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Tiny Acquisitions
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- potatosalad1 5y agoDoesn't load for me
- eatonphil 5y agoMe neither.
- alex_g 5y agoMe neither.
- PStamatiou 5y agoloads for me but takes a while
- alex_g 5y agoThis is totally off topic but I'm a huge fan of your work!
- hello_newman 5y agobecause it's built in bubble (https://bubble.io/ https://bubble.io/)
- zeeshanqureshi 5y agopop
- funkaster 5y agosounds like a fun project, but it shows empty on mobile (iOS) and desktop (Firefox). Also, having a search before a browser is a bit weird. I don't know what to search for, maybe if I could look at a few projects before I could have some ideas.
- vkdelta 5y agoOP needs to probably enable cache on his Wordpress or something
- zomglings 5y agoAs someone who would seriously consider purchasing a project, I would prefer to browse projects rather than search for them.
- SomaticPirate 5y agoHuh, if you open the dev console it says it was build with Bubble (https://bubble.io/ https://bubble.io/) a no-code platform.
- canadianfella 5y agoWhy huh?
- Aperocky 5y agoSince this is likely my first conscious run in with a website explicitly generated through a no-code platform, I have to say my experience are very negative. The load time is unbearable for something as simple as this.
- flir 5y agoOh yeah, they're terrible in many ways, but so was the first version of <insert favourite platform here>. At the moment you can prototype with them. In five years, though...
- phist_mcgee 5y agoIt could be the hacker news front page traffic slowing the server?
- Aperocky 5y agoI had a side project game that made it to the front page for half a day and it logged about 28k visits for that day. Any proven open source database should be able to handle that, sqlite included. It's most likely some form of bloat sitting in the middle slowing everything down. And probably more due to the way the page is generated via 'low code' framework vs. the intention/design of the author.
- jmuguy 5y agoMaybe that explains why it never loads
- Nalta 5y agoI'm curious if there's a market for people who want to buy small projects like this. I imagine there's a lot of projects that are already on GitHub with a small following with owners that would like to cash out, but I'm not sure there's a market of buyers looking to pick up repos?
- ljoshua 5y agoAre you referring to open source projects, or just commercial projects that have been developed in the open?
- IgorPartola 5y agoDepending on what it is, I would certainly be a buyer. There are a lot of niche projects that I know nothing about but I am good at picking up on a topic and making projects successful once I find the niche and get into it. $5k seems right and if it’s a thing that can be profitable then yeah it seems like a good investment amount.
- jlawer 5y agoThere is a bunch of small tools that exist online (base64 encoders, hash functions, SPF rule generators, etc). Most of these wouldn't make much money, maybe enough to cover hosting. I could imagine someone basically picking these up and collectively monetizing with ads, or other methods. Likely not suitable for a massive business, but likely able to sustain a sole operator or even a small team if operated frugally.
- _manifold 5y ago> Most of these wouldn't make much money, maybe enough to cover hosting. Do you have any personal experience or any other sources that estimate this kind of thing? I'm legitimately curious, I've often wondered what kind of revenue these types of things pull in. Obviously if they're not running ads and don't have any explicit monetization then it would be very little. But I always wonder about the ones that do.
- 5y ago
- xwdv 5y agoWhat this is good for is people with failed projects who want to just sell them off so they can save face and say their project was "acquired" and technically not be lying. If they can go a step further and send out press releases about the acquisition automatically that would be great, but without revealing the sum of the acquisition.
- Trufa 5y agoIs anyone at HN interested in selling a project for under 5k? I’m interested in the concept, node.js applications preferred. Minimal amount of profit is also somewhat preferred. My email is my username + varela @ the google mail.
- jascii 5y agoI don't think I'd let a profit making project go for under $5k, but have fun shopping and I hope you find what you're looking for!
- Trufa 5y agoI understand, maybe if it’s doing small amounts? I’m just curious about the offers and I can afford that kind of money for an experiment as long as there’s a long shot of making something out of it.
- csa 5y agoFor businesses that have not been aggressively monetized, the $5k range is not an uncommon number. This is often due to the creator not being interested in monetization. A $5k price tag is roughly $100 a month in profit/SDI (seller discretionary income), and there are a lot of good projects that could have much more revenue that are currently at or below the $100/mo SDI level. Fwiw, while you not be the target market, there are many sellers (of businesses in general) that like to see something they made grow, even if the growth is done by someone else.
- chillfox 5y agoA web app/page that makes $200 a month would be worth $5000.
- spicybright 5y agoHow do you make money on tiny projects like this?
- ska 5y agoMake it up in volume ;)
- eatonphil 5y ago5k sounds like an incredibly small amount of money. The equivalent of a week's salary in the US. What could you build in a week that would be in a position to be sold that you couldn't develop slightly longer for significantly more than 5k profit? Edit: whether it's literally a week or a few weeks my question still remains. What could you build that would be ready to be sold in such a short amount of time that you couldn't hold on to for significantly more profit?
- tvanantwerp 5y ago$5k/week is $260,000 per year, which would put a person in the top 98% of earners in the US.
- dangerdaniel 5y agodefinitely top 98%, maybe even top 2%
- Jtsummers 5y agoThat's not a week's salary for most of the US, maybe in SV and NYC. $5k/week is $260k/year. The median salary in 2019 was apparently $107k or so for software developers, which is more like $2k/week. I wouldn't expect it to have more than doubled in the past 2 years.
- weird-eye-issue 5y agoCareful, you are incredibly out of touch with reality
- fish_phrenology 5y agoI don’t have the formal education or know how to get hired as a developer, and make 35k a year in Seattle doing non-developer stuff. $5k would be pretty neat. It does remind me of the height of the flash game period though (where I started programming!)
- williamtwild 5y ago5k is a weeks salary? Thats 260k a year. That is executive salary and not common at all.
- grouphugs 5y agoimagine thinking this was a good idea
- dimmke 5y agoI had an iPhone app with 1k DAU and some very modest revenue. This would have been a perfect fit.
- welder 5y agoSimilar marketplaces: https://flippa.com/ https://flippa.com/ https://microacquire.com/ https://microacquire.com/
- sideproject 5y agohttps://www.sideprojectors.com https://www.sideprojectors.com Disclaimer : I run it. :)
- kinderjaje 5y agoThe problem with your website is that you accepted bunch of low quality, no value websites made in 7 minutes and selling for thousands of $$$$. Which make hard or impossible to find real quality projects. That's why curating, reviewing, examining real projects is needed in order to keep the quality and not quantity.
- asyrafql 5y agoEven if I want to switch to dark mode, I need to sign up first. Weird.
- propter_hoc 5y agoA friend of mine is doing this as his day job through MicroAcquire. He's bought a few businesses so far and is writing a blog about his experience: https://microangel.so/ https://microangel.so/ So far, it looks like he's having fun but putting in a lot of work. He seems to be doing a lot of little code updates and fixes when apis change or other little things break.
- cglee 5y agoIf I were to guess, the money is actually in writing about the experience and parlaying it to an entry into Angel or VC.
- hinkley 5y agoI feel like the trick must be if you can amortize some of the maintenance costs across multiple projects. Maintaining DNS records and SSL keys is not 3x as hard for 3 domains as for one. Probably neither are taxes. Or keeping on top of security fixes for projects using the same tech stacks. There’s a couple groups out there who do something like this for public sector projects, sort of taking over the devops aspects and keeping the lights on. And in that case creating project generators could be feasible as well, because it’s easier to run a project that’s built the way you prefer them to be built.
- phendrenad2 5y agoI'd love to buy a zip file library (zlib is too heavyweight)
- nuclearnice1 5y agowhat language?
- bullen 5y agokuba zip
- cratermoon 5y agoMmmmm .. smells like... rent-seeking
- dboreham 5y agoThis makes little sense to me. Surely to be worth doing at all, the purchase of a "project" needs to have legal paperwork to ensure that the IP is secure, and so on. Legal fees to get that drafted and reviewed will be approaching $5k. It's like trying to sell a micro-house for $5k.
- prawn 5y agoI assume at that pricepoint, there's little scope for extensive due diligence. Take the seller at their word and fly under the radar. I've started many small projects over the years in which a lawyer/accountant has had zero involvement. If I were buying at that level, I would expect little more than some code review and historical analytics/revenue info.
- steve_adams_86 5y agoThe name made me think this was a Tiny Capital project; they like to acquire small (but more successful) companies. https://www.tinycapital.com/ https://www.tinycapital.com/
- tempestn 5y agoI thought the same. Might run into trademark issues if it's not affiliated.
- ibraheemdev 5y agoIs the site down?
- alex_g 5y agoIf you're interested in buying and/or selling small projects, you can typically expect to pay more than $5k for something that's making any consistent amount of money. You're also unlikely to find a great deal on a really special project on a marketplace. People who post on marketplaces like Flippa or MicroAcquire or SideProjectors (there're dozens of them) have either: 1. Realized the time it takes to maintain is not worth the revenues/profits 2. Realized the income is not sustainable and are trying to cash out at the end of a great run 3. Realized that some folks are willing to pay very high multiples and will list their projects at prices most (but not all) people will balk at. If you're really interested in taking over a project that's profitable, network with people, do cold emailing, and find opportunities to take over projects that the owners are simply not interested in any more. In other words, look for the elderly couple who is ready to move on from owning their profitable, outdated shop.
- Scoundreller 5y agoOr 4: realized that the real money is in being an unethical operator, and while you’re not such a person, you’re okay selling to someone that is. See: browser extensions. Or anything with traffic that is otherwise hard to monetize.
- prawn 5y agoOr don't have the time. I have/had profitable projects that don't take much time, but they'd be more profitable under someone who isn't spread as thin.
- rlayton2 5y agoThis is why I sold a website making about $150/mo in ad revenue for $5k. I knew the site could make more, but had other things on the go and I couldn't spend the time on the site to improve it. The person that bought it from me did make those changes and did make more money, but I just didn't have the time to get there. Win-win for me
- prawn 5y ago
- TenJack 5y agoLove this concept. I would suggest showing at least 3 highlighted projects for sale directly on the home page.
- birdyrooster 5y agoTiny Little Acquisitions
- foobiekr 5y agoThese are a little too tiny. There are projects I would pursue as a side project, but not in the 5k territory (it's just not worth the effort), and I would be very concerned that they were simply using small projects to push malware.
- alasdair_ 5y agoAssuming I wanted to buy a few of these, what's the best way to get the cash out at the end of it all? Create an LLC, have the LLC buy the sites, then just do dividends or something? I'm kind of hazy on how to fund such an LLC to buy stuff in the first place - do most people structure the initial money as a loan so it's tax free? I'd love to hear practically-speaking how to do this on a small scale.
- snypher 5y agoI'm hoping experts will arrive to tell me why I'm wrong - but I think you just buy stock in your LLC at whatever price, or you can loan the LLC the money at whatever terms.
- hinkley 5y agoYou could pay yourself a salary, but right now capital gains are still more tax efficient. I have often wondered how providing yourself insurance and a dollar salary works out financially.
- sakopov 5y agoYou can start a Directed IRA and literally buy and sell whatever you want tax free.
- icedchai 5y agoThe best way to get cash out is to not get cash out. You run "business expenses" through the company: laptops, your internet, cell phone, monitors (maybe you need a really big one, like a TV size.) Get creative. It's like getting a ~40% discount on everything you buy that way, since you're paying with pre-tax money. If you're lucky, you'll have very little profit. Pay yourself a small distribution with some of the remaining cash.
- bemmu 5y agoI’m not in the US, but can’t you be a sole proprietor and add the income to your tax return?
- ikeboy 5y agoHere's a list I put together last year of similar sites, I just added Tiny Acquisitions to it. Disclaimer, haven't looked at this in a while, some may be inactive. Marketplace https://microacquire.com/ https://microacquire.com/ - SaaS https://flippa.com/ https://flippa.com/ https://empireflippers.com/ https://empireflippers.com/ - Focus on Amazon but also SaaS and other online businesses https://exchangemarketplace.com/ https://exchangemarketplace.com/ - run by Shopify https://latonas.com/ https://latonas.com/ https://websiteproperties.com/ https://websiteproperties.com/ https://www.sideprojectors.com/ https://www.sideprojectors.com/ Investors.club https://app.centurica.com/marketwatch https://app.centurica.com/marketwatch https://tinyacquisitions.com/home https://tinyacquisitions.com/home Brokers: https://www.quietlightbrokerage.com/ https://www.quietlightbrokerage.com/ https://feinternational.com/ https://feinternational.com/ https://digitalexits.com/ https://digitalexits.com/ https://thefbabroker.com/ https://thefbabroker.com/ https://www.websiteclosers.com/ https://www.websiteclosers.com/ https://www.globalwiredadvisors.com/ https://www.globalwiredadvisors.com/ https://helloexit.com/ https://helloexit.com/ https://www.wearebarney.com/ https://www.wearebarney.com/ https://acquisitionsdirect.com/ https://acquisitionsdirect.com/ Listings only: https://www.bizbuysell.com/ https://www.bizbuysell.com/ https://www.businessbroker.net/ https://www.businessbroker.net/ https://dealstream.com/ https://dealstream.com/ https://www.businessesforsale.com/ https://www.businessesforsale.com/ https://www.loopnet.com/ https://www.loopnet.com/
- joshuaengler 5y agoIf somebody is selling something it's because it's not making them money, and that's the end of it. Nobody would sell you a project for 5k that's generating 1k per month. People sell when either the writing is on the wall, or they can't finish the project and don't care anymore. Just expect that.
- abraae 5y agoNot at all. Plenty of people get to the point where: - they've just had enough and can't be bothered - they know the business needs investment of money and/or time to go to the next level - they've identified some more lucrative business elsewhere and want to concentrate on that.
- joshuaengler 5y agoOf course, there are no absolutes. But how common are projects like that? Exceedingly rare in my experience. The great majority of projects (especially web and tech) are no longer profitable or decreasing majorly by the time of sell. That's been my personal experience from extensive study and searching for profitable projects for sale. But one could always get lucky I suppose.
- Kiro 5y agoIt's common. As soon as your project starts making money it also starts giving you anxiety and stress. Having a project that's stuck on a moderate income is a curse and you dream of getting rid of it. Been there many times and I've also closed down a lot of profitable projects even without selling them. That's how much of a burden it is. The fun part is creating something new before it starts getting paying users.
- AndrewKemendo 5y agoEmail verification seems to be broken if you're signing up as a seller.
- known 5y agoIs buying tiny real estate possible?
- Quequau 5y agoI have been seriously considering doing a tiny acquisition myself as a gambit to get back into tech after a very long period away. Frankly, it's been hard to find something that seemed serious or at least real and somehow worthy of existing in the world (I get that this is my own internal value judgement). I left with the impression that this sort of thing is like the tech version of /r/CrackheadCraigslist. Also, it didn't help that at least one of these sorts of sites demands users link to their LinkdIn account to even see the projects that are for sale. I think LinkdIn is creepy enough on its own and that really put me off.
- mcintyre1994 5y agoI saw a really interesting acquisition on Twitter yesterday - a $400 MRR business sold for $27k on one of these platforms. Unrolled Twitter thread: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1408088057140547592.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1408088057140547592.html
- glangdale 5y agoWeird that anyone would acquire anything for <$5K; I would have thought that sensibly taking on any kind of going concern or project would require too much in the way of legal expenses to make it worth it. Maybe I have an exaggerated notion of this after having been part of an 8-figure exit to an S&P 100 company, but I would figure you take on anything like this you're potentially buying something with an imminent lawsuit, patent infringement problem, etc. unless you do due diligence, but that said due diligence would be ridiculously expensive relative to the $ involved. Do they provide any help with this issue, or are they a no-legals as well as a no-code startup?
- robryan 5y agoThose issues though generally scale with the amount of money your company is making. The likely worst case is shutting down and being out the $5k.
- glangdale 5y agoMostly, but there are legal actions one could stumble into where $5K is pocket change. These typically 'downscale' but they don't necessarily downscale all the way.
- premek 5y agohttps://tinyacquisitions.com/search https://tinyacquisitions.com/search Scrollbar got acquisited
- lelanthran 5y agoAll the HN comments here say "buying/selling projects", which I guess is because the website itself says "buying/selling tiny projects". However this is very different to buying/selling businesses (i.e. going concern with books up to date), and the search interface doesn't let me specify that I want to buy something with at least one paying customer (i.e. a business). I'd be interested in buying a going concern (even if it's going off a cliff), but not someone's weekend attempt to learn a new web platform whose only hits are from search engine indexing and people who got there by mistake. Seems like all you'll be buying here are snippets of working code, which is not very valuable in and off itself.
- appstrategist 5y agoTried signing up and didn't get the activation email
- timvdalen 5y agoSame here, I'm on the GSuite
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- caretak3r 5y agoHas anyone been able to sign up and log in? Never received a verification email.
- hopesthoughts 5y agoCould this have an RSS feed? Maybe of recent projects posted, bought sold etc?
- benrapscallion 5y agoSeconded.