How I sold my app for +$100k via email (and why I regret it)
This is the story of my second biggest regret in life. Don't make the same mistakes I made. *** “You want to do what now?”About 8 years ago, being young and naive, I decided I wanted to build apps for a living. My dad was not happy about it. As
shadowysupercoder.com
Nice read, I like that you have included emails and everything, full transparency.
I see many indie hackers selling too soon. --> It happens quite often nowadays.
Yeah this is as transparent as I could tell the story without revealing my identity :)
Yup I see it a lot now, indie hackers that have a great thing going and think they can easily replicate it and decide to sell. They often discount luck and timing in the equation.
This is pretty genius:
Yes when you start building a product I think the feedback is way more valuable than any money you could get :)
Ah, that good ol' quid pro quo, Clarice.
I would suggest people just let things like this run sideways, just answer the tech support calls and emails and ignore it except for keep-alive efforts and grabbing the cash as it comes in. I've had an app in slow decline for ages that every month spits out a couple grand while costing a few hundred and we are just letting it run until it gets to break even, then we'll kill it. Might as well milk it for what it's worth if you cant get a decent multiple.
Haha, great read. Not sure you should regret it, seems like you had a good time for the most part - and walked away with some spending money.
What was the app called? Would love to have a look at it.
Yeah I made peace with it by now. And you're right, it was mostly a good time, and I learned a hell of a lot.
Unfortunately can't tell you the app name for now (the reason I could write this story so candidly is because it's written pseudonomously)
I would regret it because it was sold for too low! Only 2 years of revenue, cashed out early. Even when there is no growth potential, the author could just maintain it like the buyer did and get revenue year after year. If he made other apps, he could use the original app to get initial users. Like he said, an app in the app store is real estate.
Yeah there were some very good competitors at the time which was another reason to sell, but in hindsight that's a really bad reason..