With startups, you're basically growing assets, and not profits. Some other company will make a lot more profit based of what you've built, or you'll have built

With startups, you're basically growing assets, and not profits. Some other company will make a lot more profit based of what you've built, or you'll have built something and acquired users cheaper than them. The ideal time to sell is when the growth slows down. If you have a great profit margin... why? Are you not reinvesting it into anything? Are you not using paid advertising? Have you already dominated the market? $4 mil ARR sounds like you could at least hire a team of 5 and put it into some form of R&D. It sounds like a good business, but if you could get cash, say $20m, would there be a better way to invest that cash? It could well be that the best thing you could do with your cash flow is reinvest it into itself. In that case don't sell. Related article: http://paulgraham.com/corpdev.html http://paulgraham.com/corpdev.html Until you're going to sell, don't check the market price. It's a good way to convince yourself that you should sell, and probably at a lower price than you intended.