

Sortfolio auction only has 24 hours left with 0 Bids - DanBlake
https://flippa.com/2739829-sortfolio-com-web-design-marketplace-w-220k-annual-revenue?nodupe

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Lukeas14
The comments on the listing might explain why they haven't gotten any bids.
37Signals seems to be relying on their name to sell Sortfolio as opposed to
using best practices for selling sites on flippa. They haven't provided any
traffic/revenue proof, responded to questions, or put any visible effort into
the sale beyond listing it. Sounds like they aren't too serious about selling
it on flippa.com.

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luiperd
They blogged about the sale.

I think one of the bigger turn offs might be the fact that the new owner will
have to get everyone to setup their payment method once they switch. Because
the current payment system relies on 37Signal's own.

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a5seo
I think this is spot on: the payment system issue is huge.

My guess is they just put the listing on flippa to attract attention. I'll bet
there have been bids but nobody is paying attention to the listing and
accepting them.

They certainly haven't done any of the basics, such as answering questions.
One commenter wrote, "For all we know, he is dead as he has not replied to ANY
questions."

I, for one, am not impressed by their behavior. It just screams arrogance.

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theseanstewart
Let's see if Jason actually follows through with shutting it down if it
doesn't sell. Remember this? <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3941626>

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anthonycerra
I'd guess that 37signals does at least 60 million a year in revenue from their
main products (100,000 paying customers [1] times at least $50/mo avg).
Sortfolio is such a tiny fraction of that, but still requires occasional
attention (time + money). I'd shut it down, too.

[1] [http://entrepreneursunpluggd.com/blog/jason-fried-scaling-
st...](http://entrepreneursunpluggd.com/blog/jason-fried-scaling-startups)

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adventureful
At this point, with no clear buyers lining up, I'd have held an interview or
some other more efficient process, and handed it over to an impressive
entrepreneur, while keeping 25% to 40% of the company (give the entrepreneur
the majority equity). Set up whatever fair protections are reasonable, and let
the entrepreneur run with it, no money down. Then all but forget it exists.

Radically better option than just shutting it down.

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ckluis
Radically better option and dumb not to consider. There are scores of people
who could turn this into a much more profitable venture. I mean hell a little
toutapp email marketing, cold-calling, seo & ppc - could turn this into a
decent business. But anyone would be dumb to take it sans 37signal branding.

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uptown
Why would anyone seriously considering buying the site bid earlier than
necessary? If somebody wants it, buying it at close is when you'd place your
bid.

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DigitalSea
You'd probably have more luck making a return on your investment by purchasing
Facebook stock instead of buying Sortfolio. The whole site relies on the
37Signals payment integration and name, if someone buys this I feel sorry for
them, because they won't ever see a dime of that money made back after you
factor in the cost of running the site infrastructure and time spent
integrating the sites payment system with something like Paypal who will take
commission from each sale.

Shutting it down would be the decent thing to do here. I question whether the
site makes as much money annually as 37Signals say it does. Why shut down a
profitable site that probably in its current form requires hardly any
maintenance? Something is fishy here, I don't know what but the whole thing
wreaks of suspicion.

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chrsstrm
I've tried to use Flippa before and I still don't understand the bidding
process. If as a seller you don't act on a bid, it auto-expires after
something like 5 days. To me it sounded like accepting a bid meant that was
the end of the auction, but maybe it was just confirming the bid as an actual
bid, which seems unnecessary. Either way, anything I tried to sell always had
0 bids, even though people were bidding on the sites.

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sanswork
It allows you to avoid having people push up the price of your auction with
false bids. For higher value sites it gives you a chance to confirm the buyer
is able to pay.

~~~
chrsstrm
I just went into my account and checked... If you don't accept a bid, it
automatically rejects it after 72 hours. What is the point of accepting a bid
below your reserve price or expiring bids after 72 hours on a 30 day auction?
Lots of messages from users wanting to know why I "rejected" their bids and I
didn't know what to tell them. I understand measures to prevent artificial
price inflation, but anytime bids started becoming competitive, they would
start to expire.

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pathdependent
I think they set the minimum bid too high.

The fear that there will be a lot of customers who fail to reenroll after the
transfer is well founded. Ditto to the idea that it wouldn't survive
independent of the 37signals brand. Consequently, an opening bid at greater
than one year revenue is much too high.

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tibbon
Agreed. One thing I found on eBay was to always start with a low price. Quite
often $1. People get involved that otherwise wouldn't. It normally ends up
with a much higher ending price than normal, because many people are bidding,
not just 1-2

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ozataman
No wonder. I would not pay (or advise anyone to pay) half a mil for a business
with # of customers in the low hundreds, some of whom have anecdotally
confessed to very low efficacy/value from it in previous HN threads.

Intuitively, 37signals was in a very rare position in the market to
immediately funnel traffic to this service and it still did not take off into
thousands of paying customers and $1M+ of annual revenue.

I don't believe the ask price is _fair_ as much as it is _high enough_ to
maintain the 37signals brand and image. A couple hundred K lower, and it is
too little for them to bother. I think it might have had takers in the $70k -
$120k (basically salvage price) range.

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robryan
This would have been a lot more successful if they privately shopped it around
and had a plan to make the payments change seamless. If I am paying this site
currently I would be uneasy about the way it is possibly changing hands.

Also a lot of people paying for it may have been attracted by the 37 signals
brand.

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larrys
Well now what changed? They made it very clear in both the post and on HN that
if they didn't get $480,000 they would close it down (very arrogantly I might
add):

"The price is $480,000, cash. No special deals, no partial payments now the
rest later, no equity in your company, etc. $480,000 cash and it’s yours."

... "If you’re interested at $480,000, please email me direct at"

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3941230>

"Sortfolio isn't right for us anymore. Our attention is elsewhere. If we can
sell it for a fair price (we consider $480,000 fair), then we'll sell it. If
not, we'll close it down and move on."

[http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3172-sortfolio-going-once-
goi...](http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3172-sortfolio-going-once-going-twice)

The flippa auction says $250,000 is the minimum bid.

They weren't even willing to offer a commission to a broker. They wanted
$480,000 nothing less.

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sirwanqutbi
more like floppa.com

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xxyyxyxyy
Sometimes the best comments are at the bottom. Nice one. ;)

