10 ms·

I sold my side-project for $30k

252 points by marckohlbrugge 6y ago

marckohlbrugge 6y ago
I figured some of you might enjoy this story. I talk about how my Medium post on setting up Zapier to tweet your Instagram photos, lead to a SaaS product that recently got acquired for $30,000 (with one asterisk, details in the post). It's not a life-changing amount of money, but I think it's a more typical example of what you can expect when selling a bootstrapped side project. Hopefully it will inspire some of you who have been on the fence to start your own project.
- anigbrowl 6y ago
  It's really great. I appreciated that you gave equal weight to ups and downs, and the pros and cons of each decision, while still keeping your explanations clear and focused. Informative and enjoyable. Congratulations on your successful project!
- nicbou 6y ago
  I always enjoy seeing honest write ups like this one. They're rather difficult to find, unlike the "entrepreneur porn" that usually gets shared.
- ayewo 6y ago
  Congratulations on your success! Your story is inspiring for other “solopreneurs” out there. A bit off-topic: what was the motivation behind you building WIP.chat ? I don’t see an about page on mobile. To me at least, WIP looks like a cross between a todolist, Twitter and Product Hunt but targeted at indie hackers, no?
  - marckohlbrugge 6y ago
    I'm a firm believer that you're the average of the people you spend the most time with, so I love to be around other productive makers. And while you can find many chat communities, they always seem like more of a distraction than something that really motivates me to do by best work. So I created WIP[1]. Initially it was just a Telegram group chat, but with the added twist of being able to share what task you were working on. This oriented the discussion around the actual work people were doing, rather than just chit-chat. Over time this evolved into more of a platform with a website, Desktop apps, etc. But the core remains the same: an online community of makers/bootstrappers/solopreneurs working in public. [1] https://wip.chat https://wip.chat
- ionwake 6y ago
  Thank you for the great write up - I have only one question - how did you get featured on BetaList and Product Hunt? Did you email them directly or did you pay someone to make a press release? I have had similar products but I never seem to know how to get the word out. Any insight into your first day and how you marketed it would be highly appreciated. Thank you and keep it up!
  - donaltroddyn 6y ago
    The OP is the founder of BetaList.
  - marckohlbrugge 6y ago
    As @donaltroddyn points out, I'm the founder of BetaList. With regards to Product Hunt, I think my account is flagged such that anything I submit automatically hits the front page. So yeah, those are definitely two unfair advantages that are hard to replicate. I guess the underlying two lessons are: 1) build and own your own acquisition channels if you can (I initially built BetaList to promote my other startup at the time), and 2) leverage whatever advantages you have. For me that happens to be the fact that I can quite easily get some initial traffic, but if you're a great writer you could use that. If you have a great personality you could invite yourself to podcasts, if you have a certain technical skill perhaps you build what nobody else can. FWIW, I don't think it's worth paying people to write a press release. If you're an indie maker it's much more compelling for a journalist to hear from the founder directly. Just make sure you have a story worth sharing with their audience. (in a way your "pitch" is just as much a product as your product itself. But in case of the pitch you're trying to convince a journalist you have an interesting story to tell their audience wants to hear).
    - ionwake 6y ago
      Thank you for your informative reply I am currently walking but will take heed of your advice when I’m at home. All the best .
- luckylion 6y ago
  Unless it was an LLC that got sold, all contracts are now gone, as they were between the users and you, right? How much churn was there while setting up new contracts? Did any customers reject the transfer of their data under GDPR?
JCharante 6y ago
Thank you for sharing your story! Even though selling my side projects isn't the goal behind them it's nice to see someone creating a side project in a short span and actually finishing it.
summitsummit 6y ago
1. how many side projects have you had? was this the only successful exit? 2. how do you come up with the startup/tool ideas?
- keesj 6y ago
  1. Too many to count. The trick is to ship fast and see what sticks. Focus on that, ignore the rest. Tweet Photo is my first legit exit, but some of my other side projects have turned into $xxx,xxx/year businesses. Just haven't sold them :) 2. Usually out of necessity. Something I want myself, but can't find an (appealing) existing solution for.
  - stevage 6y ago
    I'd be interested in hearing about some of these other side projects (well, the financially successful ones anyway). Do you have a list somewhere?
    - marckohlbrugge 6y ago
      My Twitter bio has a list of many of my projects: https://twitter.com/marckohlbrugge https://twitter.com/marckohlbrugge Most notable: https://betalist.com https://betalist.com (2010): $xxx,xxx/year https://startup.jobs https://startup.jobs (2016): $xx,xxx/year (could hit $xxx,xxx this year) https://wip.chat https://wip.chat (2017): $xx,xxx/year
      - summitsummit 6y ago
        congrats, that's awesome. are they all 100% owned by you or did you drink out of the poisoned foundation (vc)? also how do you toss up many sass so quickly? do you just have an auth and payment module you're comfortable that you reuse for every project?
        marckohlbrugge 6y ago
        Thanks. All owned 100% by me. No outside funding or co-founders. I use Ruby on Rails which has a lot of pre-made libraries for common tasks. I’ve been building products for 10+ years though. So it’s mostly a matter of time I think
mr_cyborg 6y ago
I really enjoyed this blog post. Great writing, easy to read and follow, and a compelling and relevant subject for many readers here. Thank you for sharing!
mtnGoat 6y ago
I always wonder how many of these are just bought by shady companies to install spyware and such. Seems like something easy to duplicate for anyone with funds. Unless they aren't in the business of building and running apps. I know at least a few this has happened to and goes on in the Google play store as well.
- puranjay 6y ago
  A lot of SEO spammers buy old but popular Wordpress plugins to inject hidden backlinks to their websites, so it's entirely possible
  - elevenoh 6y ago
    Woah, didn't know that, that's low. Would it be feasible for an SEO spammer to covertly include such backlinks in an npm package update?
    - conjectures 6y ago
      If 'npm package update' includes the ability to modify strings in served pages, one would assume so.
    - puranjay 6y ago
      Check the backlink profile for pages ranking for spam-dominated queries such as "buy CBD oil" or "buy viagra" and you'll see an incredible amount of spam and fraud. Sucks that despite this being a 20+ year old problem, Google hasn't been able to fix it.
smabie 6y ago
Nice score, but why do you think that guy wanted to buy it? Little revenue/userbase. Moreover, he or some contractor could have built the same product in a weekend. Also, assuming you get your money in 24 months and using a discounting factor of 5% (which is either much too high or much too low), you are looking at a little over 28k, not 30k.
- ayewo 6y ago
  Why would someone want to buy tweet.photo? Time to market. The product already had traction—actual users numbering in the thousands—and from the buyer’s perspective, it was cheaper and/or faster for them to buy vs build a comparable service from scratch. Also, by owning tweet.photo outright, the new owners can bundle it with other complementary services in their portfolio. There is a saying that there are two ways to make money in software: bundling and unbundling.
  - csunbird 6y ago
    Also, the domain name/branding :)
    - dumbfounder 6y ago
      Which, if it becomes sizable, will be targeted by Twitter because of their trademark on the word tweet. They did this with Twitpic. https://www.lawinc.com/twitter-vs-twitpic-trademark-dispute-shuts-down-startup https://www.lawinc.com/twitter-vs-twitpic-trademark-dispute-...
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
- patrickk 6y ago
  > In April, Kevin reached out to me asking if I was interested in selling Tweet Photo. He had a strategic interest with his other products CreatorKit and Top Nine. It seems like a complimentary product to the acquirers other portfolio of products. So it's probably a no-brainer for the acquirer even if 'overvalued' by traditional MRR metrics.
macca321 6y ago
Probably for the API access to Zendaya's Insta and Twitter accounts
soheilpro 6y ago
Congratulations! I run the exact opposite service: Turning tweets into Instagram posts (https://pikaso.me https://pikaso.me) It already supports Zapier but as soon as Instagram opens up its publishing API again, I will offer my own built-in automation features too.
- keesj 6y ago
  That's awesome. I think I've seen it before and thinking to myself, hey that's Tweet Photo in reverse :) If I could offer one piece of unsolicited advice, it's to build in that viral loop I did with "via tweet.photo". I think that alone 10x'd the user base and possibly the valuation as well. P.S. I saw you're in Bali. Which part are you from? I've lived in Canggu/Ubud/Lovina for a while. Hope you and your family are staying safe in these trying times.
  - soheilpro 6y ago
    Thanks for the advice. I already have a Twitter bot (https://pikaso.me/twitter-bot https://pikaso.me/twitter-bot) that people can mention and ask for a screenshot. It helps with the virality. That's cool :) I've been living in Bali (Mengwi area) for almost three years now. Hope you are safe as well.
tomkwong 6y ago
Congrats! Thanks for sharing. I think one of the best decisions you made was the choice of the domain name. It feels authentic.
stevage 6y ago
The obvious question: how many hours do you think you spent on it, all up?
- keesj 6y ago
  That's a great question I unfortunately I don't have a great answer for. The majority of the time was spent in those first few days were I built the initial product. Tweet Photo is technically quite a simple product, especially if you're familiar with the relevant open source libraries and APIs which I was anyway. But for me the main "cost" was knowing the APIs could change and I'd need to be ready to make the necessary changes.
  - stevage 6y ago
    Oh, that's cool. So a few days of actual labour, then just a certain amount of mindspace over however many months/years. $10-30k seems a good return on that.
crispyporkbites 6y ago
Marc has 26k followers on Twitter and owns https://wip.chat https://wip.chat, https://betalist.com/ https://betalist.com/ and a startup job board - all of which give him regular touchpoints (and trust!) with potential side project buyers. You might be able to build an app like this in a weekend or a few weeks, but unless you have a similar capability / vehicle to market it, you're going to struggle to sell it for anything.
- keesj 6y ago
  That's a fair point. Having an established network and reputation definitely goes a long way. I wouldn't rule our selling a side project if you don't have the net work though. These days there are more and more platforms popping up to help you do that. Some that come to mind: https://microacquire.com https://microacquire.com https://www.flippa.com https://www.flippa.com
loriverkutya 6y ago
As a user of this service: You built a service, I started to use it, I was happy to pay for it. Now you sold all the data your business had about me and the service, so I need to check the new EULA etc, and need to reevaluate if I want to use this service futher along the way. Also my experience with apps/services/etc sold by their original creator(s), that they are shuting down in a year or two and I'm so tired of this trend. So yeah, happy about your success, unhappy about another service which probably goes down the drain and I need to find something else to use, which probably not really has the same featureset. Edit: My point is, I would have been using this service and paying for it in the next few years, without the need of new features or so, so you only need to do maintenance of the infrastructure and keeping up with the security updates for mostly passive income. Probably this is the same for other users of the service. I think this should be considered, when you thinking about selling your passive income sideproject.
- quickthrower2 6y ago
  Sounds like you should stick to FLOSS then. Anything you buy as SaaS can be canned, sold on or just become crap.
  - lubonay 6y ago
    And even if it doesn't get sold/canned/broken, they can still change the EULA for any arbitrary reason.
  - Traster 6y ago
    Your solution to being unhappy about potential losing a useful service is just to never use the service in the first place? How is that productive? Just because someone is upset about a service potentially going away doesn't mean they regret ever having used it.
  - loriverkutya 6y ago
    FLOSS sadly does not solve my problem fully. I'm happy to pay for somebody to maintain the infrastructure and keep the service I'm using up to date on security issues. However if the maintainer happen to stop maintaining the service, I could setup the infrastructure and maintain it by myself with some learning, but that would take up more time I need to earn the money I'm paying to somebody else, who already done the groundwork and has the knowledge about the service. Also the service is worth $5-10 per month, but does not have enough value to worth the hassle of setting up the whole self hosted infra behind it and maintain it by myself. I'm not sure why, but people recommending FLOSS as a solution tends to forget about the additional cost to setup and maintain infrastructure and software and a simple build pipeline (even if it's just a bash script, rsyncing the code to a server) when mentioning you could self-host it if they shutdown the service. This is the "slightly annoying not to have this service, but not annoying enough to bother to replicate it even if I could" situation for me.
Cthulhu_ 6y ago
Did you ever run into trouble with the domain / service name? I wouldn't be surprised if Twitter has or has tried to copyright / trademark the word "tweet".
- marckohlbrugge 6y ago
  I think Twitter is okay with people using the word "tweet" as it doesn't imply affiliation with the Twitter company, but still clearly communicates that it's related to their service. Fun side-note: I actually had another service called "EmbedTweet" back in the day when Twitter didn't have their own embed functionality (yes, that was a long time ago). They listed my service on of their official help pages. So yeah combined with the fact there are so many "tweet"-based names, I think you're safe using that term. Oh, and when creating an app in their Developers portal the require you to enter a name, and they don't flag "tweet" but I think they do flag "Twitter".
- adventured 6y ago
  Twitter has been unable to protect/own the word tweet effectively in its use case. They tried to acquire the trademark in a round about way back in 2011 from Twittad [1], relating to a phrase ("let your ad meet tweets"), with a filing date all the way back to July 2008 [2]. If you dig for "tweet" in the TESS trademark database, there's nothing related to Twitter owning it however. My opinion, and from everything I've read on the subject, is that Twitter has zero trademark control over the word "tweet" unto itself. They did acquire this trademark however ("subtweet"): http://tmsearch.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4803:kmzjl7.2.20 http://tmsearch.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4803:kmz... And there is a new trademark published for opposition from August 25, 2020, related to bird food: http://tmsearch.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4803:kmzjl7.2.5 http://tmsearch.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4803:kmz... [1] https://mashable.com/2011/10/10/twitter-tweet-trademark/ https://mashable.com/2011/10/10/twitter-tweet-trademark/ [1a] https://www.hg.org/legal-articles/update-twitter-finally-lands-coveted-tweet-trademark-30458 https://www.hg.org/legal-articles/update-twitter-finally-lan... [2] http://tmsearch.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4803:kmzjl7.3.1 http://tmsearch.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4803:kmz...
jbverschoor 6y ago
> The first $10,000 is cash upfront with no strings attached. > The remaining $20,000 is contingent on Tweet Photo making that much (or more) in revenue within 24 months of the acquisition. So it's sold for $10k, and a max €20k revenueshare on a service that currently does 1620/year
- outime 6y ago
  Yeah, it's a big difference. I hope it's just for views and not that the author sees it that way. Money that's not in your hands isn't yours and may never be yours.
- marckohlbrugge 6y ago
  That's correct, but it's important to point out the acquirer has an existing app with a user base in the millions it will use to cross-promote Tweet Photo. Based on some initial tests and analysis of Tweet Photo's current funnel, that $20,000 goal seems more than plausible. But you're right in that it's definitely not certain and this type of deal has some inherent risk.
  - jbverschoor 6y ago
    It's still a good experience to sell something, and go through the process. Congrats!
    - giarc 6y ago
      I agree, I sold a small Saas and it was a lot of work getting everything in place. It heavily affected my future work and the way I set up the business. Even small things like using a password manager is super helpful when trying to hand over a business.
  - OJFord 6y ago
    Have you done something like that before? Did you spend a chunk of your $10k on solicitor/lawyer to arrange it? Not necessarily saying you should have done, just think personally I'd be shy of anything more complicated than 'here give me cash and take this, kthxbye'.
quickthrower2 6y ago
TLDR: sold for 10k plus rev share. Sold because of platform risk.
Traster 6y ago
>The first $10,000 is cash upfront with no strings attached. The remaining $20,000 is contingent on Tweet Photo making that much (or more) in revenue within 24 months of the acquisition. I'm not sure I'd call that $30k given the current revenue needs to grow more than 5x over the next 2 years to get the 20k (assuming the acquiring company even continues to monetize the project). Is that really the terms?
- keesj 6y ago
  I went into more detail here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24340211 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24340211
ijafri 6y ago
basically he still made great money, i don't think anyone would pay more than $10k .. if he had listed it on flippa it's simple 3 x yearly revneue for such sites = $ 5000 maxium. he got the right buyer and $10k isn't bad deal for either party.
abinaya_rl 6y ago
Thank you for sharing your story Marc. Any idea how much time you spent on creating this service in total? Are you going to continue involve with the product development?
- keesj 6y ago
  See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24340353 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24340353 I won't be involved in the product development, but we might to the occasional video call or email to exchange ideas and insights.
dmitriid 6y ago
On technical side: I wonder what APIs this service (and others like Zapier) use. Original Instagram API is all but closed to devs, and the new Facebook APIs are limited and reduced to "business accounts". Any good APIs I've seen are libs that reverse-engineer Instagram's internal APIs and use those.
- keesj 6y ago
  Instagram's new API is open to regular users as well (that's what Tweet Photo uses), but I believe it's read-only. Zapier etc probably have special deals with Facebook.
  - dmitriid 6y ago
    Thank you! Last time a looked at it a few years ago I couldn't make heads or tails of it. I'll take a look again.
    - keesj 6y ago
      There’s an approval process you need to go through. I wouldn’t recommend it if you can avoid it as you’ll be at the mercy of Facebook.
jevgeni 6y ago
I mean, there’s IFTT...
- andrew3019 6y ago
  > You can find many workarounds using automation services like IFTTT and Zapier. Because I was unhappy with all solutions,
  - jevgeni 6y ago
    Sure. The question to me is where the 30k PV coming from?
huhtenberg 6y ago
> It got featured on BetaList and Product Hunt. A little detail here is that BetaList just happens to be OP's other project.
- keesj 6y ago
  Yes, perhaps I should point that out in the article. Although to be honest it's not that hard to get featured on BetaList if you have a half-decent product :)
swyx 6y ago
you had zendaya using you and there was no step function jump in revenue? why is that? seems really odd.
- keesj 6y ago
  There was a big jump in signups, but not as much in monetization. My guess is that it was mostly young consumers signing up through her, but it's the professionals and businesses that pay to upgrade.
OJFord 6y ago
> I made a new thing called https://t.co/LMVsrPNaFV https://t.co/LMVsrPNaFV Another reason to dislike Twitter's disguised shortening... (In the original tweet, viewed on Twitter, that should read 'called tweet.photo'.)
Pete-Codes 6y ago
Great work! Email me.
groggo 6y ago
How did you host this project? Did that have a significant cost? > I believe in using the tools you’re familiar with, so I used Ruby on Rails to build the product.

I figured some of you might enjoy this story. I talk about how my Medium post on setting up Zapier to tweet your Instagram photos, lead to a SaaS product that recently got acquired for $30,000 (with one asterisk, details in the post). It's not a life-changing amount of money, but I think it's a more typical example of what you can expect when selling a bootstrapped side project. Hopefully it will inspire some of you who have been on the fence to start your own project.

anigbrowl 6y ago
It's really great. I appreciated that you gave equal weight to ups and downs, and the pros and cons of each decision, while still keeping your explanations clear and focused. Informative and enjoyable. Congratulations on your successful project!
nicbou 6y ago
I always enjoy seeing honest write ups like this one. They're rather difficult to find, unlike the "entrepreneur porn" that usually gets shared.
ayewo 6y ago
Congratulations on your success! Your story is inspiring for other “solopreneurs” out there. A bit off-topic: what was the motivation behind you building WIP.chat ? I don’t see an about page on mobile. To me at least, WIP looks like a cross between a todolist, Twitter and Product Hunt but targeted at indie hackers, no?
- marckohlbrugge 6y ago
  I'm a firm believer that you're the average of the people you spend the most time with, so I love to be around other productive makers. And while you can find many chat communities, they always seem like more of a distraction than something that really motivates me to do by best work. So I created WIP[1]. Initially it was just a Telegram group chat, but with the added twist of being able to share what task you were working on. This oriented the discussion around the actual work people were doing, rather than just chit-chat. Over time this evolved into more of a platform with a website, Desktop apps, etc. But the core remains the same: an online community of makers/bootstrappers/solopreneurs working in public. [1] https://wip.chat https://wip.chat
ionwake 6y ago
Thank you for the great write up - I have only one question - how did you get featured on BetaList and Product Hunt? Did you email them directly or did you pay someone to make a press release? I have had similar products but I never seem to know how to get the word out. Any insight into your first day and how you marketed it would be highly appreciated. Thank you and keep it up!
- donaltroddyn 6y ago
  The OP is the founder of BetaList.
- marckohlbrugge 6y ago
  As @donaltroddyn points out, I'm the founder of BetaList. With regards to Product Hunt, I think my account is flagged such that anything I submit automatically hits the front page. So yeah, those are definitely two unfair advantages that are hard to replicate. I guess the underlying two lessons are: 1) build and own your own acquisition channels if you can (I initially built BetaList to promote my other startup at the time), and 2) leverage whatever advantages you have. For me that happens to be the fact that I can quite easily get some initial traffic, but if you're a great writer you could use that. If you have a great personality you could invite yourself to podcasts, if you have a certain technical skill perhaps you build what nobody else can. FWIW, I don't think it's worth paying people to write a press release. If you're an indie maker it's much more compelling for a journalist to hear from the founder directly. Just make sure you have a story worth sharing with their audience. (in a way your "pitch" is just as much a product as your product itself. But in case of the pitch you're trying to convince a journalist you have an interesting story to tell their audience wants to hear).
  - ionwake 6y ago
    Thank you for your informative reply I am currently walking but will take heed of your advice when I’m at home. All the best .
luckylion 6y ago
Unless it was an LLC that got sold, all contracts are now gone, as they were between the users and you, right? How much churn was there while setting up new contracts? Did any customers reject the transfer of their data under GDPR?

JCharante 6y ago

Thank you for sharing your story! Even though selling my side projects isn't the goal behind them it's nice to see someone creating a side project in a short span and actually finishing it.

summitsummit 6y ago

1. how many side projects have you had? was this the only successful exit? 2. how do you come up with the startup/tool ideas?

keesj 6y ago
1. Too many to count. The trick is to ship fast and see what sticks. Focus on that, ignore the rest. Tweet Photo is my first legit exit, but some of my other side projects have turned into $xxx,xxx/year businesses. Just haven't sold them :) 2. Usually out of necessity. Something I want myself, but can't find an (appealing) existing solution for.
- stevage 6y ago
  I'd be interested in hearing about some of these other side projects (well, the financially successful ones anyway). Do you have a list somewhere?
  - marckohlbrugge 6y ago
    My Twitter bio has a list of many of my projects: https://twitter.com/marckohlbrugge https://twitter.com/marckohlbrugge Most notable: https://betalist.com https://betalist.com (2010): $xxx,xxx/year https://startup.jobs https://startup.jobs (2016): $xx,xxx/year (could hit $xxx,xxx this year) https://wip.chat https://wip.chat (2017): $xx,xxx/year
    - summitsummit 6y ago
      congrats, that's awesome. are they all 100% owned by you or did you drink out of the poisoned foundation (vc)? also how do you toss up many sass so quickly? do you just have an auth and payment module you're comfortable that you reuse for every project?
      - marckohlbrugge 6y ago
        Thanks. All owned 100% by me. No outside funding or co-founders. I use Ruby on Rails which has a lot of pre-made libraries for common tasks. I’ve been building products for 10+ years though. So it’s mostly a matter of time I think

mr_cyborg 6y ago

I really enjoyed this blog post. Great writing, easy to read and follow, and a compelling and relevant subject for many readers here. Thank you for sharing!

mtnGoat 6y ago

I always wonder how many of these are just bought by shady companies to install spyware and such. Seems like something easy to duplicate for anyone with funds. Unless they aren't in the business of building and running apps. I know at least a few this has happened to and goes on in the Google play store as well.

puranjay 6y ago
A lot of SEO spammers buy old but popular Wordpress plugins to inject hidden backlinks to their websites, so it's entirely possible
- elevenoh 6y ago
  Woah, didn't know that, that's low. Would it be feasible for an SEO spammer to covertly include such backlinks in an npm package update?
  - conjectures 6y ago
    If 'npm package update' includes the ability to modify strings in served pages, one would assume so.
  - puranjay 6y ago
    Check the backlink profile for pages ranking for spam-dominated queries such as "buy CBD oil" or "buy viagra" and you'll see an incredible amount of spam and fraud. Sucks that despite this being a 20+ year old problem, Google hasn't been able to fix it.

smabie 6y ago

Nice score, but why do you think that guy wanted to buy it? Little revenue/userbase. Moreover, he or some contractor could have built the same product in a weekend. Also, assuming you get your money in 24 months and using a discounting factor of 5% (which is either much too high or much too low), you are looking at a little over 28k, not 30k.

ayewo 6y ago
Why would someone want to buy tweet.photo? Time to market. The product already had traction—actual users numbering in the thousands—and from the buyer’s perspective, it was cheaper and/or faster for them to buy vs build a comparable service from scratch. Also, by owning tweet.photo outright, the new owners can bundle it with other complementary services in their portfolio. There is a saying that there are two ways to make money in software: bundling and unbundling.
- csunbird 6y ago
  Also, the domain name/branding :)
  - dumbfounder 6y ago
    Which, if it becomes sizable, will be targeted by Twitter because of their trademark on the word tweet. They did this with Twitpic. https://www.lawinc.com/twitter-vs-twitpic-trademark-dispute-shuts-down-startup https://www.lawinc.com/twitter-vs-twitpic-trademark-dispute-...
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
patrickk 6y ago
> In April, Kevin reached out to me asking if I was interested in selling Tweet Photo. He had a strategic interest with his other products CreatorKit and Top Nine. It seems like a complimentary product to the acquirers other portfolio of products. So it's probably a no-brainer for the acquirer even if 'overvalued' by traditional MRR metrics.

macca321 6y ago

Probably for the API access to Zendaya's Insta and Twitter accounts

soheilpro 6y ago

Congratulations! I run the exact opposite service: Turning tweets into Instagram posts (https://pikaso.me https://pikaso.me) It already supports Zapier but as soon as Instagram opens up its publishing API again, I will offer my own built-in automation features too.

keesj 6y ago
That's awesome. I think I've seen it before and thinking to myself, hey that's Tweet Photo in reverse :) If I could offer one piece of unsolicited advice, it's to build in that viral loop I did with "via tweet.photo". I think that alone 10x'd the user base and possibly the valuation as well. P.S. I saw you're in Bali. Which part are you from? I've lived in Canggu/Ubud/Lovina for a while. Hope you and your family are staying safe in these trying times.
- soheilpro 6y ago
  Thanks for the advice. I already have a Twitter bot (https://pikaso.me/twitter-bot https://pikaso.me/twitter-bot) that people can mention and ask for a screenshot. It helps with the virality. That's cool :) I've been living in Bali (Mengwi area) for almost three years now. Hope you are safe as well.

tomkwong 6y ago

Congrats! Thanks for sharing. I think one of the best decisions you made was the choice of the domain name. It feels authentic.

stevage 6y ago

The obvious question: how many hours do you think you spent on it, all up?

keesj 6y ago
That's a great question I unfortunately I don't have a great answer for. The majority of the time was spent in those first few days were I built the initial product. Tweet Photo is technically quite a simple product, especially if you're familiar with the relevant open source libraries and APIs which I was anyway. But for me the main "cost" was knowing the APIs could change and I'd need to be ready to make the necessary changes.
- stevage 6y ago
  Oh, that's cool. So a few days of actual labour, then just a certain amount of mindspace over however many months/years. $10-30k seems a good return on that.

crispyporkbites 6y ago

Marc has 26k followers on Twitter and owns https://wip.chat https://wip.chat, https://betalist.com/ https://betalist.com/ and a startup job board - all of which give him regular touchpoints (and trust!) with potential side project buyers. You might be able to build an app like this in a weekend or a few weeks, but unless you have a similar capability / vehicle to market it, you're going to struggle to sell it for anything.

keesj 6y ago
That's a fair point. Having an established network and reputation definitely goes a long way. I wouldn't rule our selling a side project if you don't have the net work though. These days there are more and more platforms popping up to help you do that. Some that come to mind: https://microacquire.com https://microacquire.com https://www.flippa.com https://www.flippa.com

loriverkutya 6y ago

As a user of this service: You built a service, I started to use it, I was happy to pay for it. Now you sold all the data your business had about me and the service, so I need to check the new EULA etc, and need to reevaluate if I want to use this service futher along the way. Also my experience with apps/services/etc sold by their original creator(s), that they are shuting down in a year or two and I'm so tired of this trend. So yeah, happy about your success, unhappy about another service which probably goes down the drain and I need to find something else to use, which probably not really has the same featureset. Edit: My point is, I would have been using this service and paying for it in the next few years, without the need of new features or so, so you only need to do maintenance of the infrastructure and keeping up with the security updates for mostly passive income. Probably this is the same for other users of the service. I think this should be considered, when you thinking about selling your passive income sideproject.

quickthrower2 6y ago
Sounds like you should stick to FLOSS then. Anything you buy as SaaS can be canned, sold on or just become crap.
- lubonay 6y ago
  And even if it doesn't get sold/canned/broken, they can still change the EULA for any arbitrary reason.
- Traster 6y ago
  Your solution to being unhappy about potential losing a useful service is just to never use the service in the first place? How is that productive? Just because someone is upset about a service potentially going away doesn't mean they regret ever having used it.
- loriverkutya 6y ago
  FLOSS sadly does not solve my problem fully. I'm happy to pay for somebody to maintain the infrastructure and keep the service I'm using up to date on security issues. However if the maintainer happen to stop maintaining the service, I could setup the infrastructure and maintain it by myself with some learning, but that would take up more time I need to earn the money I'm paying to somebody else, who already done the groundwork and has the knowledge about the service. Also the service is worth $5-10 per month, but does not have enough value to worth the hassle of setting up the whole self hosted infra behind it and maintain it by myself. I'm not sure why, but people recommending FLOSS as a solution tends to forget about the additional cost to setup and maintain infrastructure and software and a simple build pipeline (even if it's just a bash script, rsyncing the code to a server) when mentioning you could self-host it if they shutdown the service. This is the "slightly annoying not to have this service, but not annoying enough to bother to replicate it even if I could" situation for me.

Cthulhu_ 6y ago

Did you ever run into trouble with the domain / service name? I wouldn't be surprised if Twitter has or has tried to copyright / trademark the word "tweet".

marckohlbrugge 6y ago
I think Twitter is okay with people using the word "tweet" as it doesn't imply affiliation with the Twitter company, but still clearly communicates that it's related to their service. Fun side-note: I actually had another service called "EmbedTweet" back in the day when Twitter didn't have their own embed functionality (yes, that was a long time ago). They listed my service on of their official help pages. So yeah combined with the fact there are so many "tweet"-based names, I think you're safe using that term. Oh, and when creating an app in their Developers portal the require you to enter a name, and they don't flag "tweet" but I think they do flag "Twitter".
adventured 6y ago
Twitter has been unable to protect/own the word tweet effectively in its use case. They tried to acquire the trademark in a round about way back in 2011 from Twittad [1], relating to a phrase ("let your ad meet tweets"), with a filing date all the way back to July 2008 [2]. If you dig for "tweet" in the TESS trademark database, there's nothing related to Twitter owning it however. My opinion, and from everything I've read on the subject, is that Twitter has zero trademark control over the word "tweet" unto itself. They did acquire this trademark however ("subtweet"): http://tmsearch.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4803:kmzjl7.2.20 http://tmsearch.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4803:kmz... And there is a new trademark published for opposition from August 25, 2020, related to bird food: http://tmsearch.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4803:kmzjl7.2.5 http://tmsearch.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4803:kmz... [1] https://mashable.com/2011/10/10/twitter-tweet-trademark/ https://mashable.com/2011/10/10/twitter-tweet-trademark/ [1a] https://www.hg.org/legal-articles/update-twitter-finally-lands-coveted-tweet-trademark-30458 https://www.hg.org/legal-articles/update-twitter-finally-lan... [2] http://tmsearch.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4803:kmzjl7.3.1 http://tmsearch.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4803:kmz...

jbverschoor 6y ago

> The first $10,000 is cash upfront with no strings attached. > The remaining $20,000 is contingent on Tweet Photo making that much (or more) in revenue within 24 months of the acquisition. So it's sold for $10k, and a max €20k revenueshare on a service that currently does 1620/year

outime 6y ago
Yeah, it's a big difference. I hope it's just for views and not that the author sees it that way. Money that's not in your hands isn't yours and may never be yours.
marckohlbrugge 6y ago
That's correct, but it's important to point out the acquirer has an existing app with a user base in the millions it will use to cross-promote Tweet Photo. Based on some initial tests and analysis of Tweet Photo's current funnel, that $20,000 goal seems more than plausible. But you're right in that it's definitely not certain and this type of deal has some inherent risk.
- jbverschoor 6y ago
  It's still a good experience to sell something, and go through the process. Congrats!
  - giarc 6y ago
    I agree, I sold a small Saas and it was a lot of work getting everything in place. It heavily affected my future work and the way I set up the business. Even small things like using a password manager is super helpful when trying to hand over a business.
- OJFord 6y ago
  Have you done something like that before? Did you spend a chunk of your $10k on solicitor/lawyer to arrange it? Not necessarily saying you should have done, just think personally I'd be shy of anything more complicated than 'here give me cash and take this, kthxbye'.

quickthrower2 6y ago

TLDR: sold for 10k plus rev share. Sold because of platform risk.

Traster 6y ago

>The first $10,000 is cash upfront with no strings attached. The remaining $20,000 is contingent on Tweet Photo making that much (or more) in revenue within 24 months of the acquisition. I'm not sure I'd call that $30k given the current revenue needs to grow more than 5x over the next 2 years to get the 20k (assuming the acquiring company even continues to monetize the project). Is that really the terms?

keesj 6y ago
I went into more detail here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24340211 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24340211

ijafri 6y ago

basically he still made great money, i don't think anyone would pay more than $10k .. if he had listed it on flippa it's simple 3 x yearly revneue for such sites = $ 5000 maxium. he got the right buyer and $10k isn't bad deal for either party.

abinaya_rl 6y ago

Thank you for sharing your story Marc. Any idea how much time you spent on creating this service in total? Are you going to continue involve with the product development?

keesj 6y ago
See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24340353 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24340353 I won't be involved in the product development, but we might to the occasional video call or email to exchange ideas and insights.

dmitriid 6y ago

On technical side: I wonder what APIs this service (and others like Zapier) use. Original Instagram API is all but closed to devs, and the new Facebook APIs are limited and reduced to "business accounts". Any good APIs I've seen are libs that reverse-engineer Instagram's internal APIs and use those.

keesj 6y ago
Instagram's new API is open to regular users as well (that's what Tweet Photo uses), but I believe it's read-only. Zapier etc probably have special deals with Facebook.
- dmitriid 6y ago
  Thank you! Last time a looked at it a few years ago I couldn't make heads or tails of it. I'll take a look again.
  - keesj 6y ago
    There’s an approval process you need to go through. I wouldn’t recommend it if you can avoid it as you’ll be at the mercy of Facebook.

jevgeni 6y ago

I mean, there’s IFTT...

andrew3019 6y ago
> You can find many workarounds using automation services like IFTTT and Zapier. Because I was unhappy with all solutions,
- jevgeni 6y ago
  Sure. The question to me is where the 30k PV coming from?

huhtenberg 6y ago

> It got featured on BetaList and Product Hunt. A little detail here is that BetaList just happens to be OP's other project.

keesj 6y ago
Yes, perhaps I should point that out in the article. Although to be honest it's not that hard to get featured on BetaList if you have a half-decent product :)

swyx 6y ago

you had zendaya using you and there was no step function jump in revenue? why is that? seems really odd.

keesj 6y ago
There was a big jump in signups, but not as much in monetization. My guess is that it was mostly young consumers signing up through her, but it's the professionals and businesses that pay to upgrade.

OJFord 6y ago

> I made a new thing called https://t.co/LMVsrPNaFV https://t.co/LMVsrPNaFV Another reason to dislike Twitter's disguised shortening... (In the original tweet, viewed on Twitter, that should read 'called tweet.photo'.)

Pete-Codes 6y ago

Great work! Email me.

groggo 6y ago

How did you host this project? Did that have a significant cost? > I believe in using the tools you’re familiar with, so I used Ruby on Rails to build the product.