

Ask HN: Can you sell small non-scaling startups? - steilpass

When listening to PGs office hours at disrupt I once again heard this famous "looks like a nice business for an steady income but nothing which can scale". 
I remember hearing this myself and ignored that advice. And I think the reason was that I didn't want to give up the dream of selling my small non scaling startup. But maybe this relation is wrong.
So can you sell small businesses?
What are good advices since you probably don't have an existing network of investors?
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jnorthrop
I don't know what investor would be interested in a company with little growth
opportunity. I've been involved in two business that were in that situation. I
call it "survival mode." They both made enough money to stay in the black but
neither had enough (or any) growth to invest in new ideas. In both cases the
market wasn't as big as they thought it would be but didn't have enough cash
to pivot.

A business like that doesn't have the promise of a return on the investment an
investor is looking for.

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parallel
A company that has no growth potential is not very exciting to an investor.
They 'make bets' on companies they think might take off. It's high risk high
return as most small companies fail.

I think investor won't be interested in buying a business for small scale
steady income. There are plenty of very safe ways to do that like bluechip
shares or even term deposits.

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mattgratt
There are a number of people who know what they're doing who buy smaller web
companies. Typically they can network these together to get economies of scale
around user acquisition and monetization.

Check out internet brands - <http://www.internetbrands.com/ib/acquisitions>

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danielh
Of course you can sell a small business, the question is at what price. If
your potential for growth is limited, you won't get a Twitter-like valuation,
but if your business is solid and profitable, someone might be willing to pay
a couple times your earnings.

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steilpass
My question would be how to find that "someone". If I have investors they have
probably an idea how to sell it.

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proexploit
Why not post here as a start? If it's a worthwhile real business with some
degree of stability, you'll probably find some interest. "Small" might mean
$100/mo, $1,000/mo, or $10,000/mo to you and those have very different
valuations and ways to sell.

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eitland
Try "37 signals" first book, "Getting Real", freely available here:
<http://gettingreal.37signals.com/toc.php>

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steilpass
Interesting that you reference that book. Can you point me to an chapter that
relates to my question?

