Show IH: Crovl has 15K users in less than 5 months, and 0 MRR, but now it's SOLD

I have shared the entire journey i.e going from idea to now SOLD status on IH and on Medium.

It was such a unique journey, good start for the year and an incredible experience for me.

I only started in the mobile apps space 5 months ago. And now...

Crovl is SOLD and I’m so excited to see what lies ahead in the future. I first struggled a bit to find the best place to sell. I came across:

• Empire Flippers — Need to have $1000+MRR, not yet there on the Empire spot.
• Micro Acquire — Too big for Crovl to be micro
• Flippa — I have to list for a fee and also share a percentage commission called success fee. Nice business model to attract serious buyers but I didn’t think it was worth it for my case.
• Indie Maker — Listing is free, but you have to pay to view the interested buyers. A percentage of the sale price has to be paid to the platform. I searched for my own project after listing it but it was hard to find. The site was also not mobile optimized.
• Side Projectors — Was the best place for me to sell the project. No listing fees, no success commissions, no hidden fees whatsoever. However, ads will be shown on the marketlace and on my listings.

I didn’t mind ads on my listing and listed with Side Projectors. The project was right on the homepage and I started sharing it on my personal Twitter handle, here on Indie Hackers and on Medium. Each contributed to views and engagement. Side Projectors also supported the project by tweeting about it and it was automatically showcased on the most visible parts of the site, like Trending block for example.

There were 8 proposals from the interested buyers and I made the deal with an amazing person. The decisive factor was the interest shown by the winning buyer, and not money to be honest.

I was ready to sell at a loss and move on because selling and attending calls with the interested buyers was taking time and had to negotiate in between. But luckily, I have sold it for a nice profit and didn't spend too much time selling it, it sold itself on the Side Projectors marketplace.

Lessons and takeaways:

• Don't kill when you can sell. I really wanted to shut it down and focus on my other projects, which are plenty. But I listened to a friend and decided to sell instead. It took some time? Yes. Was it worth it? Yes.
• You never know the value unless someone tells you. I valued the app at $50 but a friend valued it at $200, but interested buyers valued it for even more.
• Be patient. I could have sold on day one of listing it for less, a buyer was ready to pay and shared their interest to buy immediately. But I waited for a few more days and I meet a really good person. I'm sure if I waited for even more I could have got another good deal but I'm satisfied with the current decision.
• You can sell even if you're at $0MRR. Your project's worth is not its MRR, it goes way beyond that for sure. Your project's potential = its worth.
• Probably an unpopular and controversial take - there was nothing in courses, ebooks and others - just do it. If you have read each of the posts on this project, you might know that I didn't anything special at all. It was just common sense stuff like listening to your friends when they say something that makes sense. Or optimizing store listing for keywords, in fact just words that use to search for you. Or sharing about your project like normal people do? Five or six years younger me could have done this. Don't get stuck in some learning loop, get outta there and do it instead. Spend hours of time in perfecting a failure than trying to save time in the name of learning. Think about it.

Coming back. The deal went really well and we’re now set for a smooth transition. Really looking forward to the future of Crovl.

For the moment, I’m going to retire to my island near Sunny Beach and enjoy the martini 🍸