myself spreading flyers at events.

And it was great! We grew organically and planned to make it our cash cow!
Until …

The big shot

One day, around two years after we started, we were approached by friend of a friend. This someone, let‘s call him Ed for sake of simplicity, had an head hunter business and stated that he would like buy into our cause. Ed was eloquent, generous and somehow trusted by our friend. He offered us 250k payed off in monthly rates, in exchange for our community. We just had to do our part in migrating everything to them and keep around in the community until the transition was made. You can‘t imagine the excitement. How big our egos grew, telling friends and family that we will make a fortune. After all these nights of hacking we felt like we deserved it - so we grasped for the easy money.

How it went down

Lawyers drafted a contract, we crossed checked it with an independent lawyer team. Then had a great joined dinner, where everyone signed the deal. All was good for the first months on our end. But the members of our community were not so happy - not because of the fact that we sold out, but rather that Ed decided to rebrand everything under a new domain and underlying technology. And you know it: users are just people that grew into their habits. Eds initiative changed how to contribute and exchange with each other - so some key users the went on strike. They blew off some steam publicly in the community. Ed and ourselves did our best to mitigate. Hanging on the phone with our top contributors, listening to their feedback, improved here and there and shared incentives wherever needed.

Some months later, Eds payment was due. Us calling him ended up in excuses like „I'll inform my bank to wire the money“. And we really believed it for two other months until he started to accuse us that we have fake users, there is no real traffic. All of this because his plans of cross-selling his HR services into our community didn‘t work out.

So we ended up with a lawyer and he did his magic for an impressive hourly rate with the result, that both parties could keep a copy of the community. By this time months have passed. Users just settled with the first change and now the next one was coming as we restarted with the initial community concept.

But the momentum was gone, all of us were exhausted - we felt like Ed played us pretty bad. The team quit and I kept going for a while because I felt the community deserved better, but it wasn‘t nearly the same.

The end?

From this moment I kept distance from indie hacking or startup life and focused solely on my 9-5 job and to have a good time beyond that. Only helping out friends in need.
But one can‘t hide from it‘s passion for too long. I can hear the sirens sing a song of building something for fun and profit.

Thanks for reading my story. It is good to have that off my chest.

What I‘d tell my younger self:

• Watch your ego. Yes, you have attention by people throwing money at you, but don't let this blind you.
• Never sign a first contract proposal. Talkt to competitive bidders and check their reactions.
• Failure is not the end. Stand up, dust off and learn from of it.