

Ask HN: Would you buy webapps? - jmonegro

I'm not sure about my position on buying and selling webapps. This comes to mind due to the recent 250k sale of retweet.<p>What I'm thinking is about the practicality of it all: content sites and blogs are simple: anyone can take over.<p>But webapps deal with languages, and frameworks, and good or bad code.<p>What's your stance on buying and selling webapps in the short term?
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terrellm
I don't see how the fact that it's a web app, content site, or desktop
software would matter. You value an asset, taking into consideration the
acquisition and maintenance costs. I haven't figured out the $250k for Retweet
but I tend to be more ROI-based with my purchases.

As far as good code vs bad code, if you intend on maintaining the site then
you probably want to setup a code review via remote desktop where you can
review some of the code.

I'm in talks to buy the assets of a company that developed a desktop software
program. The software was developed in an archaic language I've never heard of
and am not interested in learning, so I was pretty frank that the source has
no value to me since my interest is in converting the customers over to my
desktop product. Had the code been in something like .Net that could easily be
maintained, I'd place a higher value on the asset.

I'm also in the process of selling a custom classified site written in .Net.
When I sell the site, I'll be providing the contact information of the
contractor developer who created it. The new owner will have the option of
continuing with this developer or finding their own developer.

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jacquesm
I'm not sure how 'qualified' I am to give you an answer, but I do technical
due dilligence as a part of my consulting work, and some of that has been
evaluating web based applications.

In general the criteria I use are:

    
    
      - is the team a part of the acquisition or is it just the code
      
      - how much of the knowledge about the code is present in
        the heads of the authors and how much of it is 
        transferrable
    
      - is the codebase in a language that you can easily get 
        developers for
    
      - how much time is invested in the code
    
      - what is the 'backlog' in terms of open critical tickets
        and such
    
      - what is my estimate on time to re-write the whole thing
        from scratch (some help here from wordcount and gzip)
    
      - how well will the current implementation scale
    

All those (and a whole bunch of other, but less relevant) criteria together
make up the main ingredients of what goes in to determining what the value is
of the code behind a web app.

I hope there is something of use in there for you.

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JayNeely
As with any business, you'd want to do due diligence. If I couldn't look at
the code, I wouldn't buy it. Most web apps could be reproduced without ever
looking at the code behind it, so allowing you to do so shouldn't be an issue.

Buying a web app makes sense when:

1) you have a clear path to making more from it than you'd pay for it, in a
short enough amount of time that it makes sense to buy the app rather than
spend it elsewhere / develop it yourself.

and you:

a) have a relevant advantage that the current owner doesn't, like target
market connections, a distribution network, or an app with complementary
functionality.

-or-

b) can get an advantage with the app, that you need for something else.

