ROUNDTABLES ★ 11 upvotes 2024

Ask HN: How to Sell My Side Project?

The Founder's Submission

Direct narrative and submission text authored by @ijidak on Hacker News:

I've been running a side project, an iOS app, for about four years now. It's currently generating around $1,000 in revenue per month, with a pre-tax profit of approximately $800 per month. While the app has shown promising growth (revenue doubled last year), I'm finding it challenging to invest the necessary time and energy to continue its development and marketing.

I believe the app has significant potential if someone with fresh enthusiasm and resources took over. Given this, I'm considering selling the entire business.

Does anyone have experience or advice on the best approach to sell a side project like this? What platforms or strategies would you recommend for finding a buyer interested in acquiring a small but profitable app business? Any insights or tips would be greatly appreciated.

Retrospective Overview & Key Insights

Distilled analysis of the business dynamics, operational challenges, and strategic takeaways:

An open Ask HN community consultation from 2024 where @ijidak convened hundreds of developers and bootstrappers to share real experiences, hard numbers, and tactics.

Core Principles for Independent Builders:
1
Participants share raw revenue figures, churn rates, and stack decisions that corporate PR never publishes.
2
Recurring answers reveal that distribution, not coding skill, is almost universally the rate-limiting step in developer businesses.
3
Practical recommendations on bookkeeping, payment gateways (Stripe vs Paddle), and freelance-to-product transitions.
Community Debate Themes:

Hundreds of active indie hackers contributed case studies, pricing heuristics, and pitfalls to avoid when moonlighting on side projects.

Community Discussions & Critical Reviews

High-signal perspectives, counter-arguments, and peer founder insights debated on Hacker News (5 total discussions):

GU @gus_massa Peer Contributor

My usual recomendation is to read whatever patio11 wrote about the subject. In this case "What I Learned Selling Bingo Card Creator" https://training.kalzumeus.com/newsletters/archive/selling_software_business (HN discusion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11347006 (439 points | March 2016 | 84 comments))

CO @codegeek Peer Contributor

Your best bet are platforms like flippa.com, acquire.com (these 2 I have bought stuff on) and many others.

KA @kazanz Peer Contributor

Make a post on indiehackers. You'll get a ton of people offering to buy it.

LD @ldjkfkdsjnv Peer Contributor

Mind pasting some basic information about that the app does?

HISTORICAL ERA Post-ZIRP & AI (2023–2026)
COMMUNITY SCORE ★ 11 points
TOTAL DISCUSSIONS 5 comments
TOPICS & TECH STACK: