Hit its effort vs scale limit and we’ve got more pressing things to spend time on. We could grow it but the result isn’t worth the effort compared to cost benefit of other endeavors we’ve got on the go (big tech jobs) and more recent time needs (young families).
Learnt a bunch across so many dimensions and set us up for ongoing success with that knowledge, but this specific thing has no future and selling it appeared too hard.
It was on autopilot for sure but that baked in an assumption that customers self solved, and had no new needs. We felt bad that we were delivering a decaying service to users in silence, users could use an alternative and get better service for their $ (in theory) and we would stop taking $ for what we see as delivering a subpar result.
Understood. Have you looked at brokerage firms to sell your company?
I haven't used them and I'm not affiliated with them, but:
- https://microconf.com/quietlight they appear to be a brokerage partner for MicroConf, which is a conference for those who follow the self-funded/bootstrapped route such as yourself.
I don't know if it's all said and done, after all, we're 31 December, but putting this here just in case. I don't like to see a service that provided value go to the waste bin, though I don't want to overstep either.
Yep we talked to FE and they were great, but most selling processes require doco, finances, code review, walkthroughs, hand holding, explanations etc. “write down all the shit you’ve just known or learnt in the last 8 years” to make some multiple of revenue (not necessarily >1), with no guarantee of the sale closing and having to repeat.
Too. Hard. That plus the complexity of other things in our lives to deal with means that some $ just to see through a sale isn’t worth it.
The software is the thing we built and a testbed which we cut our teeth on, and learnt so much, took that knowledge and folded into other newer projects an incredible platform for learning and iteration, but we’ve moved on to bigger and better already so don’t too feel bad about turning it off (it was our first baby tho..).
I see. If continuing to operate it is out of the question and selling it is too much of a hassle, have you considered open sourcing the code to give it a chance for a second life, instead of letting it die on a hard drive somewhere?
Learnt a bunch across so many dimensions and set us up for ongoing success with that knowledge, but this specific thing has no future and selling it appeared too hard.
It was on autopilot for sure but that baked in an assumption that customers self solved, and had no new needs. We felt bad that we were delivering a decaying service to users in silence, users could use an alternative and get better service for their $ (in theory) and we would stop taking $ for what we see as delivering a subpar result.