
My Bootstrapped Micro-Startup Got Acquired - myth_drannon
https://mohddanish.me/my-bootstrapped-micro-startup-got-acquired-for-usd22k-10
======
throwaway13337
Sounds like the buyer got a terrific deal.

There seemed to be rapid growth and interest. Getting any revenue is hard -
growing from 700/month to 7000/month can be mostly momentum. Just sitting on
it would make more.

Maybe there is more to the story but if not, please hold out with your next
project. You'll get low ballers.

I had someone offer me 30k for an app I spent a month building. I would have
taken it but he wanted to do a payment plan and I said no way. The project has
since grown without much help from me to ~2.5k/month and will likely continue
for years. It already made more than the offer.

The ability to sell it is still there at any time and for more money just from
the momentum of growth. Once you sell, though, you stop collecting revenue and
having the potential of growing it even bigger.

If someone wants it at first, it's likely worth more than they're offering.
They know it and you should, too.

~~~
hanniabu
At the same time a bird in the hand is worth more than 2 in the bush.

~~~
socceroos
Except in this analogy the two birds in the bush give you a continuous stream
of their eggs.

~~~
rlonn
unless they're both male birds. Perhaps also bad-tempered, shrieking a lot and
prone to peck you on the head or take a dump on your shoes. It's amazing how
analogies never fail to clarify and raise discussions to new heights!

~~~
hhjinks
Yes, but those two asshole male birds might be celebrities, attracting tonnes
of thirsty female, egg-laying birds to your bush. Didn't think of that, did
you?

------
encoderer
Developing a SaaS product isn’t for everybody but if you are a developer and
want to expand your breadth it’s a wonderful and rewarding challenge.

Nothing is easy but there has never been more resources, support and tooling
for indie SaaS makers. If you want to get started the indiehackers community
is fantastic and my inbox is always open for answers/encouragement Shane at
Cronitor.io

~~~
woutr_be
The hardest part about building a SaaS product for me isn't the technical
challenges (although there are some too), it's mostly anxiety. The thing that
scares me the most is launching and receiving negative feedback, the thought
alone is enough for me to stop working on it.

~~~
bsaul
Negative feedback is better than no feedback. at least you know the person was
sufficiently attracted to your product and idea and try it. It’s an
opportunity to improve, and it’s also an encouragement. I’ve had people giving
me bad feedback and then a few years later come back and finally use it. At
this point i knew my product had improved.

Also, you’d be surprised how most people sound harsh but actually don’t really
mean to. They’ll most likely completely change their tone after you’ve
contacted them and tell them you’d like their opinion on future improvements.
Also, if by any chance those people finaly use your product, you have a high
chance that they become strong proponents and advertisers for your product.

~~~
davnicwil
Right! Don't worry about negative feedback, because the much more likely
scenario is no feedback as nobody cares.

Getting anyone to care enough to give you any feedback at all is a sign you
are onto something.

------
nif2ee
It's heartbreaking to see people who scrape websites and make 60k in a weekend
project while opensource maintainers for projects used by thousands of
companies are begging for 10 dollars a month

~~~
spottybanana
Creating value and capturing value are different things. If you start doing
open source, you shouldn't except money. If you want money, you should do
something that people usually pay for.

It is common knowledge that open source can be very difficult to monetize. If
you are smart enough to program good software you should be able to understand
also that. Also if you can program good quality open source software, it
shouldn't be difficult to switch to the "evil capitalistic" side and code some
software with an actual business model.

It is best to work on open source at the point where you have enough savings
so you don't need the money. Creating open source with the exception of
monetization is just stupid - sometimes it happens but usually not, and that
should be excepted.

~~~
geofft
Sure, for an individual, what you say is exactly the correct approach.

But for society, does it benefit us to pay people to work on scraping websites
more than on OSS infrastructure? (One argument is yes because that's how the
money flows, but _why_?) How do we as society fund OSS infrastructure and
prevent people who would be good at it from leaving to seek money?

------
PaywallBuster
First of all, congratulations on the sale.

Second, funny that his first job after graduation was CTO.

Can't see that happening anywhere in EU or US heh

~~~
n_ary
Actually more absurdity is possible in EU. I frequently notice, out of college
PM(grad scheme), 1yoe Senior Engineer/Team Lead, out of college R&D
Engineer(with BSc only), 2yoe CTO etc.. These are mostly in UK though but
still counts.

~~~
C1sc0cat
Why is a new grad R&D Engineer strange? that's certainly most of the people
recruited at the first place I worked (UK) started as.

OK they wont be at the same level as the Boss (the President of the Mechanical
engineers at the time)

What sort of people do you thein NASA JPL etc. recruit from university in the
main.

~~~
0xffff2
I don't work at JPL, but I do work at a different NASA center. I am one of
only two people in my team of ~15 that does not have a graduate degree. There
are only three with master's degrees; the rest are PhD's. You have to be both
talented and _incredibly_ lucky to secure a full time position without a
graduate degree here.

~~~
C1sc0cat
That's not what the previous person was saying - they thought it was strange
you had new grads as RnD engineers.

And I know all about v high end RnD I worked on campus Cranfield Uni at BHRA
in the Math modeling and Nuke section

Though I was a technician, who of course you need to remind the "engineers"
how ohms law works :-)

~~~
0xffff2
>... they thought it was strange you had new grads as RnD engineers.

Yes, and I'm saying that we _don 't_ hire new (under)grads as R&D engineers.
We hardly hire people with undergraduate degrees at all regardless of
experience.

~~~
C1sc0cat
Ah Grade inflation then :-)

------
simplify
If I'm not mistaken, 22k is roughly the amount you would get for placing a
single software engineer in a recruitment pipeline. Job-seeking traffic is
quite valuable.

~~~
manuelflara
Unless I'm mistaken I think he sold public-apis.xyz, the product the main
story is about, and not the TweetJobs.dev one (or maybe I'm mistaken, or maybe
he sold both?)

------
bilekas
> Right after I graduated, I was very blessed to land myself as a CTO(Chief
> Technology Officer) at one of the startup tech companies in the co-working
> space industry.

Umm... What ?

That's insane.. But always good to hear some good stories once in a while!

------
kresten
Hard to make sense of an acquisition at a cost this low. It’s like a month or
two salary of a senior software engineer.

~~~
mddanishyusuf
But I can feed myself and my project the next 1+ years with that money.

~~~
jacurtis
In the USA it would only last a few months.

You must be located in an emerging market.

~~~
JaviFesser
He said it himself, he is from India and he lives there, so the cost of life
must be way lower

~~~
this-ali
yup. $22K in INR is a lot. with that money (50k/month as expenses), you could
live a decent life for about 30 months.

For a Danish, a person who has multiple products out right now, that Plenty of
enough time to work on another idea.

------
4ndrewl
Congratulations - what a great story! It's somehow much more satisfying to
read this than ludicrous $Billion acquisitions in SV. Seems more human.

------
fajarsiddiqfs
Congratulations Danish! :) I help him with this writing of the blog post 50%
when we are on the ferry ride from indonesia to singapore.

I'm glad a domain .xyz can build a microstartup "side project turn to
profitable business" and you get acquired.

I'm really proud of you!

~~~
mddanishyusuf
Hey, Thanks Fajar for helping to motivate me do that. You are my man.

------
j45
Congrats to you, this is more than most have accomplished.

~~~
loriverkutya
nope, it's not

~~~
chrift
I certainly have never sold a product I developed. Have you?

------
chrift
This is really interesting, well done! Seems like you're getting a lot of
cynical people on here, you might be interested in posting this story on
indiehackers.com

------
steve1977
I'm not sure if the first offer was really for the startup or rather just for
the domain.

~~~
jacurtis
$22k is a hell of a lot to pay for a hyphenated .xyz domain. I doubt they
bought it for the domain.

~~~
sdan
For reference, you can pick up .xyz domains for a dollar on namecheap (last
time I checked).

------
ggmartins
congrats, you're on track for a big thing super curious to know how much you
were paying to deliver 30k page views/month and 60k. Any chance to share?
Thanks a lot!

~~~
mddanishyusuf
$0 only some good SEO keywords and time.

~~~
ggmartins
fantastic! Can I ask you what did you use for web hosting? any of the web
hosting supported by gatsby.js? thanks!

