

Why we shut down Newsberry Part 2: Why we didn’t sell  - alexknowshtml
http://wildbit.com/blog/2012/02/20/why-we-shut-down-newsberry-part-2-why-we-didnt-sell

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Domenic_S
Yeah, I don't believe it.

I think they never would have gotten past due diligence. They claimed to be
generating $75k "in profit", but had no F/T devs on the project. Combine that
with self-proclaimed stalled growth, and the company's a loser. I'm going to
guess that a huge slice of that $75k was due to parasitic hosting -- they
probably put it on infrastructure belonging to (or at very least subsidized
by) their other "real" projects, so even $75k is a stretch.

Next, the codebase is hacked together (as they say in the "why we're not open-
sourcing it" paragraph). People buying entire companies in a packed market
like this are looking to buy something that's basically running on rails.
Newsberry isn't this. Hacked together is fine for a bleeding-edge idea, but
this thing had been going for 7 years.

A buyout would have landed somewhere in the 4-figures. If I were in their
shoes, I would have turned it down, too.

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alexknowshtml
Follow up post to questions about shutting down our $75k/year profitable
product: [http://wildbit.com/blog/2012/01/26/why-we-shut-down-a-
produc...](http://wildbit.com/blog/2012/01/26/why-we-shut-down-a-product-that-
was-75000year-profitable/)

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captaincrunch
I'd find it more interesting to see how a company such as this got to the
point of getting an offer. Not trying to be rude, but I find articles like
this a little too trendy.

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j45
What do you find trendy, not selling?

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ABS
ever considered something like flippa? it addresses all your concerns and is
nearly impossible not to know about it if you do business online (and read HN)

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alexknowshtml
From TFA:

>> It’s not like we were going to put a For Sale sign up. We had active
clients who we didn’t want to scare off. We were still actively supporting the
product and we also wanted to sell a profitable service, and for that you
needed customers.

~~~
ABS
and that's taken care of by flippa if you want: you can do private auctions,
you can hide names and urls until people sign an NDA and stuff like that

RTFM

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ahoyhere
Any word on why this was [deleted] until a few minutes ago? Inquiring minds
want to know.

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orenmazor
we'd love to know too, actually.

