[HN Gopher] Show HN: I made a simple platform to buy/sell side p...
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Show HN: I made a simple platform to buy/sell side projects
Hi Guys, I made a simple platform to buy/sell side projects.
Current solutions are over complicated so I decided to make things
simpler. Let me know your what you think about this.
https://secondfounder.com
Author : heyarviind2
Score : 146 points
Date : 2022-07-16 12:50 UTC (10 hours ago)
| kangaroodingo wrote:
| are there any speicifc solutions you have found over complicated
| in this space?
| heyarviind2 wrote:
| - not showing listing before logging in - Not showing actual
| PROFIT LOSS STATEMENT numbers - Wanted to switch to monthly
| recurring profit from MRR
| moneywoes wrote:
| How do you factor in a founders time in that profit equation?
|
| Let's say the solo founder spends 80 hour a week running
| sales marketing ops dev and then sells. He could artificially
| make his profit high if he isn't billing for his time
| lagrange77 wrote:
| Nice. What happens, when a potential buyer finds a project he
| wants to buy? Do they just get the contact details of the seller,
| or do you also manage payment?
| heyarviind2 wrote:
| The plan is to integrate escrow and make the entire flow
| seamless.
| espadrine wrote:
| Very neat website. I love that it gets you right into it with no
| presentation homepage.
|
| Regarding the market system: why did you pick a lump price rather
| than a bidding system?
|
| A few notes for improvement: the "My projects" page feels empty
| at first: it could use a call-to-action with a quick explainer
| and a button. The "Go home" button has an odd wording; maybe
| "Main page"? Clicking on the logo to go to the main page is a
| classic, but not everyone is used to it; adding a link from the
| hamburger menu could be good. The website pricing and the way to
| settle are a bit unclear.
| nathancahill wrote:
| Any difference from IndieMaker (https://indiemaker.co)?
| maxbond wrote:
| I'm curious to hear from people who buy or sell projects on sites
| like these about how they value the projects. I look at prices on
| sites like this from time to time, and no two of them seem to be
| valued according to the same principles. I'd be interested in
| participating in this market, but when the prices seem arbitrary
| like that I assume I'll end up a sucker, and stay out.
| heyarviind2 wrote:
| I am going to introduce a 2nd param - valuation (calculated by
| the team) which would be calculated by the algorithm. Buyer
| would have a choice if they want to consider our valuation or
| user's.
|
| This is the rough idea tough, will try to get feedback on the
| same and improve it further.
| djbusby wrote:
| Why not just get a 409A and post it with the listing?
| maxbond wrote:
| Sound's neat! I've signed up for your mailing list and will
| keep an eye out.
| djbusby wrote:
| Valuation is a hard topic, at least four well know methods with
| lots of fuzzy parts. Sites like this require you do do your own
| diligence - which itself is hard work. It takes a lot of
| practice.
| mNovak wrote:
| Interesting, and congrats on launching!
|
| On the one hand it sounds nice for me to be able to sell a side
| project and have finality. But also I've never had the patience
| to actually advertise/monetize them, so the valuation a pre-
| revenue service would get is too low for me to accept the sunk-
| cost fallacy. I suppose that's the small-project catch 22
| willswire wrote:
| Couldn't agree more - current solutions are way over complicated.
| As someone who develops iOS apps on the side, I've always been
| looking for (but never found) a simple solution for offloading
| some of my projects. I will certainly be submitting some projects
| here this morning! Thanks!
| heyarviind2 wrote:
| I will be more than happy if this project helps you in any way
| :)
| prox wrote:
| Excellent idea!
| heyarviind2 wrote:
| Thanks Man!
| slurpmaker wrote:
| Can someone give the TL;DR here? What kinds of projects go on
| here?
| imvza wrote:
| Mostly one-man band MVP's, side-hustles, Apps, sites with or
| without revenue/profit that is looking for a 100% buyout.
|
| We will be expanding to connect project owners with 2nd
| Founders looking to join, and not just do a buy out.
|
| ~ 2nd Founder of SF
| dingleberry420 wrote:
| No thanks, my side projects exist to bring me joy. Corrupting
| them by trying to monetize them would take away all the fun.
| barnabees wrote:
| I'm sure some people feel this way and others feel differently.
| If it's not for you it's not for you--no need for a snarky
| comment
| heyarviind2 wrote:
| Yeah side projects are like therapy but there are people who
| are trying to make a living from side projects and end up
| selling them for quick money.
| quirk wrote:
| This is great. What are the current solutions that you find over
| complicated? You could reach out to posters there to get more
| projects onto your platform.
| heyarviind2 wrote:
| I am sending messages to the posters, hopefully will get few
| listings by next week :)
| ISL wrote:
| Might check the ToS of the existing players before doing that
| _en masse_.
| whoomp12342 wrote:
| existing players might have works not yet submitted to
| current platform, even if ToS is a jerk
| [deleted]
| KaoruAoiShiho wrote:
| You are aware of microaquire.com?
| __john wrote:
| I think you meant microacquire.com , you forgot the 'c'. The
| domain you're linking to is hella scammy.
| bsaul wrote:
| i'm surprised there isn't a market for software already.
|
| Being able to price a stack would probably let software developer
| get easier access to funding or borrowing since at least you'd
| have some way to use the code as a collateral.
|
| it would probably also helps developers develop products using
| more decomposed, standardized and documented components (to
| facilitate selling them in parts) which is always a really good
| thing.
| rfrey wrote:
| There's several. microacquire.com is one, I'm sure I've seen
| others.
| nickbyfleet wrote:
| Get rid of the email popup. Nobody wants that. Other than that,
| cool!
| gmjosack wrote:
| I was reading through some of the posts when the modal takeover
| happened and my natural instinct to close the page kicked in. I
| have so little patience for modals these days.
|
| If you want some kind of delayed call to action maybe some kind
| of toast at the bottom would be better. As it is today I'm
| primed to abandon sites that do a full screen take-over while
| i'm reading.
| tr1ll10nb1ll wrote:
| Just submitted my project! :)
| heyarviind2 wrote:
| It's live on the website
| t_mann wrote:
| Looks really neat! Some ideas/questions/suggestions:
|
| 1 Are you taking a fee on sales completed through the platform?
| Couldn't find this at a quick glance, but it's important info.
|
| 2 Did you look into legal / liability aspects regarding the
| veracity of expense / revenue / profit claims? Do you vet
| projects/owners before listing them? How do you ensure that the
| offer is legit (ie the seller actually owns the project)?
|
| 3 Does the platform facilitate safe transactions (eg deposit
| access credentials / purchase price in an escrow service)?
|
| 4 Any reason that only sellers can post a public ask price? Using
| eg a second-price public auction system could make sense here.
|
| Happy to support btw, feel free to reach out, contact info is in
| my profile.
| goldenkey wrote:
| Please put this platform on the platform and enforce that the
| buyer has to do so as well, contractually. Infinite inception.
| nixcraft wrote:
| How is the project making $399 per month while asking for
| $20,000? Is such an asking price accurate?
| mmastrac wrote:
| Probably off by a factor of 5-10
| asutekku wrote:
| Something making currently $399 a month should be pretty easy
| to scale up in the right hands.
| icedchai wrote:
| The devil is in the details. If the project has taken a
| couple of years to reach $399/month, growth is incredibly
| slow.
|
| I mostly use these sites to get ideas.
| csa wrote:
| > If the project has taken a couple of years to reach
| $399/month, growth is incredibly slow.
|
| Some folks who make good side projects make little or no
| effort in growing them. A professional marketer can often
| scale these quite easily.
|
| That said, this strikes me as an unreasonably large
| multiple unless there is a juicy market, a moat, and little
| or no competition.
| yomkippur wrote:
| What if I told you that it has been making that much money for
| the past 8 years and likely to keep making money for the next
| 10, 20 years?
| ddmichael wrote:
| Still irrationally expensive. You need 4 years to break even
| and then you _may_ make another 20k in 4 years. 8 years full
| of risk to make a profit of 20k while the platform is going
| to be 16 years old? Not worth it.
| yomkippur wrote:
| but this is the exact multiple most SaaS are using, what
| makes mine different? I don't get it.
|
| At least mine is making net profit, most SaaS trading on
| stock exchanges with the same multiples are _losing money_
| and unlikely to remain at current market caps if not
| already.
| vasco wrote:
| I hope you realize valuation of public companies has
| nothing to do with a random one person side project
| that's been up for a few years.
| csa wrote:
| > I hope you realize valuation of public companies has
| nothing to do with a random one person side project
| that's been up for a few years
|
| Four years of seller discretionary income is not an
| unusual sale price for small solo projects _that have
| traction_. Iirc, Patio11's bingo card creator sold for
| something around this multiple.
|
| That said, it's unclear if this project has as much
| traction as others that sell for this multiple.
|
| If there are only a few clients, especially if they are
| friends of the current owner, then the business is
| fragile.
| yomkippur wrote:
| but customers who have been with you for 8 years is the
| anti-thesis of fragility.
|
| for instance, you could have a thousand customers but
| with low LTV (they cancel after a month or one off).
|
| which is more fragile here?
| csa wrote:
| You make a reductio ad absurdum argument and then treat
| it like it's a completely reasonable comparison. It's
| not.
|
| You seem interested in getting some answers, so I will
| give you my two cents worth...
|
| > but customers who have been with you for 8 years is the
| anti-thesis of fragility.
|
| Sure. How many of your customers have been around 8
| years? How did you acquire them?
|
| > for instance, you could have a thousand customers but
| with low LTV (they cancel after a month or one off).
|
| Since this is basically 100% MtM churn, this is not a
| viable SaaS business.
|
| > which is more fragile here?
|
| If you take the 1000 customer SaaS and make it a more
| reasonable 10% or even 20% churn, then your business is
| more fragile for sure. We have no idea what might cause
| people to churn in your business because the n is so low.
| With 1000 customers, we can probably find some reasons
| (possibly before even buying) for the churn and halve it,
| thereby doubling LTV.
|
| So questions I would have for you if I were serious about
| purchasing:
|
| 1. What's the TAM?
|
| 2. What's your moat?
|
| 3. How did you acquire your customers (esp. the 8 year
| ones)? If it's a personal relationship, that is very bad,
| since they may leave when you aren't the owner.
|
| 4. How many of your customers are new (1 year or less)?
|
| 5. What marketing have you tried?
|
| 6. What is the language of communication with these
| customers?
|
| 7. Where are your customers located (country)?
|
| So after a quick glance with only the information you
| have given so far, I would probably be willing to pay $5k
| for a business like this and give it to an intern to
| develop. At $10k, I would be tempted to have one of my
| programmers make a copycat and just compete. As such, we
| could probably meet in the middle at $7-8k. This is
| probably a bad deal for you.
|
| More information could increase or decrease this price.
|
| Note that my biggest concern would be that all of the
| customers could instantly jump ship after you leave,
| because they were only customers because of you. This may
| seem odd to you, but I've seen entire business that make
| ridiculous amounts of money for the owner(s) exist purely
| because of personal connections. How do I know that this
| is not the case for you business? Since you have so few
| paying customers, I can't even be sure that an answer you
| give me is true.
|
| My totally unsolicited advice to you is to find a young
| and competent SaaS sales person and offer them 50% rev
| share (maybe with a 2 year cap). This allows you to grow
| your business with relatively little grunt work, and you
| get to keep the cash cow. Selling cash cows is almost
| always bad unless the money completely lacks
| significance, and then you should look more for a
| competent owner to hand it off to rather than optimizing
| sale price.
|
| I will be happy to answer more questions if you have
| them.
|
| Best of luck!
| csa wrote:
| After looking closer at the business, it looks like they
| have 13 or fewer paying clients.
|
| That's quite fragile unless they have been long term
| clients, and this type of system has high transfer costs.
| alangibson wrote:
| I'm happy to be corrected, but IIRC the value of any asset is the
| present discounted value of future revenues. These valuations
| seem ... much higher.
|
| You could argue that future growth justifies higher valuation,
| but that's hard to swallow when revenues are in 3 and 4 digits.
|
| Also, the idea of selling a business that is pre-revenue is kind
| of laughable. That'll never be anything but people trying to get
| a few grand for abandoned side projects
| Varqu wrote:
| Very cool, do you do any vetting / background checks of the
| projects that are submitted?
| heyarviind2 wrote:
| yes I manually go thorough the projects and contact with the
| poster if there is something wrong
| canadiantim wrote:
| You should add ability to search projects by type of code used.
| Eg I specifically went to see if any Django projects were for
| sale and theoretically would be interested depending on what was
| there, but no way for me to search it. Cool idea tho
| bag_boy wrote:
| Ahhh this is a great idea
| heyarviind2 wrote:
| this is on the roadmap, will add it soon!
| capableweb wrote:
| Sounds like the name/domain is a bit misaligned from what the
| actual purpose is.
|
| The name hints at finding a co-founder, while you describe it as
| a platform for selling projects (transferring the project from
| one founder to another)
| imvza wrote:
| Hi, I'm the 2nd Founder of SF. We have identified this
| potential arena and been discussing expanding our ways to help
| project owners find that 2nd Founder, and not just a platform
| to sell a side project. Thanks for the validation.
| nlh wrote:
| Congrats on launching and site looks and works great. Care to
| share the stack you built it / are hosting it on? Always curious
| to hear the technical details :)
| solardev wrote:
| I like your UX! It's simple, clear, and fast. Thank you for
| focusing on usability :)
|
| Some minor feedback:
|
| - I wonder if the pre-revenue column should be left, and the >5k
| MRR should be right, so it goes from least expensive to most?
|
| - Can the category dropdown be checkboxes (so you can choose more
| than one) and also have an "All" category if you're just casually
| browsing?
|
| - Some measures of time might be useful, like how long a project
| has been active ("since 2019") and how long it's been listed for
|
| - Could you please add some tooltips or similar to explain what
| MRP and MPP are? Just a one-sentence description like "Monthly
| recurring profit is ____, as reported by the company/calculated
| by our algorithms/whatever".
| heyarviind2 wrote:
| These are very valuable points, thank you!
|
| Adding them to the roadmap.
| swyx wrote:
| how do you solve the lemon problem?
|
| https://www.investopedia.com/terms/l/lemons-problem.asp
| adamzerner wrote:
| How did you handle design stuff? It looks pretty good! I'm a
| programmer without design training and always end up using
| Bootstrap.
| heyarviind2 wrote:
| I just use tailwindcss and get some inspiration from Dribbble.
| :)
|
| Thank you for your kind words
| jdiganginoho wrote:
| Nice site. Clean design. Like that you used tailwindcss and
| Dribbble.
|
| Was hoping for a site that allows you to search the
| technology stack used to create a project (i.e. search for
| React apps that are for sale).
|
| Congrats!
| moneywoes wrote:
| How do you validate the revenue is authentic?
| boutell wrote:
| I popped this open on my phone and I must say the browsing
| experience feels good. You really did keep it tight and simple.
| You're on to something. But if you feel burnt out, now you have a
| place to sell it
| heyarviind2 wrote:
| haha yes!
| danielunited wrote:
| Thanks. Will try later
| imglorp wrote:
| I bailed at the first engagement popup, sorry. That could be an
| item in the hamburger menu if people are looking for it
| heyarviind2 wrote:
| Removed!
| [deleted]
| bemmu wrote:
| I tried to make a listing, but it kept saying to keep description
| under 280 characters, even though it was.
|
| Anyway if someone wants to make me an offer for the domain and
| text content of Candy Japan (candyjapan.com), email me. Gets
| ~2000 clicks on Google per month, 7000 uniques. It's the oldest
| Japanese candy subscription box domain on the internet, but the
| service itself hasn't been running for 2 years.
| DizzyDoo wrote:
| I'm really going to miss the behind-the-scenes year-end posts
| about Candy Japan! I've been reading them for a decade or so? I
| hope you'll keep blogging and sharing what you're up to, but
| even if not, thank you for all those fascinating glimpses into
| the finances and numbers behind a fun product.
| [deleted]
| heyarviind2 wrote:
| can you send the description here please?
| bemmu wrote:
| # Description
|
| Japanese candy subscription box. Includes domain and right to
| use text content only. Specifically does not include any
| code, customer list, or anything else.
|
| # Asking price.
|
| $6942
|
| # Why sell?
|
| It's the oldest candy subscription box domain in the world!
| And there's old content with decent backlinks as well. In
| other words: Google likes it.
|
| I used to run this subscription box, but shut it down after
| Covid made global shipping impossible. If it's extremely low
| effort for me, then I would be willing to sell the domain and
| site content to someone who wants to start a similar site, or
| to use as lead generation for a competing service.
|
| I am selling this site, because I know it still has value.
|
| Despite the service being down for 2 years, the site still
| gets ~2000 clicks on Google each month, and ~7000 unique
| visitors. From past experience, this would convert to a few
| (let's say 5) new paying subscribers each month with no
| marketing at all. With an LTV of ~$40, should have lead
| generation value of at around ~$2400/year.
|
| But I won't set up your website for you. I'll just transfer
| the domain to you, and sign a poorly worded document telling
| that I allow you to keep using the site content.
|
| You will not get the code. Because it's terrible, and I don't
| want you to punch me or have even a remote risk of having to
| set it up for you or maintain it.
|
| You will get the rights to use the blog text content, but
| you'll have to copy paste them yourself from the website.
| Because they are in some bizarro combination of two different
| formats in a database I barely remember how to log in to.
|
| Again, you only get: the domain name, and the right to use
| the blog content text. But no right to ask me time-consuming
| questions. After I have transferred the domain to you, I
| consider my work to be 100% done.
|
| # Competition?
|
| The Japanese candy subscription box scene is admittedly
| intensely (ridiculously?) competitive. See here for a full
| list: https://www.candyjapan.com/wow/japanese-candy-boxes
| heyarviind2 wrote:
| You can try posting now from your official email, it will
| work just fine :)
| bemmu wrote:
| OK tried it. Still had to shorten the reason to 500
| characters.
| [deleted]
| GordonS wrote:
| > # Asking price. > $6942
|
| Lol, intentional I assume?
| ed wrote:
| Candy Japan was a big deal on HN for a while. Hope you get
| a good price! You should consider posting to microacquire,
| if you haven't already, I had a good experience posting my
| company there (I didn't sell it ultimately but had some
| good conversations with real buyers). And maybe do a show
| HN to say you're selling - I bet a lot of folks remember
| the service!
| alexdejeu wrote:
| Nice! As an aside, could you please improve the error message for
| "password length invalid" - took me a few tries to figure out how
| short it has to be. Best of luck!
| heyarviind2 wrote:
| oops sorry about that, fixing it now!
| bwb wrote:
| From what I have seen the challenge with something like this
| isn't building the app, it is stocking one side of the
| marketplace and then the other...
|
| Looks great though!
| kubami wrote:
| Some call it "chicken and egg problem". Classic of two-sided
| marketplaces!
| xEnOnn wrote:
| What are usually the solutions to such problems with a two-
| sided marketplace?
| noahl wrote:
| The solution is posting this marketplace on a forum full of
| people who might like to buy and sell side projects
| cldellow wrote:
| - Start in a niche where you can lean on your own personal
| connections to kickstart the demand/supply side. Once
| you've established yourself as the best platform in that
| niche, go broader.
|
| - Outsource/"borrow" supply from other people until you can
| bootstrap the demand side (eg: scrape/syndicate other
| marketplaces; subcontract services)
|
| - Heavily incent the supply side of the marketplace (eg:
| offer a guaranteed base pay to subcontractors regardless of
| demand)
|
| - Bootstrap the supply side yourself (eg: for a forum, use
| sockpuppet accounts to create the appearance of of a
| thriving community)
|
| It's hard!
| dinom wrote:
| I like the bootstrapping idea... github projects may
| appreciate getting buyout offers out of the clear blue!
| And, submitted offers could be fed back into the
| valuation model for fine-tuning.
| nickfromseattle wrote:
| In this example, the OP could reach out to everyone who has
| listed a project on Micro Acquire, Flippa, and similar
| businesses acquisition marketplaces.
|
| "Hey, I saw your listing on X. I wanted to invite you to
| list your project on Second Founder. We have X,XXX views
| per month. You don't have to do anything except create an
| account, and I'll migrate this listing over."
| hasperdi wrote:
| Annoying subscribe pop-up. Bye!
| heyarviind2 wrote:
| removed popup. Hii!
| orliesaurus wrote:
| I am going to add this to my list of side projects selling
| platforms!
| djbusby wrote:
| Please share that list with everyone.
| heyarviind2 wrote:
| Sure please do!
| [deleted]
| atum47 wrote:
| Nice, just submitted my game Qubes. There were some people trying
| to buy it from mean few months ago but the offer was low.
|
| The game right now is free to play with no ads, so it generates
| no money. But it has over 7k installs, which is pretty neat.
| readme wrote:
| needs pictures
|
| model it after the already successful site that exists for this
| (flippa)
|
| if you want to compete with it you must at least match it first
|
| then you need to find a way to have an advantage over them (one
| way would be to curry favor with users here)
| 8organicbits wrote:
| Disagree, don't chase the features of a competitor. Find the
| features your customers need and the features you can build
| better than others. We don't need another flippa clone.
| zakokor wrote:
| Good job! Looks great.
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