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38 Comments

How I Sold My 1st Business ๐Ÿฅณ๐Ÿฅ‚

what happened

Earler this week, I sold 3 products to a PE firm based in San Francisco.

The products:

how it happened

On Feb 22nd at midnight, the Bay Area PE firm reached out via email.

Well, it wasn't "the firm", but the founder of the firm.

And, it wasn't really much a "firm" because he started it a few months ago.

But, he was an impressive dude. Fun fact: a few years ago, he sold his content business to Tencent for $2M, at 18 years old!

In his email, he shared his vision for building an ecosystem of PM education products. Products that would help upcoming PMs advance in their careers.

It's a vision that resonated with me because...I'm a new PM starting out in my career.

And with those 3 products, I was unknowingly already building that ecosystem.

But unfortunately, I was not maintaining them very well.

With my last semester of college, my job, and other projects dividing my time, I've been doing the bare minimum to grow them.

And, I've been working on them alone which makes it worse because I didn't have anyone to feel accountable to.

So, bringing on a partner to help grow these products to their full potential felt like a great idea.

So, after:

  • 17 days
  • 71 exchanged emails
  • 2 Zoom calls

the acquisition papers were signed ๐ŸŽ‰

what's next

The 3 products were combined into 1 business. And, I sold 51% of that.

The vision is an ecosystem of PM education products. And my new partner wants to get us to 10k MRR and beyond.

Having a partner will definitely help. Being a solopreneur is cool and all, but it's hard fighting dragons on your own.

We'll be creating consistent content for the newsletter and the interview series. And we're going to give Product Checklist a makeover. We'll also release more products and services relating to PM education down the line.

The future is looking pretty awesome, can't wait for what's next :)

(๐Ÿ“Œ Btw, I learned a few things from the whole acquisition experience. For the sake of keeping this post short, I turned it into another IH post. You can find it here ๐Ÿ‘‰ 5 lessons I learned from selling my 1st business )


FAQs

Why give up 51%?

Here's my answer to that question.


Happy to answer anymore Q's in the comments. Thanks for reading! ๐Ÿ™

  1. 2

    Congrats! I must say I was also happy to learn about Bproduct Checklist, it's dope.

    1. 2

      thanks Ali! ๐Ÿ™Œ Glad you like it โ€” Planning to make it even better in the future. Stay tuned :)

  2. 2

    Congrats pal! Can't wait for the future

    1. 1

      thank you thank you amigo! ๐Ÿฅ‚

  3. 2

    Congrats! What an awesome feat, can't wait to see the new content that you will release together

    1. 1

      thank you thank you! ๐Ÿค— โ€” will be good I promise haha

  4. 2

    This is awesome! I remember how tough it was running my first company solo. I tried so hard to find a co-founder but was never able to find the right person. Sounds like you found a great parter and got some cash out of it. Canโ€™t beat that!

    1. 1

      hahah thank you thank you! ๐Ÿ™ and yeah I feel like I got a lot out the deal, so Iโ€™m happy about that

  5. 2

    This is very cool. And it shows the power of focusing in on niching on a specific topic.

    1. 1

      thanks Rosie! ๐Ÿ™Œ and yup exactly

  6. 2

    Congrats! Great success :)

    1. 1

      thanks Yaro :)

    1. 1

      ๐Ÿค™๐Ÿ˜

  7. 2

    This is super awesomes! Happy for you and congrats!! :)

    1. 1

      thanks Claudia! ๐Ÿ˜๐Ÿ™Œ

  8. 2

    Congratulations, Anthony!

    1. 2

      thanks dude! ๐Ÿ˜

  9. 2

    Congratulations! I have an experience selling to a PE and itโ€™s much worse than this. PE have some negative press... but this example tells us that it all depends on the people behind it.

    Thanks for sharing the experience.

    1. 2

      thank you thank you :) and yeah process was swift which Iโ€™m super happy about

      what product did you sell to PE?

      1. 2

        It was more a service company.
        starloopstudios.com

        1. 2

          thats still really dope man! Congrats on that ๐Ÿพ

          1. 1

            Thanks, man. Now getting ready for working on the next one ๐Ÿ˜

            1. 1

              Niceee! Any idea what itโ€™s gonna be?

              1. 2

                Not yet. Iโ€™m examining ideas. But it should be something more scalable and less people-intensive. We have70 employees now, that's a a lot of headaches if you want to grow it further...itโ€™s doable, but not fun.

                1. 2

                  wow 70! that's insane, props to you ๐Ÿ‘

                  wishing you lots of luck on your next project :) whatever it is, you'll probably kill it ๐Ÿ’ช

                  1. 2

                    Yes, but never forget that number of employees is a vanity metric. The company had good margins though :-)

                    Thanks for your positive energy. That fuels me! ๐Ÿ’ช

    1. 1

      thanks man! :)

  10. 1

    How you created these websites? Is it weblow?

    1. 1

      Yup, Product Checklist & PM News were built on a Webflow.

      The Product Person landing page was built using umso.com

      1. 1

        Thank you! Did you use any specific template on a Webflow?

  11. 1

    Looks like you sold it for peanuts if you don't share the details of the financials.
    Perhaps, enough for a college student to get by. Congrats!

  12. 1

    PM means Product Marketing?

    1. 1

      Product management

      1. 2

        Alright, and congrats sir!

        1. 1

          thank you thank you :)!!

  13. 1

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