Just acquired a little SaaS tool from an Indie Hacker!
First post! Just acquired a little SaaS for SaaS (essentially paid the MVP dev costs)
1st new project since I started a niche SaaS for maid services back in 2013. And it's the first since I discovered Indie Hackers (I'm non-technical but appreciate so much of the stuff I read here!)
We've used exit flow software for some time, with great results, and I didn't feel like anyone was leading the way marketing these tools to other SaaS founders.
I reached out to a couple solutions I found and quickly connected with Kevin (on Twitter which I'm also new to), an Indie Hacker who built one back in 2017
Over the next couple of days my partner did quick due diligence and I incorporated a holding company (thanks Stripe Atlas ;-) )
We used Chase and did the transfer on a Zoom call, no escrow
Planning a bit of a revamp to the system later this month but wanted to share as it's our first acquisition and I'm pumped for it :-D
Congrats! What's your goal now that you've acquired it? And why acquire something vs starting something new from scratch?
The man himself! Thanks for putting all this together!
Great questions. Goals would be to personally walk about 50 people through getting it all set up to better identify what I don't know I don't know.
After that definitely going to be asking a lot of questions in the growth channel as I expect marketing this to be very different from my primary SaaS
"And why acquire something vs starting something new from scratch?"
Had a mental road block around starting something new right now. Thought it would take too long and require too much work, though I'm seeing more and more how much I have to do even with what I just acquired.
I guess on a personal note I have an easier time being creative with editing things that exist vs designing from nothing.
Also, my primary company, ZenMaid, did actually create a new SaaS from scratch to be released this month and seeing the work that went into that made me wonder if going through the start up effort again (particularly around finding the right tech help) was going to be worth the effort and frustration
Love this. I'm also intrigued by the "niche SaaS product" that you built for maid services. Would you mind sharing a little bit more about that one?
Hey Grant, that'd be ZenMaid.com - we provide simple scheduling software for maid services and are probably the top brand in the market at this point though our revenue doesn't quite reflect that yet ($70k MRR pre-COVID, about $60k MRR at the moment)
Happy to answer any specific questions you have about that :-)
Sweet, good luck with it! I bet you have plans for it piling up in your head ;)
So many :-D Got a notebook and whiteboard filled out with notes on how to market this thing + working on product mock up improvements next week!
Hey Amar, congrats!
"We've used exit flow software for some time,"
What's exit flow software?
It's your client's experience when they wish to cancel your service. Lots of people just have a cancel button that shuts down the account at the end of the billing cycle.
But there's so much more that can be done at that point to potentially retain the client or to gather great feedback to prevent others cancelling in the future :-)
oh got it.
man, I will tell you though, nothing makes me hate a service more than when I can't easily cancel.
In my personal and professional life as a developer I spin up and spin down services as I need them. Any friction to that experience makes me run for the hills and makes me want to leave bad reviews as well as scream into a pillow.
So many reasons not to make it hard to cancel.
I 100% agree, that'd be a dick move
Consider a scenario though where you're on the fence about cancelling. Would you mind if I offered you 75% off for 3 months with 1 click to stay on board? If you say/click no, you're automatically cancelled.
Is that going to leave the same overwhelmingly negative feeling for you?
Nope, I wouldn't mind that, as long as I have an out :)
I want to cancel =>
=> Are you sure? here's a sweet discount
=> dope, I'm back in.
=> Nah, it's not you, it's me.
Good luck!
Where did you find the project?
Did you try some other marketplaces?
Hey Semy, I reached out to a specific SaaS I was interested in buying but got turned away. Went to a few competitors the day after and quickly connected with Kevin.
Might keep an eye on marketplaces in the future but in this case I had a solid vision of the problem/solution I wanted to work on right now :-)
Sounds reasonable. Thanks! :)
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"My worry is I sell this thing (not SongBox, something else) and then I get back in the mail "I thought it did this and did this... and had this feature and had that feature" etc etc."
This is the buyer's responsibility before purchasing. If you sell to them and they don't have an agreement to continue working with you then it's not your problem that it doesn't do XYZ. Honestly though, I seriously doubt that you would sell to someone if you didn't think they had an understanding for what the product did. Don't think you're worrying about anything 'real' here ;-)
Legally you're exactly buying the codebase and other assets. You're not buying the features you think it does :-)
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