11 ms·
Tiny
- s_Hogg 5y agoWhat's the catch with this, I wonder? If it's so easy to cash out, what does that mean for the price at which you cash out? How does Tiny manage to stay non-interventionist as they claim? It's interesting but I think there has to be more than what's pointed out here going on
- umvi 5y agoThe catch is that your business has to be in pretty darn good shape. They won't just buy any company, you have to prove it is stable, profitable, and growing.
- quickthrower2 5y agoI imagine it has to be something that another company can generically understand and take over. A startup where the founders deep domain knowledge / connections is the key - that domain knowledge / connections go when the founder leaves.
- s_Hogg 5y agoIf that's the case then why are they ok with the founder leaving? I don't think this is a scam or anything, I just wish I understood the mechanics of how their business works better than I do
- Nevermark 5y agoThey are going to expect that the founder can leave a functional company. A company that requires them to build a leadership team or hire replacement talent to maintain doesn't sound like what they are looking for. If needed, the founder should do that first.
- HeyLaughingBoy 5y agoBy the time the business is "stable, profitable and growing" the founder is likely far less important than in the beginning. There have to be processes in place to manage the business's day to day operations, and a good management team that looks to the future. You can't maintain a business at that level while still being dependent on a single person so the business at the time of sale has to be capable of continuing on without that person present.
- quickthrower2 5y agoYou might be relying on the top person for the “growing” part even if everything else can tick over nicely.
- senectus1 5y agoyeah, good for if you want to develop another business but not detatch yourself from that one for example.
- tempestn 5y agoI would also have to assume if your business is all those things you're likely going to be leaving something on the table in exchange for the convenience of the process. (Which might be a perfectly rational thing to do when you're ready to exit!)
- bjarneh 5y ago> you have to prove it is stable, profitable, and growing. I just cannot imagine selling my business if everything was pointing upwards like that.. but people are different I guess
- vidarh 5y agoIt can be stable, profitable, and growing and you might still be burned out, or have an even better idea you want to focus on, or just want a change.
- bjarneh 5y agoTrue; but from what I've seen it seems most people who start businesses have a very hard time letting them go, even when they are doing badly; but I guess there are circumstances where it makes sense to sell out.
- TAForObvReasons 5y agoThe website gives an example: > You've got early employees, investors, or a co-founder who wants to leave or cash out. You want to swap them for a friendly new face who can add value and help you grow the business. This is common in professional groups (like law firms or medical practices) when a partner is looking to retire.
- bjarneh 5y agoSelling out is common; I just hope and think I would not do it, but who knows. I've never been in the position to sell out :-)
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- fragmede 5y agoSelling out in other industries is looked down upon (eg former indie musician selling out for a mainstream record contract), but business is, well, business. Better to be honest with yourself that your heart's no longer in it (if it's not), and sell to someone who is.
- rglover 5y agoThey're ops guys. Andrew and his partner Chris work off of the Buffet/Munger model used at Berkshire Hathaway. They buy good businesses they think are undervalued and then bring in their ops/logistics experience to (if necessary) install a new team, get any loose ends cleaned up, and then send them on their way (retaining ownership via Tiny). They find ATMs, upgrade their software and case, and then let them run. Over time, if you're good at it (they are), you build a portfolio that is consistently cash flowing vs. a bunch of lottery tickets like the traditional VC model.
- busymom0 5y agoIn case someone from the company is reading, the current background blue color is quite harsh on eyes, especially when reading text. Please try using #3f51b5 or something similar. Other than that, love the design.
- GordonS 5y agoAnyone here sold to them? Curious about what kind of ARR multiplier they use.
- bensouthworth 5y agoWe sold Unicornhunt.io to Tiny Capital a few years ago and it was a relatively painless experience ( selling up is an emotional thing as is ) and I'd strongly recommend to any indie founder looking to exit. Feel free to email me on benjamin@peaceandlove.io if you want to discuss it further.
- devops000 5y agoDid you have more than $500K profits at year before selling? What it was the sold EBITDA multiplier?
- buf 5y agoTiny is basically as advertised. A few years ago, I tried to sell one of my businesses to them (Zack) and he was straightforward in his reason to pass back then (profit too low). Took about a day once I had my metrics sorted. The experience was positive and re-enforced my understanding of important growth metrics and product storytelling.
- kingcharles 5y agoYes, having been through situations like that you can feel bummed and dejected at the time because the deal didn't go through, but when you look back it can seem like a really positive learning experience.
- dmitriid 5y ago> profit too low > important growth metrics > product storytelling Yup. Everything that's wrong with (predominately US) modern business culture. Product doesn't matter, storytelling is. Nothing matters, inflated growth metrics do. Profit doesn't matter unless it's high (for some definition of high), but even that doesn't matter if you have hyperinflated growth metrics.
- movedx 5y agoAnd not actually caring about the problem at hand. "Dude! We could make so much money if we made X!" - but do you actually care about X? Why is money the only reason people are setting up business and solving problems? It should be secondary, a happy side effect of solving hard problems (which people will thank you for with money.)
- brtkdotse 5y agoBecause people want to pay their rent and eat. “Hard problems” take a lot of work and time and no one is going to pay me to ponder on a tricky algorithm [1] [1] actually there is. It’s called “academia” and from what I’m told it’s pretty miserable to be in
- 5y ago
- John7399 5y agoThanks for sharing. I found a lot of interesting information here. https://www.upsers.onl/ https://www.upsers.onl/
- braincrash 5y agoSee also https://open.store/ https://open.store/ for Shopify stores.
- slyall 5y agoPrevious discussions of Tiny: 2 months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28806500 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28806500 18 months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23739381 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23739381 4 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13905777 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13905777
- dang 5y agoThanks! Macroexpanded: The Berkshire Hathaway of the Internet (2017) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28806500 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28806500 - Oct 2021 (42 comments) Andrew Wilkinson and Tiny Capital - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23739381 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23739381 - July 2020 (16 comments) Berkshire Hathaway of the Internet - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13905777 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13905777 - March 2017 (112 comments)
- black_13 5y ago... great grandfather started this company with one single rickety leaky hand-crafted slave ship, and a simple motto: "People Selling People to People".
- jimsimmons 5y agoI like this new style aesthetic that I’ve been seeing on a few sites. minimalism the right way
- omarfarooq 5y agoWhat other examples do you like?
- unnouinceput 5y agoIt's sooo much blue though
- avnigo 5y agoSeems like Corporate Memphis. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_Memphis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_Memphis https://www.wired.co.uk/article/corporate-memphis-design-tech https://www.wired.co.uk/article/corporate-memphis-design-tec...
- quickthrower2 5y agoOoh there is a name for that style! Didn’t know that. I see it everywhere. It feels very generic most of the time. Some graphic artists do it well though.
- shatnersbassoon 5y agoFrom the wired article: “It really boils my piss to be honest,” says Jack Hurley, a Leeds-based illustrator who says his main output is “daft seaside posters.”
- petenick 5y agoI found it easy to use and it left no ambiguity around what Tiny is and how it works
- xyst 5y ago> We pay finders fees of $25,000 to $200,000+, all you have to do is intro us. hmmm - not a bad payday just to be a referral
- Cthulhu_ 5y agoYeah there's got to be a catch there, nobody works for 'just a referral' that doesn't result in something significant.
- ralusek 5y agoIs anybody else super tired of this aesthetic: https://assets.website-files.com/5f10771cbfea70224f1ce526/5f21dd68f36fe25cb3bdc872_illustration_1.png https://assets.website-files.com/5f10771cbfea70224f1ce526/5f... I know companies all jump on design bandwagons, but this one of these hideous illustrations of amorphous blob people is not only one that every company has been riding for the last few years, but should have never existed in the first place. Not to mention the egregious usage of 90s HTML hyperlink blue. I get it, that ugly is ironic and cool, etc, but I'd really like to just pass through this phase of ironically self-aware, ugly design.
- superasn 5y agoAt least their images are connected to the message somehow. Most of the sites I see using this nowadays just slap them there like font icons, i.e. just to look cool with the graphic having absolutely no relation to the text.
- yrral 5y agoI recently learned this has become a meme and is called (amongst other names) "globohomo" art style. https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/subcultures/corporate-art-style https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/subcultures/corporate-art-sty...
- mbo 5y agoA more politically correct name suggested by Consumer Aesthetics Research Institute is "Corporate Memphis": https://cari.institute/aesthetics/corporate-memphis https://cari.institute/aesthetics/corporate-memphis
- Tepix 5y ago"globohomo" meaning "globalized homogenization". Nothing to be offended by.
- ncmncm 5y agoAlmost as tired of as of "incredibly". Thus, incredibly, deeply, profoundly tired of. This use is what linguists call a "generic intensifier". It is somewhat less bad than misused "exponentially" or "literally".
- vasco 5y agoThe founders also have a Spotify marketplace sidekick to Tiny https://www.wecommerce.co/ https://www.wecommerce.co/
- berkes 5y agoShopify, not Spotify. Now I'm left wondering what would be needed to piggyback on the spotify success, though. A marketplace for in-podcast-advertising? A (digital) agency that helps musicians sort out "all their Spotify administration, artwork, etc" so they can focus on making music?
- blairbeckwith 5y agoFunnily enough, Tiny is in an adjacent market to this via one of their companies, Supercast[1] [1] https://www.supercast.com https://www.supercast.com
- supperburg 5y agoCan anyone say how much it costs a founder to go through the process of being propositioned and then either rejecting the suitor or be rejected by them?
- omarfarooq 5y agoSee this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29376973 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29376973
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- padolsey 5y agoIs there a story behind the cruel-sounding "Cap table cleanup" heading? It says: > You've got early employees, investors, or a co-founder > who wants to leave or cash out. You want to swap them > for a friendly new face who can add value and help you > grow the business. It feels like they're insinuating that there's usually a painful process in enabling people to cash-out and leave? Is this because of the whole "golden handcuff" thing and the risk of everyone just wanting to leave immediately? To me that's always seemed like a larger problem in how we arrange early equity. Incentives are malformed.
- Cthulhu_ 5y agoThe wording really creeps me out, it's kinda condescending like, we'll just work our way in and tell you how to run your business.
- ealexhudson 5y agoIt just means you need a liquidity event. Many investors don't want to cash out early stage employees, many PE will only want to buy the whole thing. If the business can't take out a loan or similar, and those staying can't afford it, you need a new investor who's up for this type of restructuring.
- diordiderot 5y agoJust a heads up that you don't need to add a new ≪ for each line of text in the text area, everything after the first ≪ will be quoted untill you double 'enter'. Cheers
- mkl 5y agoNot really. HN doesn't support any quoting syntax/formatting. There's a common convention in use of putting a ">" (not "<" or the more relevant ">") at the start of a quoted paragraph. The "problem" with the above comment is they indented the quote, which formatted it as code, which wraps strangely, so they wrapped it manually.
- 5y ago
- kakoni 5y agoWhat happens after Tiny acquisition? Cost cutting?
- sudhirj 5y agoI'm speculating, but based on friends who work in this industry the apps are put into maintenance mode, with one hired/contract developer in charge of two or three apps — assuming it's a SaaS app that doesn't need a team. If the product is still on a growth trajectory or needs a specialised team I think it's a very case-to-case basis. Cost cutting is one tool in the toolbox, and it's usually only used when the owner thinks the product is already dying and wants to squeeze value out of it. From what Tiny says they might not be buying products like that. That said, I feel like the Baremetrics emails started getting a little more spammy and frequent once they were bought, but I might be mistaken, it was a while ago. It's possible there's a growth hacking team that Tiny has that takes over all the products.
- aitchnyu 5y agoI worked in a US group that acquired competing SaaS products. The individual teams were small and had jack of all trades. The group prided themselves in attaching rocket engines to the bikes they bought. They could outsource specific work to India (yours truly) and other countries, hire top engineers, consultants and designers full time to improve multiple projects, monitor uptime and performance, build a big customer care team (India and other countries) and more.
- billyboar 5y agooh my eyes
- firecall 5y agoI wish companies would indicate which countries they operate in!
- FriedrichN 5y agoWhen it's not mentioned I just assume it's US only. Which is usually the case.
- huhtenberg 5y agoIIRC Tiny came out of MetaLab and MetaLab is Canadian. Don't know if they might be registered elsewhere though. They probably are.
- 3pt14159 5y agoIf so, no wonder. I've done a lot of data analysis contracts over the years and they were, by far, the most concerned about protecting user privacy way before it was cool. Tiny sounds just like their values.
- CryptoPunk 5y agoThis reminds me Apple in the early 2000s: a simple message promising a fundamental improvement in some aspect of the world. If it lives up to the message, this would grow into a massive fund, just as Apple grew into a trillion dollar plus company, and like Apple, this capital would enable this company's to realize its vision at a global scale. The free market is a beautiful thing.
- Gigachad 5y agoI hate this art style. Facebook and related have been pushing it for a while and it has become just repulsive to see now.
- TaylorGood 5y agoDon't like calling out things, but Sophia with GirlBoss got lucky. Do they accept NFT projects?
- berkes 5y ago> but Sophia with GirlBoss got lucky. Without some background and/or numbers that really is "calling out things". Could even be considered gossip or slander. I'd never heard of GirlBoss before, but I put it on my podcast-list just now because the topics look very interesting.
- jmacd 5y agoFor B2B SaaS and dev tools/infrastructure there is https://xenon.io/ https://xenon.io/ which operates with similar principals it seems.
- cormacrelf 5y ago(Principles. Lots of people making this error these days. A principal is e.g. of a school, or a loan.)
- aspenmayer 5y agoPrincipal investor is a term of art in the industry. It has other financial meanings as well. Principles are ideals you adhere to or uphold. They are also concepts used to implement a design. Principal and principle are homophones, and they are commonly mixed up. https://www.law.cornell.edu/definitions/uscode.php?def_id=12-USC-1100363702-1484898689 https://www.law.cornell.edu/definitions/uscode.php?def_id=12... https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/principal.asp#understanding-principal-private-companies https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/principal.asp#understan...
- cormacrelf 5y agoAre you disagreeing with me?
- aspenmayer 5y agoNo, I was just trying to disambiguate the terms. Sorry if it came off that way.
- jmacd 5y agoYeah, some guy in finance wrote a whole book using that stupid term!
- skrebbel 5y agoFor a data point, they bought Baremetrics and immediately removed the cancel button (which itself is a Baremetrics feature!). Now you have to call them to cancel. I guess that is exactly the kind of stuff you'd expect a SaaS PE firm to do, but it still feels a bit sleazy to me. IIRC the founder reported that from his perspective, they handled the purchase well though.
- LordAtlas 5y agoThat background blue is hideously bright and hurts my eyes when I try to read any text on my desktop monitor. Why hasn't anyone told them that?
- libertine 5y agoProbably because for the people that visit their website, the last thing they'll notice is the brightness of the background color. Maybe they even feel that discomfort, but the rest is enough to keep them going.
- Teandw 5y agoWhy is it automatically a problem on their end? Maybe your monitor brightness is turned up too high. It's perfectly fine on my monitor. More to the point, the people that are generally visiting their website are not the sort of people that would be wasting their time moaning about the colour of a website. If someone moaned about the colour to them, I'd wager a bet that they'd know to never do a deal with that person.
- SMAAART 5y agoThis is quite interesting. Are there any competitors/similar companies? Not looking for IAC, but smaller upcoming companies.
- fumblebee 5y agoSimilar but different: a company called MicroAcquire[1] facilitate the buying and selling of small companies, though unlike tiny[2], don't acquire them themselves. [1] https://microacquire.com/ https://microacquire.com/ [2] https://www.tinycapital.com/ https://www.tinycapital.com/
- _6hmp 5y agoMicroAcquire is just a marketplace, and IMO not that good (as a customer looking to acquire). Tiny is explicitly modeled as a mini Berkshire Hathaway for tech (they also, as a sideline, sell bronze busts of Charlie and Warren). An easy exit for those who don't want to see their work dismembered. They also part-own WeCommerce, a canadian public company doing the same for shopify apps/themes/agencies. (disclaimer, I also am a shareholder--no advice)
- mendigou 5y agoCan you elaborate more on your experience with MicroAcquire as an acquirer? Is it that you don't see enough deals? Not the right size? Bad companies? I'm not affiliated with the company. Just stumbled upon it a few weeks ago and was curious about the deals stats (size of companies, stage, etc.).
- _6hmp 5y agoIt's not horrible but I haven't found anything I like on it yet. One issue is that the UI kind of sucks (hover state button for more info on a company, vs clicking the name of the company, which is always redacted until you contact them). I would like more info on the companies before contacting. Another is that the microsaas category seems to be very micro on the traction/revenue and very macro on the multiple/pricing. Like if people are getting these prices good for them, but it's not attractive for me to wade through right now. It feels like I'm more likely to find something vetted and legit at a reasonable price through a broker like FEI.
- make_it_sure 5y agodo you have to sell 100%? is 49% possible? Also, how small the businesses are? What if you're doing 7 figures ARR?
- lquist 5y agoA close friend of mine sold them a business. They are quick as advertised but pay bottom of the barrel multiples. Helpful if you need cash quick I guess.
- mrkentutbabi 5y agoSometimes I wonder whether I should go and try to buy a micro SaaS business (I am an SWE) that's already out there just for the sake of trying to learn the ropes on how to do a business. Convince me this is a bad idea.
- FredPret 5y agoThe book E-Myth is about just such a scenario
- mrkentutbabi 5y agoWill take a look! thank you
- proexploit 5y agoI think it's a lot harder to pick a good business than you think. Many "micro" sized businesses have significant issues and avoiding them requires you to know all the right questions to ask. If you are able to make the right pick and the size of the deal is something you're comfortable seeing go to zero, it may be a good learning experience. However, you'll be learning to acquire and keep a business alive, not start a business through this. Some things may remain the same depending on the stage of the business but if you're looking for experience starting a business, I think starting on and failing will be better training (and free)
- mrkentutbabi 5y agoYeah I expect this. I think I would like to start from something I am somewhat familiar with. Interesting note about "acquiring and keeping a business alive, not starting a business", I am under the impression that these two skills are related, if not the same.
- proexploit 5y agoThey're definitely related (and more so the closer to start a business is). Depending on the business you may be benefiting from research, product/market fit, marketing, experiments, and on and on. It's not that the stuff you would do isn't relevant to starting your business but that it's not the complete picture.
- GoodJokes 5y ago[dead]
- wenbin 5y agoAndrew Wilkinson, co-founder of Tiny, has done a lot of podcast interviews. If you consider selling your business to Tiny, you should listen to a few of his interviews first to learn about his startup journey, Tiny's approach of buying businesses, and himself :) Search "Andrew Wilkinson": https://lnns.co/2lXRHeZc17A https://lnns.co/2lXRHeZc17A
- gonab 5y agoIt looks like regular capital but really tiny https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gj4-E5Hs3Kc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gj4-E5Hs3Kc
- devops000 5y agoDo you buy legal entity based in EU (Italy)? or only US?