Why we shut down Newsberry Part 2: Why we didn’t sell
In this postmortem from 2012, @alexknowshtml candidly breaks down the dissolution of their startup, examining the fatal assumptions, misallocated resources, and market dynamics that led to its shutdown.
Community discussions on HN centered on identifying product-market fit early, avoiding vanity metrics, and the emotional recovery process after shutting down.
Yeah, I don't believe it.
I think they never would have gotten past due diligence. They claimed to be generating $75k "in profit", but had no F/T devs on the project. Combine that with self-proclaimed stalled growth, and the company's a loser. I'm going to guess that a huge slice of that $75k was due to parasitic hosting -- they probably put it on infrastructure belonging to (or at very least subsidized by) their other "real" projects, so even $75k is a stretch.
Next, the codebase is hacked together (as they say in the "why we're not open-sourcing it" paragraph). People buying entire companies in a packed market like this are looking to buy something that's basically running on rails. Newsberry isn't this. Hacked together is fine for a bleeding-edge idea, but this thing had been going for 7 years.
A buyout would have landed somewhere in the 4-figures. If I were in their shoes, I would have turned it down, too.
I'd find it more interesting to see how a company such as this got to the point of getting an offer. Not trying to be rude, but I find articles like this a little too trendy.
ever considered something like flippa? it addresses all your concerns and is nearly impossible not to know about it if you do business online (and read HN)
Any word on why this was [deleted] until a few minutes ago? Inquiring minds want to know.
Follow up post to questions about shutting down our $75k/year profitable product: http://wildbit.com/blog/2012/01/26/why-we-shut-down-a-product-that-was-75000year-profitable/