
Ask HN: Is there a way to sell my MVP? - konschubert
I started working on a little web service startup idea with a colleague about two months ago. We managed to implement a minimum viable product which at this point is basically just a website with registration, payment and a nice domain. But we realized that our passion for this project currently isn&#x27;t strong enough compared to the legal legwork that comes with going public in our jurisdiction while dealing with our full time day jobs.<p>So, we figured that we might try sell the MPV plus domain to somebody who&#x27;s in a better position to get the business started.<p>Is this at all a realistic idea? Where should we advertise it? For how much money could we expect to sell something like that?
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wpietri
You have correctly identified the problem, which is lack of passion. This is
part of why experienced entrepreneurs tell noobs not to worry about somebody
stealing your idea. It's rare enough that even one person cares about the idea
enough to make it real. Most other entrepreneurs already have ideas that they
like just fine.

As others say, you can try to sell it, although it sounds unlikely. But if you
want to try, ask yourself two questions:

Who specifically would be passionate about this specific idea?

How much would that person have to pay to replicate what you have?

The first question gets to how to market this. Depending on the topic of your
MVP, maybe there's a wannabe-entrepreneur somewhere who just couldn't come up
with his own idea but has money in his pocket. You need to find that person.

The second gets at pricing. Most MVPs are throwaway code. And even if it was
well written, most code without the original team gets thrown away, because
it's expensive to find somebody who knows the domain and tech stack, get them
up to speed, and clean up the tech debt. So the fair comparison is something
like: how much would it cost a discount outsourcer to build a replica? That
ceiling is probably pretty low.

Now you can do the math: fairly valuing your time, subtract your cost to find,
sell, and close that prospect from your expected selling price. For most
people, that estimated return is negative, especially once you weight for
risk. Maybe you're different, but be sure you have a good understanding of
why.

~~~
konschubert
Thank you for writing out this response. I knew that I should not be worried
about somebody stealing my idea, that's why I asked about selling the MVP, not
the idea. But you are right: Even though I believe that the MVP is well
written, I am effectively competing with the cheapest outsourcing shop.

~~~
wpietri
Very welcome.

Agreed, and I'd be careful with thinking about it as "well written" in this
context. An abstract notion of quality doesn't matter nearly as much as
whether it suits the person taking over the code base. If you're selling to
another developer, then they have to have similar language and framework
tastes. If you're selling to a non-technical person, then it's more about
whether they can find somebody who can more efficiently work with your code
than build from scratch. So in a strictly commercial sense, a mediocre PHP
site can be more valuable that a very smartly constructed Erlang site.

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saycheese
Based on your description, you do not have an MVP, but an attempt to find an
MVP; what you have is untested prototype or an MVP that for whatever reason
failed to validate your assumptions.

Only potientally asset you have to sell is the domain, which in my opinion is
a completely different question; that being, how do I value & sell a domain?

The hosting, design, payment & registration systems, etc. - are most likely
are liabilities unless proven otherwise given the related technical debt[1];
basically, these are commodities which best acquired from scratch based on the
needs of party acquiring them.

Lastly, as you likely know, the point of an MVP is to validate an idea is of
value, since ideas generally speaking are worthless; I would actually argue
that good, but unvalidated ideas, have on average a negative value, since
resources are required to store/process them and most "good" ideas fail
validation attempts.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technical_debt](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technical_debt)

~~~
konschubert
I guess you are right, but damn...

~~~
saycheese
Generally speaking, passionate users are much, much easier to find than a
motivated buyer and there is a predictable correlation between the two.

As such, I would argue that if you are unable to find users it is highly
unlikely you will find a buyer without knowingly materially misrepresenting
the opportunity and/or exploiting a naive buyer.

It's a common problem, thanks for the opportunity to express my take on it.

~~~
konschubert
We have not launched the product yet. It isn't online. Therefore I can't say
if we would have found passionate users.

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pliftkl
Easy things: 1\. Ideas 2\. Name 3\. Website with registration and payment

Hard things: 1\. Acquiring paying customers 2\. Keeping paying customers 2\.
Product Management once you have customers

People will pay you more for hard things than they will for easy things (there
are, of course, exceptions to this, but execution of "great ideas" is much
harder than having those ideas).

~~~
konschubert
You are right. I realize that. I know that an idea alone is worth very, very
little. And an MVP is worth little more than nothing.

But even "little more than nothing" is _something_. That's why I am asking.

~~~
codegeek
Tell us what the MVP is and we can give you more ideas. Without knowing
anything about what it does, what do you want to hear ? let me give you an
example. There is a framework called Spark [0] which is built on top of
Laravel framework. It sells for $99 and comes with registration, auth,
payments, admin dashboard all out of the box. Does your MVP beat that ?

[0] [http://spark.laravel.com](http://spark.laravel.com)

~~~
jimnotgym
I kind of thrive on the harder stuff mentioned above. I may even be
interested! Why not post us a link?

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bborud
"registration, payment and a nice domain".

A minimum, VIABLE product? Does it do anything? Does it do anything that
others can't easily replicate?

Explain the "viable" to me.

~~~
heeton
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_viable_product](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_viable_product)

"is a product with just enough features to gather validated learning about the
product and its continued development"

If people are willing to pay for something, even before it has any features,
that seems like a pretty good MVP to me.

Assuming that people _are_ paying for it that is...

~~~
bborud
Thanks, I know what it is and I am up to my arse in people who believe this
has value despite having actual _validated learning_ that overwhelmingly
points to the opposite.

It turns out that when you fuck around with your customers and tell them that
you have a product, only to have them find out that you have fuck-all and you
are cobbling it together as they wait, your customers lose faith in you and
think you are a douchebag.

And rightly so. Because pretending isn't doing.

Eric Ries has done untold damage to the tech and the business world. He is
successful at one thing and one thing only: writing and marketing a book.

Generous people call his book a post-fact rationalization of success, but that
would be overstating it grossly. Because he didn't have any success to
rationalize post-fact.

It makes me angry that people think this horseshit has anything to do with
creating value. Doing stuff and knowing how to do stuff has value. Yanking
people around with smoke and mirrors does not. It mostly ends up wasting time
and time is the one resource you can't get back.

~~~
Clubber
Yes, maybe I'm missing something but from what I'm reading, he has a marketing
website and a payment system to take payments for ?? what? Is there a product?

I've always understood a MVP to be a product to have just enough features to
add core value immediately. Bells and whistles to add more value are not
included, but core value is.

For example, if you are writing scheduling software, MVP would be able to
schedule better than, say on pen and paper, or whatever is standard
functionality in the current market space. Future value would be adding
features to "cast a wider net," so to speak.

Do people seriously consider MVP a way to pay for vaporware? Am I
misunderstanding the situation?

------
obvio
[https://flippa.com/sell](https://flippa.com/sell)

~~~
seibelj
This is the best place to sell it. Be aware that many of the products for sale
are scams and your product will have to explain why it isn't also a scam to
rise above the fold.

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f311a
So you wanna sell domain, website and untested idea without customers?

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adamqureshi
The problem is "value" if your MVP makes NO money that what is it worth? I
sold my MVP to a private company then they paid me to customize it for them.
It was in healthcare. The MVP had value for them, they wanted to license it to
others in the same niche industry ( i kinda had to "sell'em" on this platform
approach) but did it back like 3-4 years ago. Same approach could work for
you.

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jimnotgym
Could we see it? It is really hard to sell something without a revenue stream.
Its value is closer to the value of the domain than a business.

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Alvarogot
Sounds difficult but why not give it a try? Have you identified a buyer for
your web service startup idea? Once you´ve done it you could send some
Linkedin messages, cold e-mails and even make some phone calls

I think that might work better than advertising an MVP

Best of lucks

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joshmn
I don't think you have an MVP. I think you have a domain and either an
untested prototype OR an MVP that failed to validate your idea.

There are forums to sell your domain on, Flippa/the like, SEDO/the like. I
won't list them here since they're just a Google search away.

My advice would be to do whatever it takes to spend 4 hours (each of you)
trying to get your first customer, payment in hand. If after that, you don't
have a customer, then I think it's a fair thing to either write it off as a
learning experience or seek the "hey someone else take over this invalidated
idea" route.

If you manage that first customer, that could potentially motivate you to get
the legal stuff done. I'm not sure your locale, but usually a Delaware LLC and
generic ToS/PP is acceptable. You'll know when you don't need the generics,
and when that time comes, you'll know.

You could be the next Pied Piper, which is why it never hurts to try.

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stefanobernardi
You sure can sell it, but it won't be very valuable. Less than the cost of
building it for sure. Probably the only spot that would work for that is
Flippa, but you could try to contact a broker like FE International to see if
they might be able to help you.

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iamabraham
The value goes up - sometimes way up - if you have even one paying customer.
It isn't a "minimum viable product at all." It's a non revenue generating
website with no users which makes it a hobby, not a product.

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ummahusla
Use flippa.com to sell your stuff.

I sold like 5-6 side projects which were abandoned for ages.

~~~
tluyben2
From the sound of it, it seems this would needs to have more development
before it would make anything even on Flippa.

~~~
xiaoma
No, you can sell even bare domains on Flippa. There are also "starter sites",
growing sites with 5 figures a month in revenue and pretty much everything in
between.

~~~
tluyben2
I know you can, but it won't get you much these days.

Edit: aka if it is a good idea, it is probably better to find someone to take
it over for a gentlemen's agreement of a % later than tossing it away for a
few $. IMHO of course.

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bdcravens
Your domain is at best worth a few hundred. Your code is worth an hourly rate
x hours worked, discounted. (since there needs to be a reason to buy vs build)

Assuming you and your partner put in 20 hours a week, I'd guess $5000 for an
untested business is the best you could hope for.

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satysin
Does the site actually _do_ anything or is it just a business idea and
branding?

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jpdus
You are from Germany, right? What kind of legal legwork do you mean, is it
domain specific? Would love to hear more about the MVP, contact is in my
profile.

~~~
konschubert
Elementary :)

I will send you an email.

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alecsmart1
Can you let us know about your MVP? A website? Maybe then we can tell you
more.

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konschubert
Sorry, I want to keep this discussion generic to make it useful for others.

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mbesto
We can only answer that if you disclose revenues and net income.

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eecks
What's the nice domain? What is the tech stack behind it?

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WhiteSource1
There are domain brokers you can sell.

