13 ms·

Ask HN: Is there a way to sell my MVP?

• bborud 10y ago
  "registration, payment and a nice domain". A minimum, VIABLE product? Does it do anything? Does it do anything that others can't easily replicate? Explain the "viable" to me.
  • heeton 10y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_viable_product https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_viable_product "is a product with just enough features to gather validated learning about the product and its continued development" If people are willing to pay for something, even before it has any features, that seems like a pretty good MVP to me. Assuming that people are paying for it that is...
    • bborud 10y ago
      Thanks, I know what it is and I am up to my arse in people who believe this has value despite having actual _validated learning_ that overwhelmingly points to the opposite. It turns out that when you fuck around with your customers and tell them that you have a product, only to have them find out that you have fuck-all and you are cobbling it together as they wait, your customers lose faith in you and think you are a douchebag. And rightly so. Because pretending isn't doing. Eric Ries has done untold damage to the tech and the business world. He is successful at one thing and one thing only: writing and marketing a book. Generous people call his book a post-fact rationalization of success, but that would be overstating it grossly. Because he didn't have any success to rationalize post-fact. It makes me angry that people think this horseshit has anything to do with creating value. Doing stuff and knowing how to do stuff has value. Yanking people around with smoke and mirrors does not. It mostly ends up wasting time and time is the one resource you can't get back.
      • Clubber 10y ago
        Yes, maybe I'm missing something but from what I'm reading, he has a marketing website and a payment system to take payments for ?? what? Is there a product? I've always understood a MVP to be a product to have just enough features to add core value immediately. Bells and whistles to add more value are not included, but core value is. For example, if you are writing scheduling software, MVP would be able to schedule better than, say on pen and paper, or whatever is standard functionality in the current market space. Future value would be adding features to "cast a wider net," so to speak. Do people seriously consider MVP a way to pay for vaporware? Am I misunderstanding the situation?
  • konschubert 10y ago
    > A minimum, VIABLE product? Does it do anything? The MVP is basically just a custom storefront for the service that is being sold and which provides the actual value. > Does it do anything that others can't easily replicate? No. But is is new and unique.
    • bborud 10y ago
      If it is just an idea at this stage it may feel like it has value, but believe me, it does not. In order for an idea to have value you actually have to build something. If you can't be bothered to build something, it probably isn't a very exciting idea. So what you are trying to sell is an idea that you, by your own admission, don't think is very exciting. And what you have is essentially something you could put together in an afternoon. The maximum I have ever paid for an idea is lunch. If I have reason to believe that someone will be able to interest me long enough that I'll make it through lunch, heck, I'll buy them lunch If you want to transform it into value, you need to do a bit more. If the idea is really so boring that you won't, you could pay someone to work on the idea or you could partner up with someone. Freeing you up to have other ideas or whatever you are doing that is more fun than acting on the idea you are trying to sell. Now here is a free tip: if you take an idea to a bigger audience, you may find other people that are interested in it. People who might want to do it. People that might have other ideas because of it. And yes, people who will tell you that your idea is rubbish. If your idea is good, someone might want to do it on their own. But this is less likely than you think. Because other people also have ideas. But in any case, if you tell more people about your idea you stand a bigger chance of getting help. Start with people you know who have built stuff.
• obvio 10y ago
  https://flippa.com/sell https://flippa.com/sell
  • seibelj 10y ago
    This is the best place to sell it. Be aware that many of the products for sale are scams and your product will have to explain why it isn't also a scam to rise above the fold.
  • tyingq 10y ago
    And find someone with a little sales flair to help you make the listing.
• f311a 10y ago
  So you wanna sell domain, website and untested idea without customers?
• adamqureshi 10y ago
  The problem is "value" if your MVP makes NO money that what is it worth? I sold my MVP to a private company then they paid me to customize it for them. It was in healthcare. The MVP had value for them, they wanted to license it to others in the same niche industry ( i kinda had to "sell'em" on this platform approach) but did it back like 3-4 years ago. Same approach could work for you.
• jimnotgym 10y ago
  Could we see it? It is really hard to sell something without a revenue stream. Its value is closer to the value of the domain than a business.
• stefanobernardi 10y ago
  You sure can sell it, but it won't be very valuable. Less than the cost of building it for sure. Probably the only spot that would work for that is Flippa, but you could try to contact a broker like FE International to see if they might be able to help you.
• pliftkl 10y ago
  Easy things: 1. Ideas 2. Name 3. Website with registration and payment Hard things: 1. Acquiring paying customers 2. Keeping paying customers 2. Product Management once you have customers People will pay you more for hard things than they will for easy things (there are, of course, exceptions to this, but execution of "great ideas" is much harder than having those ideas).
  • konschubert 10y ago
    You are right. I realize that. I know that an idea alone is worth very, very little. And an MVP is worth little more than nothing. But even "little more than nothing" is something. That's why I am asking.
    • codegeek 10y ago
      Tell us what the MVP is and we can give you more ideas. Without knowing anything about what it does, what do you want to hear ? let me give you an example. There is a framework called Spark [0] which is built on top of Laravel framework. It sells for $99 and comes with registration, auth, payments, admin dashboard all out of the box. Does your MVP beat that ? [0] http://spark.laravel.com http://spark.laravel.com
      • jimnotgym 10y ago
        I kind of thrive on the harder stuff mentioned above. I may even be interested! Why not post us a link?
    • AznHisoka 10y ago
      its not worth anything when you take into account the time needed to due some due diligence and to even think about it.
• deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
• ummahusla 10y ago
  Use flippa.com to sell your stuff. I sold like 5-6 side projects which were abandoned for ages.
  • tluyben2 10y ago
    From the sound of it, it seems this would needs to have more development before it would make anything even on Flippa.
    • xiaoma 10y ago
      No, you can sell even bare domains on Flippa. There are also "starter sites", growing sites with 5 figures a month in revenue and pretty much everything in between.
      • tluyben2 10y ago
        I know you can, but it won't get you much these days. Edit: aka if it is a good idea, it is probably better to find someone to take it over for a gentlemen's agreement of a % later than tossing it away for a few $. IMHO of course.
  • mootothemax 10y ago
    Would you mind linking to the sites you've sold before, or even the Flippa auctions? I could be interested next time you have something similar, and would be happy to cut out the middleman. This offer stands for anyone reading; send me your projects and I'll gladly take a look about buying :)
• Alvarogot 10y ago
  Sounds difficult but why not give it a try? Have you identified a buyer for your web service startup idea? Once you´ve done it you could send some Linkedin messages, cold e-mails and even make some phone calls I think that might work better than advertising an MVP Best of lucks
• saycheese 10y ago
  Based on your description, you do not have an MVP, but an attempt to find an MVP; what you have is untested prototype or an MVP that for whatever reason failed to validate your assumptions. Only potientally asset you have to sell is the domain, which in my opinion is a completely different question; that being, how do I value & sell a domain? The hosting, design, payment & registration systems, etc. - are most likely are liabilities unless proven otherwise given the related technical debt[1]; basically, these are commodities which best acquired from scratch based on the needs of party acquiring them. Lastly, as you likely know, the point of an MVP is to validate an idea is of value, since ideas generally speaking are worthless; I would actually argue that good, but unvalidated ideas, have on average a negative value, since resources are required to store/process them and most "good" ideas fail validation attempts. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technical_debt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technical_debt
  • konschubert 10y ago
    I guess you are right, but damn...
    • saycheese 10y ago
      Generally speaking, passionate users are much, much easier to find than a motivated buyer and there is a predictable correlation between the two. As such, I would argue that if you are unable to find users it is highly unlikely you will find a buyer without knowingly materially misrepresenting the opportunity and/or exploiting a naive buyer. It's a common problem, thanks for the opportunity to express my take on it.
      • konschubert 10y ago
        We have not launched the product yet. It isn't online. Therefore I can't say if we would have found passionate users.
• satysin 10y ago
  Does the site actually do anything or is it just a business idea and branding?
• jpdus 10y ago
  You are from Germany, right? What kind of legal legwork do you mean, is it domain specific? Would love to hear more about the MVP, contact is in my profile.
  • konschubert 10y ago
    Elementary :) I will send you an email.
• wpietri 10y ago
  You have correctly identified the problem, which is lack of passion. This is part of why experienced entrepreneurs tell noobs not to worry about somebody stealing your idea. It's rare enough that even one person cares about the idea enough to make it real. Most other entrepreneurs already have ideas that they like just fine. As others say, you can try to sell it, although it sounds unlikely. But if you want to try, ask yourself two questions: Who specifically would be passionate about this specific idea? How much would that person have to pay to replicate what you have? The first question gets to how to market this. Depending on the topic of your MVP, maybe there's a wannabe-entrepreneur somewhere who just couldn't come up with his own idea but has money in his pocket. You need to find that person. The second gets at pricing. Most MVPs are throwaway code. And even if it was well written, most code without the original team gets thrown away, because it's expensive to find somebody who knows the domain and tech stack, get them up to speed, and clean up the tech debt. So the fair comparison is something like: how much would it cost a discount outsourcer to build a replica? That ceiling is probably pretty low. Now you can do the math: fairly valuing your time, subtract your cost to find, sell, and close that prospect from your expected selling price. For most people, that estimated return is negative, especially once you weight for risk. Maybe you're different, but be sure you have a good understanding of why.
  • konschubert 10y ago
    Thank you for writing out this response. I knew that I should not be worried about somebody stealing my idea, that's why I asked about selling the MVP, not the idea. But you are right: Even though I believe that the MVP is well written, I am effectively competing with the cheapest outsourcing shop.
    • wpietri 10y ago
      Very welcome. Agreed, and I'd be careful with thinking about it as "well written" in this context. An abstract notion of quality doesn't matter nearly as much as whether it suits the person taking over the code base. If you're selling to another developer, then they have to have similar language and framework tastes. If you're selling to a non-technical person, then it's more about whether they can find somebody who can more efficiently work with your code than build from scratch. So in a strictly commercial sense, a mediocre PHP site can be more valuable that a very smartly constructed Erlang site.
• mbesto 10y ago
  We can only answer that if you disclose revenues and net income.
• alecsmart1 10y ago
  Can you let us know about your MVP? A website? Maybe then we can tell you more.
  • konschubert 10y ago
    Sorry, I want to keep this discussion generic to make it useful for others.
  • deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
• iamabraham 10y ago
  The value goes up - sometimes way up - if you have even one paying customer. It isn't a "minimum viable product at all." It's a non revenue generating website with no users which makes it a hobby, not a product.
• eecks 10y ago
  What's the nice domain? What is the tech stack behind it?
• joshmn 10y ago
  I don't think you have an MVP. I think you have a domain and either an untested prototype OR an MVP that failed to validate your idea. There are forums to sell your domain on, Flippa/the like, SEDO/the like. I won't list them here since they're just a Google search away. My advice would be to do whatever it takes to spend 4 hours (each of you) trying to get your first customer, payment in hand. If after that, you don't have a customer, then I think it's a fair thing to either write it off as a learning experience or seek the "hey someone else take over this invalidated idea" route. If you manage that first customer, that could potentially motivate you to get the legal stuff done. I'm not sure your locale, but usually a Delaware LLC and generic ToS/PP is acceptable. You'll know when you don't need the generics, and when that time comes, you'll know. You could be the next Pied Piper, which is why it never hurts to try.
• bdcravens 10y ago
  Your domain is at best worth a few hundred. Your code is worth an hourly rate x hours worked, discounted. (since there needs to be a reason to buy vs build) Assuming you and your partner put in 20 hours a week, I'd guess $5000 for an untested business is the best you could hope for.
• WhiteSource1 10y ago
  There are domain brokers you can sell.