Companies get bought, not sold. The best way to get bought is, first, to get on the radar of some potential acquirers. Not by saying: "Hey, come buy me!" But, instead, by trying to find a way to partner. Get some product manager at the company you think might be a good acquirer interested in what you're doing. Go in fully intending to do a partnership not a sale. Often, especially when you're small, the partnering company will just say: "This is easier for us to just own ourselves." That's what's precipitated every acquisition we've done.

In the case of a strategic buyer — like the big cloud companies you've described as possible acquirers — they're highly unlikely to care about your revenue, customers you have, or the tech you've build. They're much more likely to care about you as you've proven you can build something and understand the market at least enough to get people to pay you. The old rule of thumb in acquihires was $1M per engineer. That moves around, but is likely a good mental guide post.

I'd be deeply skeptical of hiring any banker to represent you. Frankly, it's a mark against any acquihire target we may consider — and I've heard the same from the heads of corp dev at all the big cloud providers. And I'd be even more deeply skeptical of any banker that would take you on. If you had $20M–$200M in recurring revenues and were growing 20% YoY, that's when you start to get in the hire-a-banker-to-broker-a-sale range. And, even then, it's much more likely to be driven by the acquirer than the company looking to be acquired.

Finally, if you've built a business with reliable cash flows and steady growth, the most likely place that you'd actually be able to sell it and keep it running is to a small private equity (PE) firm. There are a number of PE firms that have sprung up to buy up small "lifestyle" SaaS companies. Some of the smallest ones are started as "search funds" to go find a small business and help it grow. Start talking publicly about your revenue and growth rates and they'll inevitably come knocking on your door. Again, always better for them to call you than for you to call them.

Depending on your churn and growth rates I've seen PE firms offer 1x – 10x revenue for small SaaS companies recently. That's a big range, but, taking the mid-point (5x), and taking your $200k in sales, you're again around $1M — same as the rule of thumb above.

Congratulations on building something real that people are willing to pay for. Good luck!

This is good advice. A banker is overkill for the level of revenue you are at. PE is a good option

I’ve talked with PE folks about this and your revenue is too low from what I’ve heard.

I think an acquihire would be better for you.

PE guy here. This is correct. The only way you would get bought at your revenue level is for a strategic portfolio company add-on. Unfortunately not too many PE firms play in the field of "cloud / devops" technology solutions so your opportunities are going to be really limited.

That being said - Rackspace might be a good fit.

What kind of partnerships would you suggest doing? Ads for the company? Provide services for them? Etc?

yeah partner or raise a bunch of funding -- that gets you into the circles necessary to get seen as a potential takeover target.

At that scale you can definitely get acquihired (hired + a starting bonus) as an engineer - if THEY find YOU. Best way to do that? Market presence!

If you don't want to run your company anymore, selling the company might be more trouble than it's worth. You won't get THAT much cash for it, and you might end up at a engineering job that doesn't suit you, with golden handcuffs so you don't leave. That's the risk. After you're done working at the acquiring company, you'll just be another engineer, with a nice extra line on your resume most engineers don't have.

On the other hand, at the acquiring company you could find a business cofounder and if you want to, start another company, with more cash in your pocket, and more credibility with investors. That's the upside! But you'll be assuming that you're going to have a better idea in the future than the one your currently have.

Anyway this is all hypothetical. If you want corp dev people to find you, you need visibility in the marketplace. That means SEO, blog articles, etc.

I was with you until

> But you'll be assuming that you're going to have a better idea in the future than the one your currently have.

"Ideas are cheap, execution is everything."

Not sure what you mean here? Your comment seems to support the OP’s premise.

The "but..." phrasing of OP's premise makes it sound like a gamble. My point was that starting a successful business isn't about hoping some fairy grants you a perfect product & business plan. Coming up with an idea is the easy part. Executing on your idea is the hard part, and that's entirely within your own control.

I completely disagree. Ideas are extremely important. A mediocre idea with perfect execution won't get you very far. If Bezos had tried to build online store builders ala Viaweb - instead of THE online store - he would have a net worth at best of 1/10000 of where he's at now. Good ideas are exponentially better than mediocre ideas.

Founders of billion dollar businesses are extreme outliers with uncommon vision & a healthy dose of luck.

Besides, Yahoo bought Viaweb for about $50MM, and Shopify is a billion dollar company of its own. If $10MM or $50MM isn't successful, then I'll be happy to fail.

I highly recommend Joe/Mark at quietlightbrokerage.com.

quietlightbrokerage/FEinternational.com/empireflippers.com all share the same buyer list FYI

I would suggest reaching out to each and finding out who you are comfortable with.

I would also suggest taking a look at: centurica.com/website-buyers-report

This will give you a sense of the multiple on SDE you are likely to get. Lots of credit available to buyers right now so its a great time to sell, specifically saas.

Good luck

Getting to $200k ARR is an amazing achievement, particularly in just one year and without funding.

I can't advise you on pursuing an acquisition, but I'm in the same boat as you - I run a one-person company making $65k ARR after 16 months of hard labour. I know how tough it is doing it on your own, and how easy it is to question yourself when you don't have the external validation of an employer, investors, etc.

Are you sure you wouldn't be better sticking with it? After a year of working on something on your own all of your biases will be towards selling - if you're not sure then it's almost certainly the wrong choice. Have you looked at doing something like YC / Startup School, even if you don't want to take investment? Having any kind of external validation will help. You should also almost certainly take a few days off and recharge, if you haven't already - I find it hard to do that but whenever I do it helps.

$200K in recurring revenue - is pretty much the annual employee cost of a single average position at the companies you mention all in (office space, salary, benefits, indirect staff overheads (HR/Accting etc)).

In other words, to them, your business is very small. Other than aquihires - at a 5x multiple, $1M, does aws even go through the acquisition cycle for that type of business unless there is a much larger market presence - ie, a big free product side to your business?

If you want to sell its going to be to a different class of buyer.

You may be surprised at how sticky your customers are if you have an OK product even if the big players move in though. You might not get tons of new ones, but folks hate moving.

Yeah unfortunately $200k is entirely meaningless. In fact, any revenue sub $100m is pretty much meaningless to a large CSP like AWS.

For OP's business the price would be 100% strategy driven - ex: you've garnered some marketing attention, you've built some novel IP, or you've hired some hard to come by talent.

> In fact, any revenue sub $100m is pretty much meaningless to a large CSP like AWS.

What if OP is severely undercharging for their services? They could be providing a service that a bigcorp could charge $100k per (enterprise) customer for, at consumer prices.

I’d think acquirers would be very interested in acquiring—and then killing—the product in such a case, to remove memory of its price-anchoring influence from the market ASAP before introducing their own much-more-expensive one.

That's very unlikely. What can happen though is OP is giving away a ton of service (think github or instagram) and so a big firm can think long term on monitization.

Fight on. Take on the competition. My suggestion is to take a good vacation break and re-energise. After which, take on the competition and emerge stronger than your competitors. Fight on!

One of the comments has a great point: "You won't get THAT much cash for it, and you might end up at a engineering job that doesn't suit you, with golden handcuffs so you don't leave."

This! What have you got to lose? Worst case, you close down and get an engineering job, which is the same as if you went for aqui-hire - except that you miss the chance to build something great. Don't worry about the big guys, there is always enough space left in various niches. But do take a break first, and find some support somewhere (indiehackers?).

I sold a business through FE International (mentioned in some comments here). If you’re going to sell through a broker, I can’t say enough good thing s about them. Very professional and great to work with.

The only downside with going the broker route in general is looking like someone who isn’t wanted. Some will perceive you as having a lack of bizdev/PR skills, being in an unsexy/dying space, etc. You won’t get the big revenue multiple price that you would if tech companies were fighting for you.

Also start getting your financial and technical affairs in order yesterday. There will be a ton of due diligence whatever route you go and the better prepared you are, the smoother it will go. Retain an attorney as well.

Good luck. Happy to answer questions privately via email.

Why not just milk it until the money train dries up or you are rolling in cash? Just because one or more companies offer the same product doesn't mean you're going to squashed. What will tank your business is losing focus & giving up before you needed to.

Depending on what exactly it is it might be quite time consuming running the business, not to mention stressful to not have a reliable paycheque. An office hours job with salary might be starting to look desirable.

Congratulations! (I am using a throw away id because I'm in the middle of an M&A process myself). In my case, we have orders of magnitude more revenue, but some of the fundamentals of an acquisition process are the same. I have no experience with brokers (good or bad). If your goal is to sell to the cloud vendors themselves, you need to first develop a relationship with the relevant people on the other side. This is someone in product, not corporate development. 200K ARR may be too little for a proper acquisition so an acqui-hire may be the way to go. Two books that you need to read are "Venture Deals" (it is mostly about fundraising but has a concise, relevant section at the end) and "The Magic Box Paradigm" which is a great, surprisingly unknown book. You may want to check his talk online https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mq98YvFzn6o for a summary. Also, read Elad Gil's blog posts on M&A. All in all, you are in a great position, having bootstrapped to that level of revenue with no investors. That's impressive in and of itself. Good luck!

Chaos Monkeys by Antonio Garcia Martinez tells the author's story as his company is acquired by Twitter and he goes to work for Facebook. It's an really entertaining read and he includes a bunch of asides on how the Silicon Valley M&A pipelines work (or at least his perspective on how they work).

https://www.amazon.com/Chaos-Monkeys-Obscene-Fortune-Failure...

I must say I cannot agree with this book being a good read. If condescending, narcissistic, misogynist is your thing, I suppose maybe. Only book I have ever returned on Audible.

Someone summarized the dynamic well with the idea that "companies are bought, not sold".

The best sellers of startups are actually investors themselves. Some of them are very good at selling portfolio companies into bigger organizations. They have the contacts, relationships, and favored position as semi-third party negotiators. They've often worked at these companies themselves and know how to get them feeling the FOMO.

You might want to find some investors that have recently sold companies to your target companies and see if they want to invest in yours. Many investors say they don't like "flipping" companies but the reality is that some of them very clearly do.

First, congratulations on growing your business to this point! Most don’t make it that far!

Second, to echo some of the advice here, networking really helps. You likely have some connections at shops that do something similar and may be able to strike up a relationship with leaders and bring it up organically.

Another route is to identify your “best”/“most dedicated” client and approach them about bringing your services in-house. Depending on the nature of your business this could provide this client a diversified product offering if there is some synergy with their core competency; worked for us.

Regardless, best of luck!!

Echoing others, FE International is an established broker that is respected on both sides and will help you get all your financials in order. They also offer paperwork help to buyers, so they really do a great job on both sides. Having gone through a sale of business without them, it is an extremely annoying process that will consume your efforts for far longer than you think.

That being said, the businesses mostly being sold are either dropshipping, content with ad/affiliate rev. or the occasional SaaS, usually in a tidy package. It sounds like you might fit in thst last category, but your space might be too complicated for an easy sale. Usually people there are buying businesses without staff and take them over after a brief handoff. So if the business knowledge is key, it might not be valued appropiately there.

You could always split the difference and target 5-10 companies you think might want to buy you. Get a person on the phone if possible and let them know you are preparing to sell your business "in the coming months" and plan to be listed on FE International. Simply ask them if they would like to be notified when the sale is on.

Now you might hear crickets, they might say "ok" or they might decide to buy you right away. No matter the outcome, you will be in a better position to gauge the interest level if you try to sell.

Former founder, software investor and banker. Email me directly for some free advice on this one. You’ve got some options and good approaches - I can point you to some friends who work at shops that help companies like yours. Cameron.mullen@gmail.com

One option that may help is to use LinkedIn to find the key decision makers, figure out their email address (almost all companies have a fixed naming convention) and then put them in a Facebook Custom Audience group. Then just keep targeting them so at least they are aware of who you are and what you're doing.

The key people to target are lower level engineers, program managers as well as the VPs in charge of their respective cloud platforms.

> then put them in a Facebook Custom Audience group.

They may not be using their official email address to login at facebook

This is pretty creative, but doesn't this require the targets to have Facebook accounts associated with their professional email addresses from Linkedin?

You can target by e-mail address?

email, first, last, city, phone, any combo of the above.

use dux-soup to get their personal email address.

Get yourself featured on Indiehackers, publicize your numbers and your story (you can leave out the feeling of impending doom), and mention that you're open to a sale. You should get enough offers pretty quickly.

If you want a broker, lots of other comments here mention patio11 and the broker he used for Bingo Card Creator, he recommended them very highly.

To answer your question, exits.com is a great resource for people seeking smaller acquisitions.

If I may insert a personal opinion, I feel like for single person businesses, the potential upside is so great for you that it's going to be hard to find a buyer willing to make you an offer you can't refuse. I'd advise you ride this one out into the sunset. It's a subscription business, you could definitely squeeze at least 5 peak years out of it before it starts to fizzle out. Maybe you could move somewhere cheap and maximize the profits

I've seen this first hand. I worked at a product studio that had a few businesses which were costing nothing but generating >$20kUSD per month. I'd set up the business to be as no-ops as possible, so it can basically run itself, reap the profits. Next, take all this other advice and sell, sell, sell yourself to MS/GOOG/AWS.

I forget the name of the company but there is an Irish company broker that seems to be the main player in broking deals of this sort.

If you ask at the Indiehackers forums someone will know which company I mean.

Is it FE International? My only awareness of them comes from patio11, who speaks very highly. (And I enjoy getting their newsletter that lists properties for sale...)

https://feinternational.com/

Yep that's the one.

Revenue doesn't really matter that much. IMO a lot of bigger companies acquire when:

1. You build something that is difficult for them to build themselves.

2. You are a threat to their business model. Doubly so if an acquisition would merge well with their model.

This is the key sentence: "The major cloud providers (aws, google, azure) are starting to expand to my product space..."

If they're expanding there, they're going to need to spend marketing. They need to overthrow the incumbent. They want expertise in the field.

You mention multiple companies. That means that there are a few competing for the spot!

I would recommend being a bit of a thorn in their side, in the sense of market share. This is usually what sparks acquisitions of smaller companies. Don't actually be a thorn personality wise, but make your company visible.

You may want watch for conferences etc in the field and accidentally bump into them. I've once met all my major competitors in the same event.

Going out and saying "I want to sell" doesn't work well, for the same reason it's not a good way to get a date. You want to open up the conversation with the right person. "Oh, my business is making a quarter million dollars a year. But it's so tiring running a business. I wish I could just work in a company and focus on the tech."

A fundraising trick is to meet all the potential acquirers in the same week. It's a lot harder to do with this, but it could help.

I’ve been through this and happy to discuss privately and confidentially. Email is in my profile.

Make sure you're on the radar of biz-dev/partnership/product-management people at your potential acquirers. Check through your existing professional contacts for potential warm intros. And, your customers – product managers at the target orgs may already be trial users of your product. Perhaps even put some contact method in your throwaway profile here, so anyone at AWS/Google/Azure/etc seeing this can reach out.

If you're not naturally a sales-y networker/glad-handler/negotiator, if you have a trusted friend/colleague who is, you might want to bring them in as an advisor/junior-partner, incentivized to find & close a deal. Of course, this may not be natural for a solo builder like yourself, and includes some danger of bringing in a value-subtractor. But, someone with the right incentives, industry knowledge, & negotiating prowess could pay for their 'commission' many times over.

If you're in New York by any chance, FE International is hosting a public happy hour tomorrow at 307 W 47th St @ 6pm (https://www.facebook.com/events/267494074059745/). Could be an opportunity.

I’m surprised you haven’t received inquires. We get about one a month to acquire Cronitor.

If your objective has been to keep quiet about your success to avoid competitors, possibly reevaluate if that is the best strategy for acquisition.

Consider an outright sale at something like 24-36 months current mrr. Don’t acquihire for the wrong company.

Pitch your company to key decision makers in various companies to build exposure. Attend conferences and network with relevant people - grab a drink or dinner and discuss ideas and maybe acquisition talks can organically start.

Maybe run searches for announcements, webinars, talks, howto's about the related products, where you can see employee names. Ideally Product Manager or Product Director titles; but folks in marketing or evangelism who know the product area will know who those people are. Then reach out - LinkedIn is an option.

The product owners in the most related area would be in a position to consider your idea and advocate in the best way internally if it makes sense. If you have a call or meeting, prepare yourself about what things you might like to keep confidential until things progress a bit, in case they do not.

How about I run it for you give you a big percentage of the profit?

My SaaS has similar revenue and I've thought about selling to fund other projects. In the past year 3 large companies cold emailed me about selling - one of them twice from different departments, but after a bunch of emails back and forth none of them went through with it (I've been asking for 5-10x yearly revenue)

I'm not sure if I'm asking for too much or if they're on a fishing expedition, but for now I'm content just running things myself and growing revenue.

5-10x is on the high side for multipliers that I've heard of. 3x is fairly common.

my thinking is basically: I'm not trying to sell, they're trying to buy - I don't need a quick cash infusion so not selling is my default, but if they want to convince me to sell they should be willing to pay a premium on top of market rate.

I don't disagree. You're not likely to get a 300% premium over market rates, and you're okay with that. Sounds like everybody wins :)

Wish you could have had both departments bidding against each other

So first off congratulations to creating a business that makes customers pay $200K per year. That's amazing. There are companies out there that raise many $M, hire a bunch of engineers, and still don't get there.

I may be able to add a perspective here since I've worked on both sides of the table, in Corp Dev (before) and as a founder (today).

If you want to find an exit for your company, then it's "just" another sales process. That means you need to define your process, set a timeline, and create urgency among potential buyers. That means filling your pipeline with lots of prospects. In a way, it's like fundraising - you're trying to sell (a part of) your company.

Key is that you have a large top of the funnel - more people will say "no" than "yes". And for the ones that say "yes", you want to make sure that you have leverage, i.e. more than one offer.

Here's the rough process that I would pursue if I were in your shoes:

==========

- create a long list of companies that may be a good fit / home for your product (20+ companies)

- find their CEOs and their emails (e.g. via a freelancer on Upwork)

- get a warm intro (best), otherwise reach out cold

- prepare a general pitch (market changes, need for your product, etc.)

- do you homework to understand how your product would fit into their portfolio

==============

The first contact should only be about the potential opportunity - "xyz thought what I'm doing may be a good fit for your company. If I sent you a short deck, would you spend a few minutes looking at it?" ----> if yes, send and propose a 30 min chat

Do this for as many good potential buyers as possible, all within a few days. Schedule the coffee / call for the week after. Prepare that deck that you can send if somebody is open to talk / meet.

in the deck:

=============

- describe a big change in the market that has created a need for YOUR product

- make sure you nail the "why now?"

- explain your product's secret sauce and why it's unique

- show your traction, customer logos

- explain your economics (e.g. "ASP $18K / year")

- show what the business can look like if you join forces

- put a price on it

============

Keep this deck small. 6-8 pages max.

Make sure you communicate that you're looking to find a buyer within the next 6-8 weeks (urgency), and that you're talking to a few good companies (fear of missing out).

If you feel there's a fit, and the other side believes that too, work with the CEO to identify & involve the stakeholders on their end (e.g. VP of Product, VP of Engineering). Make sure that happens as a follow-up within the next week of your chat / coffee with the CEO.

If they all decide it's a fit - agree on the process and timeline it will take to close. They'll need to get approval from their board, etc. to get this through. So much can go wrong here. People go on vacation. There's an important release. The quarter is ending, and they missed their quarter. That's why you need many potential parties in your deal.

So:

first contact --> call / meeting --> get ok from stakeholders --> come to decision "is this a fit"? --> agree on closing steps

Reg. the price - there are few well-known small PE buyers out there that will pay your 1x revenue regardless of what your business is. Take that as the bottom of the valuation. To get something that's higher - you'll need competing parties for the deal.

But I doubt that anybody will buy you for the revenue. $200K is too little for any company to matter, regardless of small / big. So the important part is to communicate the potential, and your value-add as an individual contributor for say the next 12-24 months. But you don't know until you try and ask :-)

Hope this helps. and then look at https://www.intermix.io to and let me know if we're a potential fit :-)

This is a very good and detailed list, includes some of the things that I did in my sales process.

One thing to add is that for each company you should reach out to MANY people. CEO is a key target and the prototypical person to be involved, it's just that depending on the culture, structure, and personal preferences the best person to get involved is different at each firm.

So do research on the Founders, the Board, major investors, CEO and other C-level execs, head of Biz Dev, head of Corp Dev, head of Product Management, and all of the biz dev and corp dev teams. Reach out to them through your network or directly but blanket the organization if you're going in cold or don't here back from a referral to the CEO within a few days.

An entire industry of brokers exist to match online business owners with buyers and do these types of transactions regularly.

patio11 has used and spoken highly of FE International (you can see his blog or search HN)

But other brokers like e.g. Quiet Light Brokerage also exist.

It should be noted that these types of transactions have nothing to do with the typical Silicon Valley advice or narratives you'll read about acquihires.

The product seems pretty location-independent, have you thought/is it even an option for you about moving somewhere cheaper and keep working on it? Might just give it a go and if revenue keeps growing you might have quite a bit saved in the bank in a couple of years.

Firstly congrats, that's great that your business has driven so much ARR with 1 person and no funding! Based on your question I assume that you haven't sold a business before so here's some things to think about, ultimately before even deciding whether a sale makes sense for you. This is a timely post, my company had an acquisition offer that we ultimately rejected so I have some insights FWIW. A brain dump:

1. Only engage in acquisition talks if you're very serious. They consume a lot of time - negotiating will become your new job. The view is don't talk to Corp Dev unless you're serious [1] (this is very true) 2. Really you should sell when you don't want to sell [2]. Firesales will produce a minimal $ outcome. The upside is it's a complete package - a sale is still a sale (successful entrepreneur/exit), you're getting something for the business, it's a good resume story especially if you're a first-time founder. You'll also get a good job at the acquirers business 3. The market price isn't based on some X of your ARR, it's whatever someone is willing to pay you, so $200k ARR sounds great (congrats btw), but it's what you're worth to them. 4. Asset sale vs stock sale - generally businesses want your assets not your stock, whereas the tax for you (assuming you owned you stock >1 year) will be less via a stock sale, you'd be double-taxed from an asset sale so really try against this way [3] 5. Tax is a big consideration. In CA, long term capital gains is ~30% vs ordinary income ~50% 6. Form & timing of consideration - form: cash vs equity - cash is king, but any public company stock should be seen as liquid (blue chips you mentioned would be great stock for consideration). Also timing of the purchase price is huge. Typically they'll try to defer it over a long period of time (2-4 years) as an earn-out to incentivize you to stay there. Earn-outs might also have milestones you need to hit in order to get the payouts too. 7. Costs of selling. You'll need a lawyer and maybe a CPA and you'll generally pay their bill, so this could easily hit > $50k (if the negations fall through you'll owe whatever work your lawyer has done to date too) 8. Negotiations are all about leverage. If you're selling your company then they will hold a lot of the leverage, so be aware when you're agreeing to the letter of intent that after that moment, normally clauses/ points will only get worse for you. What you have going for you though but the sounds of things is that you don't need to sell, you're just thinking of selling - ie, you're revenue creating, hopefully profitable, so it's not like you'll run out of cash during the process. Always aim for a 30 day close to minimize the drag on of the deal.

Assuming you do want to sell, then avenues to go down could be: 1. Do you have any large customers? Large customers might be a good source of potential suitor, they already like your product (they pay for it), you have relationships with them. Always frame it as looking at deeper partnership opportunities (this is what businesses call it when they're skirting around the word "acquisition") 2. The team that do M&A in a business are called Corporate Development, so LinkedIn for these guys at all the big potential suitors you can think of, set up coffee (they might be interested because that is literally all their job is - you're doing half their legwork for them). 3. Who are your competitors? Search them on on Crunchbase for any sales and see what companies are buying. 4. You haven't raised any capital but do you have any VC links? These guys can offer invaluable advice, even if they're not interested in funding you / you aren't looking to raise they normally have some great angles for you so you should hit them up - they are also (a good one) some of the most well connected people, so can put out feelers for you/ makes intros. You never know, they might persuade you to take their money to take on aws etc...

Let me know if you had any questions on it, interested to hear your thoughts!

[1] http://www.paulgraham.com/corpdev.html [2] https://justinkan.com/the-founders-guide-to-selling-your-com... [3] http://www.marinercapitaladvisors.com/resources/publications...

The formatting in your post is messed up, so I hope you don't mind me fixing it here:

1. Only engage in acquisition talks if you're very serious. They consume a lot of time - negotiating will become your new job. The view is don't talk to Corp Dev unless you're serious [1] (this is very true)

2. Really you should sell when you don't want to sell [2]. Firesales will produce a minimal $ outcome. The upside is it's a complete package - a sale is still a sale (successful entrepreneur/exit), you're getting something for the business, it's a good resume story especially if you're a first-time founder. You'll also get a good job at the acquirers business

3. The market price isn't based on some X of your ARR, it's whatever someone is willing to pay you, so $200k ARR sounds great (congrats btw), but it's what you're worth to them.

4. Asset sale vs stock sale - generally businesses want your assets not your stock, whereas the tax for you (assuming you owned you stock >1 year) will be less via a stock sale, you'd be double-taxed from an asset sale so really try against this way [3]

5. Tax is a big consideration. In CA, long term capital gains is ~30% vs ordinary income ~50%

6. Form & timing of consideration - form: cash vs equity - cash is king, but any public company stock should be seen as liquid (blue chips you mentioned would be great stock for consideration). Also timing of the purchase price is huge. Typically they'll try to defer it over a long period of time (2-4 years) as an earn-out to incentivize you to stay there. Earn-outs might also have milestones you need to hit in order to get the payouts too.

7. Costs of selling. You'll need a lawyer and maybe a CPA and you'll generally pay their bill, so this could easily hit > $50k (if the negations fall through you'll owe whatever work your lawyer has done to date too)

8. Negotiations are all about leverage. If you're selling your company then they will hold a lot of the leverage, so be aware when you're agreeing to the letter of intent that after that moment, normally clauses/ points will only get worse for you. What you have going for you though but the sounds of things is that you don't need to sell, you're just thinking of selling - ie, you're revenue creating, hopefully profitable, so it's not like you'll run out of cash during the process. Always aim for a 30 day close to minimize the drag on of the deal.

Assuming you do want to sell, then avenues to go down could be:

1. Do you have any large customers? Large customers might be a good source of potential suitor, they already like your product (they pay for it), you have relationships with them. Always frame it as looking at deeper partnership opportunities (this is what businesses call it when they're skirting around the word "acquisition")

2. The team that do M&A in a business are called Corporate Development, so LinkedIn for these guys at all the big potential suitors you can think of, set up coffee (they might be interested because that is literally all their job is - you're doing half their legwork for them).

3. Who are your competitors? Search them on on Crunchbase for any sales and see what companies are buying.

4. You haven't raised any capital but do you have any VC links? These guys can offer invaluable advice, even if they're not interested in funding you / you aren't looking to raise they normally have some great angles for you so you should hit them up - they are also (a good one) some of the most well connected people, so can put out feelers for you/ makes intros. You never know, they might persuade you to take their money to take on aws etc...

Congrats!

I work for a venture firm in SF, we would be interested in buying the company in cash, or at least having that conversation. We've run companies like PagerDuty in the ops space.

Look forward to chatting! Here's my personal - yyzvictor@gmail

I've sold a company in your space. Reach me on gmail

gramerhein at...

Kudos on building that man. That's some awesome one man stuff.

Keep it running and start another project?

Its easier said than done. Generally a project needs our serious attention.

A Show HN should work you too.

try replying to some recruiter spam explaining your situation and see how they respond. some of them may try to connect you with whoever would be involved in that sort of decision making at their company.

Just email the respective business development folks at the companies expanding into your space.