I'm selling my bootstrapped SaaS project. Currently doing $2500 MRR and growing
Published in 2020, this chronicle by @andycloke details the mechanics of building a profitable, self-funded business without venture backing. Key verified financial milestone: $2500 M.
The community focused on B2B customer acquisition channels, cold email vs SEO distribution, and balancing full-time employment with side-project development.
Hi Andy, Former founder, now investment banker here.
Sorry to hear you're not interested in continuing the business moving forward. Btw, if you really want to sell, probably best to work on this answer [ e.g. I love other things > i hate this ].
My quick take: - $2500/mo MRR in ~6mo is nice validation of the opportunity. A natural question would be "are you interested in pursuing this as an actual business, and becoming a startup founder?" You should expect this question from any & every potential acquirer. Btw, I'd coach you that "i don't love this space" isn't best answer; try "i find this super interesting, but I love XYZ and that's where my heart is..." Follow-up question: would you join us as a developer on this for 12 months?"
- You'll be viewed as "side hustle," not pre-seed startup. By that i mean to say you're level of 'completeness' and value will be categorized this way. This will make it challenging for a buyer to consider you an 'acqui-hire' level target, e.g. the old adage "$1M / developer" type acqui-hire valuation some co's use for buying teams.
- I think you're most likely acquirers will be influencer marketplace and/or related mktg / agency / services firms [ e.g. Hypr, Traacker, similar ]. They're the independent alternatives to TikTok, Snap, whomever's own features in this area.
- Scraping will be considered a fundamental risk, e.g. "does your current usage fully abide TikTok Terms of Use?" Do they offer an API? If so, why aren't you using it? How at risk is your scraping of being cut off by TT in the future? Have you spoken with a TT biz dev person about this? See 'ckdarby' comment on friend's Insta business getting C&D ltr from FB legal; very hard for you to be acquired if you have any of this risk.
- Valuation: you're super early stage; sorry, i'm not super familiar with valuation around side-hustle projects so I'd google this a bit to see if there are nice precedent / comparables.
- Classic mba style valuation rules-of-thumb, for later stage / at scale businesses: 6.5-7.5x EBITDA. Fairly standard business school valuation rule-of-thumb, e.g. if you were at scale business being considered by private equity buyers they'd start their valuation & waterfall model around here.
Finally, congratulations -- this is a fantastic side-hustle. You may be able to find a way to get a deal closed, especially if you're willing to go with the code-base to help it land, migrate off scraping to API, etc.
J
It sounds risky to build your business on top of someone else’s business.
Do you even have legal authorization to access TikTok’s data, and customer base?
For an example, PadMapper built their rental search website on top of Craigslist, a few years back. It was actually quite nice at the time. And then, Craigslist shut them down with a cease-and-desist order.
genuine question: how is this different than the official creator marketplace from TikTok? https://creatormarketplace.tiktok.com/ I'm in the influencer space. Why would I pay you when I get the same thing for free from Tiktok?
Hi HN,
I've bootstrapped my SaaS tool Influence Grid (https://www.influencegrid.com) since December 2019. It's a TikTok influencer search engine used by marketing agencies, consumer brands etc.
I'm looking to sell and thought this doc might be interesting to other HN folk as it goes into how I've built and grown the project, and why I'm selling.
Any questions or offers, let me know! andy@influencegrid.com