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My app built with no-code, RemoteQuiz has been acquired!

Hey Everyone,

Quick update from me on what I've been up to with RemoteQuiz for the last few months!

Tl;dr:

Started building a no-code based Zoom Quiz app in April, got first 1000+ users and very slight profitability with paying customers. Just acquired by a new buyer through MicroAcquire in a simple 2 week process.

Getting the idea + building in no code

Like lots of us I found myself having lots of Zoom quizzes with friends as Covid-19 lockdown started in April in the UK.

To keep myself busy while stuck at home I decided to build a simple web app to make playing these quizzes easier. This was a fun side project for me to work on in the evenings and weekends.

I've built tons of no code apps on Bubble.io and went with that for the build - it really is incredible how quickly you can put together decent apps with that platform now - at an unbelievably low cost.

Essentially the app shows all players the same question and then collects and scores everyones answers automatically. I spent a load of time making fun quiz templates but people could also make their own.

RemoteQuizz Gif

I shared the app on Twitter and to my surprise it took off with about a hundred people signing up in the first week or so!

I didn't have any paid plans at all and everything was pretty basic. Within a month I'd added a premium tier with a bunch of extra features like Giphy support, I decided to charge a flat $10/month to keep it simple.

I hired one of my amazing creative friends to do a bunch of custom illustrations for the app which really gave it it's own character.

RemoteQuizz Illustrations

First paying customers

I was super excited when my first few customers upgraded to paying accounts, there really is nothing quite like having people pay you for something you've poured your heart in to and made.

After another month the app was breaking even and just nudging over into being profitable. Given the whole thing ran on Bubble & Sendgrid there wasn't a huge cost base, with operating costs under $100/month to keep it all running.

By July I had around 1,500 users with around 13k questions answered through the app which was awesome. Users had also made around 100 custom quiz templates with their own games.

I started to get signups from big companies (and even governments!) with staff using the app to play team quizzes in the office, which was a bit of a sign of a future direction the app could go in.

Acquisition + the transfer process

Fast forward to a few weeks ago and I decided to list it for sale on MicroAcquire.com to see if anyone would be interested in buying it.

Andrew from MicroAcquire was super helpful and helped me through the whole process of listing the app and getting featured in their newsletter. The whole listing process is super easy, pretty much just hooking up your Stripe account and writing a nice description. You can verify your metrics (GA, User numbers etc) with a couple of screenshots.

To my amazement I had a huge flood of enquiries from people interested in buying the app. There is obviously a huge market for early stage apps with a little bit of traction for people to take forward.

I had around 70 enquiries, 3 serious offers and one which went through to completion.

The sale process itself was amazingly straight forward. I had around 4 zoom calls with the buyer to run through the logic and backend of the app and how everything was connected.

We had a checklist of things to hand we had to work through

  • Transferring the Bubble app
  • Moving the domain and ensuring DNS / Cloudflare was all configured correctly
  • Migrating all the email templates to a new SendGrid account
  • Transferring ownership of the Stripe account
  • Managing the payment through Escrow.com - payment released once everything had been transferred and the buyer is satisfied.
  • Sign a simple contract to confirm transfer of ownership

Handover Zoom CallMe on the final Zoom call with RemoteQuiz's new awesome new owner Jerry!

Overall it was unbelievably smooth - this has to be one of the major benefits of building a No-Code app. Not only is the process of building the app super straight forward and quick - it's also easy to transfer to a new owner as everything is documented within the workflows themselves.

What's next

I'm going to write a more detailed blog post going through all the processes and figures in more detail but just wanted to share this with the community first.

Thanks again to the amazing IndieHackers community who constantly keep me inspired with all the amazing things you're all building.

Would love to answer any questions anyone has about the sales process or the no-code aspects of the project!

In the meantime I've started work on my next app, can't wait to repeat this process 😄

  1. 5

    Nice! You mind sharing for how much you sold it for?

  2. 3

    What an amazing story. Thanks for sharing.

  3. 2

    Hey James, congrats and good luck for the new adventures.

    This is so motivating for all indie hackers. I hope you release more details about how much time you spent and what the monthly/valuation multiplier for this acquisition is.

  4. 2

    Great success story @jamesdevonport. Congrats on the sale !!

  5. 2

    Congrats! Thanks for sharing.

  6. 2

    Congrats, thanks for sharing your story. Looking forward to reading your detailed post about this journey.

  7. 2

    This is an amazing story, and what we're all essentially striving for!
    Great motivation and thanks for sharing!

  8. 2

    I loved reading this. Congrats!

  9. 2

    This is amazing! So cool what you can do with no-code!

  10. 2

    Nice one James.

    Also, the custom illustrations are a good shout. I don't think people realise how much a bit design really helps products stand out. I did this for Ministry of Testing and got so much love for it over the years.

    And so cool that the new owner is on Indie Hackers too. 😊

    1. 1

      I agree, it's often so tempting to go for templates when starting out but adding those custom illustrations really made a difference for me this time so I will definitely be doing it again.

      Was awesome the buyer was also a Indie Hacker!

  11. 2

    This is fantastic motivation and some helpful resources for newbies such as myself. Congrats and can't wait to see the in depth blog post!

  12. 2

    Priceless Post. Keep rocking.

  13. 2

    Congrats! Cool to hear about the process. Would you recommend bubble.io?

    1. 1

      Absolutely! It's been a total game changer for me. I've built 3 apps totally on my own now and it's unbelievable what you can do with it. I must have saved a fortune in development costs by building and testing things on my own rather than hiring someone.

      1. 1

        How long have you been using bubble? Your story is such an inspiration to do a deeper dive and actually learn how to use this tool.

  14. 2

    Huge congrats James! :)

    1. 2

      Thanks for building such a great platform to make buying & selling these kinds of companies easier. Can't wait to buy something or sell again on MicroAcquire :D

      1. 2

        Do you work for them? Or just that in love haha. Regardless, huge congrats to ya

  15. 1

    Wow, super inspiring.
    Can't wait to see what happens next and the process.

    I use bubble myself.

    With lots of project ideas (too many).
    Anyway, congratulations.

  16. 1

    That's super hype bro! Well Done!

  17. 1

    Congrats man! This is what No-Code twitter is all about!

  18. 1

    Thanks for sharing. Awesome! By the way, did you have any coding background before using Bubble or creating this app?

    1. 1

      No I have never been a professional programmer, I have tried to get my head around it many times and failed! Bubble was such a game changer for me as it let me build what I wanted without having to hire other people to do it

  19. 1

    Amazing, thanks for sharing! What did you use the custom illustrations for?

    1. 1

      Thank you! They were used throughout the marketing site and app for explaining how things work :)

  20. 1

    Congrats! How long did it take to build remote quiz? I've had a similar idea but different and would love to know how long it took? And if you have any resources to help?

    1. 2

      It took about a week to build the initial version in the evenings, but I carried on making small improvements for the next few months too. You can get something working very quickly :)

      1. 1

        This comment was deleted 4 years ago.

  21. 1

    Congratulations!!! Anything you're planning to do differently on your next go-around that you learned from this? Are you able to share the purchase price?

    1. 1

      Yes I learnt a lot about customer acquisition on this project so definitely going to be applying that to the next one. I'll share more on the figures on my blog post, this definitely was a 'micro acquisition' in scale though 😊

  22. 2

    This comment was deleted 2 years ago.

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