
Ask HN: How can I strategically sell my startup? - throwaway01010x
Hi HN,<p>How do you sell a startup without significant traction but with significant IP?<p>--
My particular case:<p>I tried emailing the careers&#x27; email of 50 fintech companies but none even forwarded the request to the appropriate department.<p>I created this Delaware C company a year ago and launched this fintech product which by now has been live for months and is being used by a few on iOS and MacOS.<p>It&#x27;s a bundle of commission-free financial services. Completely P2P. Investments, payments and payments acceptance. You can deposit with any payment method (e.g local ones, an amazing thing for the unbanked&#x2F;underbanked). I&#x27;d say it&#x27;s a lot like LocalBitcoins but for all things finance.<p>It has 0 APIs connected to it. It&#x27;s a significant piece of vertically integrated, completely stand alone code. Took me around 3500 hours.<p>It has basically zero bugs, 100k+ lines of code and a great UI&#x2F;UX.<p>I&#x27;m looking to sell it because I failed to secure more funds. I&#x27;m just looking to recoup an amount equivalent to the time spent on it at US dev market rate. Sad, but real.<p>I&#x27;d be really grateful if you guys have some tips on how to to accomplish this.
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theli0nheart
You're not going to get anyone to buy your company by cold emailing them.

Do you know anyone in the industry? Meet them for coffee--no strings. Your
goal is just to test the waters. Do whatever you can to get the foot in the
door with a conversation with someone who may know someone who may know
someone.

Then do this 2-3x (or more) per week and be patient.

In the end, though, if you couldn't convince enough people to use your
product, you're going to have trouble selling it to any company for any
significant amount of capital. Hire a support person if necessary so it's
completely off your hands and turn your focus on to marketing. You mentioned
it is basically done and is nearly bug-free, so I'm assuming maintenance would
be minimal.

Good luck!

