I started a side project last year and it's been a fantastic experience. It's an opportunity to "scratch an itch" that the day job can't provide (which for me is doing whatever I want).
I had some frontend dev skills but didn't have the backend chops, so I hired someone on Upwork. I'm pretty busy at work so getting someone else involved is key (If I was by myself I'm not sure I would have stuck with it).
It's been a year and the app is doing about $3k/mo in revenue.
They have a pricing consulting business that finances it (http://www.priceintelligently.com/) so the data feeds their consulting business (I'd imagine). I use Profitwell and love it.
Over the past year I've grown my own software company from 0 - $1250/mo in revenue in a highly competitive space (lots of VC-funded startups).
It's not enough to do full-time yet, but there are distinct advantages I have that VC-funded startups don't. For example, I can serve SMBs/smaller companies, but for a VC-backed company these organizations aren't worth their time.
Clearly they have advantages I don't have either (time, headcount, etc), but the presence of a market is a great thing, because I don't have to guess if companies are willing to pay for it.
Do you have a link for your product/service/offering? I'm very keen to learn more about the sorts of products that work out and also how you happened to work on that idea.
From reading the report, I didn't think that he made 120k $ debt just to make the sale; rather he financed his second startup with credit card debt, and used some of the AR sale to pay back the debt.
What are you implying? He said in the post he paid off most of his creditors after closing. If the final price was $215k it certainly seems possible to pay off most of $120k with that.
A business like AR with $60k in profit sold for $215k seems like a pretty good deal for the seller.
On a yield basis, that seems like a great deal, but given the work involved (+ chance of the business being disrupted), I'm not sure I like that profit to price paid ratio. It certainly isn't a price I would have paid.
Oh. He perhaps he should clarify, as that's how I read it as well (I'm sympathetic to Patrick, so I wasn't reading that with a skeptical eye). He wrote something about taking equity out of AR to put into Starfighter, using credit card debt.
I had some frontend dev skills but didn't have the backend chops, so I hired someone on Upwork. I'm pretty busy at work so getting someone else involved is key (If I was by myself I'm not sure I would have stuck with it).
It's been a year and the app is doing about $3k/mo in revenue.