
Ask HN: Single-person company exit - michaeloblak
Can anyone share an experience from selling a self-founded, single-person company?<p>Topic is created because of a comment in this[1] thread<p>[1] https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=12065355
======
thomasbachem
I've built Germany's biggest online resume editor
([https://lebenslauf.com](https://lebenslauf.com)), which started as a side
project next to my main startup.

Some years ago a friend asked me to help her out with her resume, how to
convert it into a proper PDF file etc. – busy and short of time as I was, I
simply looked for some online tool to point her to.

Disappointed by the results of my search back then (2011) and motivated to
fully design, code and market a small project on my own (after all those years
mostly doing management), I started Lebenslauf.com and quickly got fascinated
by the idea and technical challenges of a WYSIWYG CV editor.

For quite some time, it remained a side project where I'd spend about 4 hours
per week maximum. Meanwhile the number of users grew slowly but steadily
thanks to word-of-mouth from my friends and their friends and their friends...

After I sold my main startup in 2012, I finally found the time and fully
realized the huge potential of Lebenslauf.com. So I started making it my main
project in 2013 and at some point charged money for the created PDF files,
which instantly led to five-figure revenues.

About one year later (2014), I sold it to [https://xing.com](https://xing.com)
(public company, essentially the German LinkedIn) for a higher seven-digit
figure. I managed to get competing bids for it from multiple companies, so the
whole sale process is a story of its own.

It's still astonishing to see what has grown out of it and how many people use
it every day, and it was an exciting journey with totally different
experiences than a venture-funded company.

~~~
TheBiv
>> I managed to get competing bids for it from multiple companies, so the
whole sale process is a story of its own.

I am interested in hearing this story! :) Thank you for the original comment
as well!

~~~
thomasbachem
Talks with other companies started when I planned to rent out white-labeled
versions of the site to job portals etc., so they could have their very own
branded CV editor and possibly get a revenue share.

During a lunch with the CEO of a German job portal, where we were talking
about a white label, he asked me whether it was possible for them to get
access to the CV data of my existing users. I replied "You'd need to buy the
site then" without actually thinking about it. He in return asked for a price
and I came up with 400k euros just to double it in an email hours later
("after carefully calculating again..." ooops double the price :D). When he
still was interested, it struck me that a sale might be worth pursuing.

I then contacted his biggest German competitors to get counter offers, and
they seemed pretty interested too. Funny anecdote: The CEO of one company told
me that they're not actually interested at that price, but that I should tell
the others they'd offer a million euros, just because he liked me and wanted
his competitors to overpay. He even told me he would confirm that offer if
they ask him. I didn't do it of course.

In contrast to the others, XING offered me a deal with a lower upfront payment
but a huge earnout upside. I spent quite a few months tracking, testing and
analyzing my users' behavior in regard to the earnout KPIs, calculating
whether the deal would be better for me and of course negotiating during that
time to make it even better.

That's essentially it, I tried to go into as many details as possible without
getting into trouble :)

~~~
nathan_f77
Wow, that's amazing, congratulations! Are you retired now?

~~~
thomasbachem
Haha no, I'm building [https://code.university](https://code.university) in
Berlin :)

------
cl42
Not quite a single-person exit but I think Plenty of Fish [1] is a great story
-- one guy builds dating site, bootstraps to 75 people, sells for $575M with
100% ownership.

[1] [http://www.businessinsider.com/how-markus-frind-
bootstrapped...](http://www.businessinsider.com/how-markus-frind-bootstrapped-
plentyoffish-and-sold-it-for-575-million-2015-7)

~~~
blahi
I remember how this guy came to a forum and asked whether starting a dating
site would be a good idea. Everybody said "no".

~~~
Johnie
Isn't this a red hot signal that it's a great idea? If everyone is saying no
and you see the world differently, you have open space to play.

Basically Peter Thiel's contrarian perspective.

~~~
StavrosK
"Is selling refrigerators to Eskimos a good idea?"

You're begging the question. It's only a signal that it's a great idea if
everyone says no _given that it is a great idea_.

Usually, if all your feedback is negative, it's a red hot signal that you
should be doing something else.

~~~
emptybits
It's an interesting example you use because I think it still serves the
previous point. Peter Drucker wrote, “To sell the Eskimos a refrigerator to
keep food cold, is finding a new market; to sell a refrigerator to keep food
from getting too cold is actually creating a new product”. (The Practice of
Management) This was apparently inspired by a true tale of a Westinghouse
salesman who sold deep freezes and fridges to arctic-dwellers. Meat left
outside was rock hard and took too long to thaw, and you can't quickly drink
frozen water/juice/beer.

My point is, lazy conventional group wisdom is often wrong because it's
invested in "the way things are." Mature industries are most vulnerable in my
experience (personally, I have experience in the large and old-thinking
parking and payment industries). Acceptance of "because that's not how things
are done" blinds people to opportunities. The lazy majority are too quick to
repeat that dismissal. This adds "weight" to a rejection, but little critical
analysis. I have found it productive and profitable to often disagree and swim
upstream. I recognize not all industries or product spaces are like this.

~~~
StavrosK
At most, people's opinion is uncorrelated with the result. To say that
people's opinion is strongly inversely correlated means that people saying "oh
my god take my money right now" means you should never follow that idea.

Simply put, you can't have it both ways. You can't both have people saying
"no" and people saying "yes" mean that it's a good idea.

------
lucasgonze
I have. DM/email me (lucas@gonze.com) if you want to chat.

My company was Webjay, a playlist-sharing site. No funding, no other devs.
500K users, 10 million page views / month.

Selling was dramatically easier than ordinary because I was getting the whole
pie, not a slice, and because I had no investors to placate. I did not get FU
rich, and I still have to work, but my quality of life was dramatically
improved for the rest of my life.

The hardest deal term in the acquisition was indemnification. I refused to
indemnify the acquirer, they insisted on it. Finally I said:

1\. If we don't have enough personal trust in this relationship for you to
believe in my company's practices, you shouldn't enter this deal at all. And
if you do, indemnification doesn't matter.

2\. You are a more attractive target than me. Many people would sue you who
wouldn't bother with me.

It was harder post-acquisition than ordinary, because I was a faction of one
within the acquirer (yahoo).

~~~
toyg
I was a total Webjay fanboi! I loved to let other people find new weird music
for me...

I remember you being pretty knowledgeable on the "scene" back then -- what
would you recommend today to do what webjay used to? Spotify is very curated
and doesn't feel spontaneous at all, whereas Youtube is an unbrowseable
cauldron of shit.

~~~
lucasgonze
Cool! Glad to see a tribe member.

8Tracks is the closest parallel.

I also love Spotify playlists by personal connections who are massive geeks,
especially professionals in the music industry. I need to know the person for
this to work.

Here's a contemporary indie metal playlist along those lines:

[https://open.spotify.com/user/gracenotes_playlists/playlist/...](https://open.spotify.com/user/gracenotes_playlists/playlist/3M50Bn27ywwnNFS844n3ZK)

------
jewel
You'll be interested in patio11's experience selling bingo-card creator, which
more-or-less meets your criteria of a self-founded, single-person company:

[https://training.kalzumeus.com/newsletters/archive/selling_s...](https://training.kalzumeus.com/newsletters/archive/selling_software_business)

------
stevesearer
Been running [https://officesnapshots.com](https://officesnapshots.com) for 9
years and I haven't sold it or exited, though I have had various offers of
varying seriousness throughout the years.

At this point it would be hard for me to see myself selling because I really
enjoy running the site. Plus it would feel strange to let someone else do
whatever they want with the thing I've created and spent so much time on.

Not saying I wouldn't sell, but I wonder if many other single-person companies
are in the same boat and feel the same way. Would love to hear :)

~~~
Someone1234
That's a great site, I love the design and utility.

I have a question: Where do the photos actually come from? Do you yourself run
around taking pictures of people's offices? Or do you work with the designers
to be featured on the site? How did you initially source your images, get the
copyright to show them, in order to entice the designers to work with you?

~~~
stevesearer
I primarily work with the architects and designers to get the project imagery.

Back in the day I would visit some offices and snap some photos, but they just
didn't compare to professional quality images.

~~~
Someone1234
Interesting.

Thanks for the answer. :)

------
krewast
I found the story of Trevor McKendrick who sold his bible app company [0]
pretty interesting.

There is also an article about him and his startup on Business Insider [1].

[0] [https://trevormckendrick.com/how-i-sold-my-bible-app-
company...](https://trevormckendrick.com/how-i-sold-my-bible-app-
company-b984bdd1f57b)

[1] [http://www.businessinsider.com/atheist-
makes-100000-selling-...](http://www.businessinsider.com/atheist-
makes-100000-selling-bibles-2015-2)

------
hkmurakami
Marco Armwnt selling Instapaper is fairly well documented.

~~~
idlewords
He went on to buy a vowel.

------
jkingsbery
If you are interested in stories of that nature,
[http://www.startupsfortherestofus.com/](http://www.startupsfortherestofus.com/)
talks about the process of two guys who've done that before and are in the
middle of doing it now. Rob Walling has a separate site,
[http://www.softwarebyrob.com/](http://www.softwarebyrob.com/), where he talks
about the same sorts of things.

------
dhruvkar
hey michael, OP of the referenced post. Heavy user of gdrive here, hope you're
not looking to sell sheetsu just yet, we have some use cases coming for it in
the next few months. :)

~~~
michaeloblak
No, I'm not planning to sell [https://sheetsu.com](https://sheetsu.com), no
worries. It's not worth that much yet. I'm just curious if solopreneurs are
selling their companies and if yes, how did they do it. Or if they keep it and
profit.

P.S. I'm eager to talk about your use cases for the coming months. You can
find my email on the website mentioned above.

~~~
dev1n
Okay so if you didn't post this I would never have known about sheetsu. Great
project!

I wish HN would do one day out of the month where commenters could post their
"Show HN" that they released that month. Much like the Who's Hiring threads.
It would help me find some awesome software that didn't quite make it to the
front page.

~~~
exolymph
Might be worth emailing dang about this idea. Or organizing it informally.

~~~
dev1n
I just emailed dang. Let's see what happens!

~~~
squeaky-clean
I like the idea a lot. There's plenty of things I've done that I'd like to
share, but don't feel they're noteworthy enough for a whole Show HN, yet my
friends aren't geeky enough to appreciate.

The same idea for "Ask HN" would be neat too. A lot of subreddits have a
weekly or monthly "Simple Questions" thread which are really helpful.

------
known
A bank in Germany has just one employee [http://www.rediff.com/business/slide-
show/slide-show-1-a-ban...](http://www.rediff.com/business/slide-show/slide-
show-1-a-bank-in-germany-has-just-one-employee/20130215.htm)

------
hoodoof
The question is, if you have a company worth selling and you are a single
owner and founder, is there any way to build the perception of high value,
similar to the valuation perceptions created for venture backed startups?

~~~
HappyTypist
Yes. Hire a PR company, pump out your metrics, and optimize for short term
revenue / profit growth.

------
mbesto
I've helped several buyers of 2-4 man companies (mainly SaaS). Feel free to
reach out.

------
xur17
I have. Happy to discuss if you want to shoot me an email (in profile).

