just_to_ask_sam

How does this work? I got a D- for my Freshdesk KB

Of course, but the feedback has always been completely different, depending on the size of the business/customer. It'd range from "price is too high" (value) to "you don't do X" (x being a all-in-one suite, as our market often bundles products together) to "not what we were looking for"

Indeed, it would be around $600k after paying back investors and such.

Even if I did net the $600k (3x my current annual salary), I wonder if I could use it to recreate something I have right now (a biz that produces $200k/year for me w/ little effort)

Thanks for the idea. I'm already doing this – my burn rate is $6k for my team of 3 (support, sales, dev).

OP here. I've considered this "passive income" approach, and perhaps am in this right now – I haven't been doing much work on the business, just collecting checks.

I often wonder what the value/problem of the upfront cash would be. I feel like I could do big things – but I just can't get over the fact that I wouldn't know what to do with $600-750k in cash, to produce more cash.

Hi, OP here. Thank you for your comment. I'm baffled by how many wonderful people have shared their POV & experience.

I don't believe my employees would know what to do. I've spoken to them before, and gotten very little value from it. They don't have much of a business acumen.

It goes without saying that the broker is doing what's in his interest. But I've found this particular broker to be very truthful, upfront.

He believes we could get $700k, upfront cash and the rest ($100-200k) an earn out.

Of the 700k, I'd get $560-600k upfront after paying back investors (10%) and broker (10%).

At this point, I'm really paralyzed on how to move forward.

I'd LOVE to be able to fix the business, but my worry is I'd have to redo the product from ground up (we have a wonderful codebase that we rewrote a few months ago), in a way where we essentially put out a completely different product.

^^ That is one of the reasons I thought about selling – If I have to build a new product to fix churn, I might aswell sell, and do it from 0, given the risk at hand.

Thanks for your input, it makes a lot of sense. However, I'm worried reducing churn to less than 1% is very very hard (I don't know if you've ran a SaaS with 1% churn – It's not as common), and often requires product changes, which may impact overall growth and cause even more churn.

Thanks for your comment – another thing I'm worried about is what next? I've been doing this so long, that, unfortunately, I've gotten quite comfortable at it, and worry that I wouldn't know what to do next.

Hi Sam!

I'm the CEO & Founder of a 4-person SaaS company – profitable as most of our employees are outside the US. We're 4 years old, and are now doing ~$30k/mo in revenue. I started the company young and have learned a lot.

I question whether this is just a waste of my time, and whether I should just sell and start something new, but my worry is that by the time the new thing kicks off, THIS company will be making far more.

What are your thoughts on WHEN to sell a startup, and whether to even sell?