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I bought HitTail (a SaaS app) in 2011, grew it, and sold it last week
- rwalling 11y agoHere's the original story of the purchase and revamp: http://www.softwarebyrob.com/2012/01/25/the-inside-story-of-a-small-startup-acquisition-part-1/ http://www.softwarebyrob.com/2012/01/25/the-inside-story-of-...
- boyter 11y agoAlso a podcast interview covering more details about it (many technical) http://techzinglive.com/page/921/165-tz-interview-rob-walling-hittal http://techzinglive.com/page/921/165-tz-interview-rob-wallin...
- myth_buster 11y agoDiscussion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3511437 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3511437
- c0achmcguirk 11y agoIt's been great listening to Rob's story about HitTail on the Startups for the Rest of Us podcast [1]. I highly recommend this podcast for the coder/entrepreneurs out there. It will motivate you and keep you focused on starting small and growing from there. [1] - http://www.startupsfortherestofus.com/ http://www.startupsfortherestofus.com/
- ThomPete 11y agoAgree one of the best pod casts out there.
- tyho 11y agoFYI, uBlock blocks your site.
- tomphoolery 11y agohere's why: "It will give you a script which you need to add in the head part of your blog and it will start tracking all Keywords which drive traffic to your Blog/Website" http://www.shoutmeloud.com/hittail-review-related-keyword-suggestion-tool.html http://www.shoutmeloud.com/hittail-review-related-keyword-su... Whenever I see uBlock flagging something, I always make sure to double-check as to what it actually is. In this case, it doesn't seem like HitTail is that malicious.
- bpicolo 11y agouBlock has had some pretty stupid political blocks, e.g. sourceforge globally
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- dchest 11y agoThis block is coming from "Peter Lowe’s Ad server list", not uBlock-maintained lists.
- forgotmypassw 11y agoYou never know which installers will get hijacked so as a precaution it's a good idea to block SF globally.
- slig 11y agoAnother great reason to use a different domain (eg: hittail.net) for hosting a tracking platform.
- stas-tatarin 11y agoThanks for reporting! We'll look into this.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- quickpost 11y agoCongrats Rob! Enjoyed following his various posts and presentations about HitTail. I suspect this is the listing for the sale on FE International: http://feinternational.com/buy-a-website/5262-saas-keyword-tool-9-years-old-73k-net-mo http://feinternational.com/buy-a-website/5262-saas-keyword-t... I'd also be curious if Google's recent updates ("not provided" keywords in analytics, etc.) have impacted the ability to make this an effective product in the long run.
- ThomasSmale 11y agoThomas from FE International here. That's the right link. HitTail uses Webmaster Tools (Search Console) rather than Google Analytics so the product still works fine - I tested it myself before we listed the business and found it very helpful!
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- ThomasSmale 11y agoI believe it goes back 999 of the top keywords so plenty of data for the tool to be practical. It's useful for people with sites to come up with a reasonable number of content suggestions each week/month. It's probably not suitable if you're looking to do a huge volume, but I suspect that wasn't the original purpose nor what the majority of users need.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- dangrossman 11y agoNo doubt the long-term outlook of this product has changed dramatically since its initial conception and the 2011 acquisition. It's an analysis and recommendation engine built on search data for each site. That data used to be directly available to and collected by HitTail, since search terms were in the referring URLs of every visit to the site coming from a search engine. Now that Google virtually never includes search terms in referring URLs, the only way HitTail can get the data it needs is via Google's APIs. Google can change the API, remove the API, or change the terms of use, and HitTail's SOL. Already they only have access to a subset of search data the API makes available, rather than all long-tail keywords, which they had a few years ago. Will Google remain friendly to tools like this in the future? Who knows. That's a risk the new owner hopefully evaluated before taking it on.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- joelrunyon 11y agoIs there a writeup for the story of this sale?
- rwalling 11y agoI'm working on something.
- boyter 11y agoPerhaps you could discuss it with the techzing guys again? It would be nice to get into the details.
- rwalling 11y agoHere's a write-up of a few things I learned on the journey: http://www.softwarebyrob.com/2015/12/02/what-i-learned-buying-growing-and-selling-hittail/ http://www.softwarebyrob.com/2015/12/02/what-i-learned-buyin...
- ArcticCelt 11y agoAs a listener of both Techzing and Startups for the Rest of Us, it's fun to have followed almost the whole story since it's beginning :)
- rfrey 11y agoCongratulations, Rob, it's nice to see counter-examples to the "it's all chance" worldview. I looked at the FE International listings, and I have to ask of those who know about these things: What would lead somebody to sell a going-concern business for 2x earnings? There were several examples. I don't want to go straight to "scam!" but that seems too good to be true.
- rwalling 11y agoThanks! Re: valuation - reputable online businesses are typically valued in the 2-3.5x annual net profit range. See http://feinternational.com/blog/how-do-you-value-an-online-business/ http://feinternational.com/blog/how-do-you-value-an-online-b... for more info about valuations. But honestly, it comes do to what the market is willing to pay for a financial (as opposed to strategic) acquisition.
- petercooper 11y agoWhen I realized this, I knew I'd stick with my business for the long haul (at least until any interest went above 'FU money' level). If I can make $1m profit per year to take out as dividends, selling it for a once-off $3m seems bizarre unless I had a rapid need for money elsewhere.
- charlesdm 11y agoThis depends on the tax situation of the country you live in. If you do the math, you might realise to get $1m in personal income by declaring dividends, you actually need to earn $2m in corporate profit. So to get $3m (capital gains from a sale), you would need to earn $6m in taxable income. Meaning it would take you 4/5/6/7 years. Also, if you then reinvest that $3m in more traditional assets (stocks/bonds/property/alternatives), you can earn 5-10% on that capital ($150-300k per year), WHILE working on something new. Capital is awesome.
- petercooper 11y agoBoring calculation for people in the UK (as I am, and I've thought about this quite a bit ;-)). Under certain conditions you can use "Entrepreneurs' Relief" to only pay 10% capital gains on your sale of a business (up to a limit of £10m), so a £3m sale could net you £2.7m in hand. Depending on many circumstances, £1m in dividends (per year) should net you around £750k. So it would take about 3.6 years to make the same as selling for current 3x annual profit. However, if your profits were increasing by more than 10% per year, it would be a wash.
- IanDrake 11y agoHey Rob - Financially speaking (and knowing what you know now) would you do it again? Will you be going through the trash to find your next treasure? Congrats!
- rwalling 11y ago>>Financially speaking (and knowing what you know now) would you do it again? Absolutely, no questions asked. Several reasons: 1. Acquiring an app with product/market fit puts you ~18 months ahead of starting from scratch. Like most founders, I'm not a very patient person. I'm now working on GetDrip.com, and it took us a long time to hit p/m fit. The slog to get there is the worst part of launching a product, IMO. 2. Financially, this was a game changer for me. During the course of my tenure with HitTail, revenue + the sale prices funded multiple angel investments, the budget for building and launching Drip, and many other things I would not have been able to afford previously. 3. The acquisition and revamp were also game changing for me in terms of what I was able to learn, the content I was able to produce from it (multiple MicroConf talks). Both are important to me. Even without the sale, the learnings and financial rewards were still a major success for me. >>Will you be going through the trash to find your next treasure? I've already started my next one, GetDrip.com. I built it from scratch with a co-founder, and I can't count the times I've said "I'm never going to build from scratch again!" I try not to say "never," but if I could choose build or buy I would buy. Every. Single. Time.
- dennisgorelik 11y agoHow do you know that the business you are buying already has product/market fit?
- malux85 11y agoCongrats Rob! Are you looking for your next adventure? I have spent 9 months building a startup, at large scale (60 servers, 4 million data points a minute) My email is in my profile, I would love to chat and get your thoughts and advice :)
- kumarski 11y agoBrilliant "Discount for Bloggers" strategy = loads of positive reviews.
- Keats 11y agoCongrats! I enjoy your podcast very much
- brandnewlow 11y agoCongrats, Rob!
- rubyrescue 11y agoWe just bought a SAAS business via FE International last month (http://talentdesk.com http://talentdesk.com). Process was incredibly smooth. I'm happy to answer questions privately if anyone has any on what it's like on the buyer side.
- ThomasSmale 11y agoCongratulations on the acquisition! Great to hear you found our process smooth, too.
- porter 11y agoWhat did your due diligence process look like?
- right2be 11y agoExcellent! I am sure HitTail is in great hands with Stas behind the cockpit. Looking forward to seeing what comes and excellent job by FEI.
- davidw 11y agoI've always enjoyed Rob's take on things. The things he's worked on seem like "a good goal" rather than something completely unobtainable, like most SV style startups seem to those of us who are not there and don't want to kill ourselves working on one. I highly recommend his book even though it's a bit long in the tooth at this point: http://amzn.to/1OuZPHs http://amzn.to/1OuZPHs