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Show HN: I made a simple platform to buy/sell side projects
Hi Guys,
I made a simple platform to buy/sell side projects. Current solutions are over complicated so I decided to make things simpler.
Let me know your what you think about this.
https://secondfounder.com https://secondfounder.com
- lagrange77 4y agoNice. What happens, when a potential buyer finds a project he wants to buy? Do they just get the contact details of the seller, or do you also manage payment?
- heyarviind2 4y agoThe plan is to integrate escrow and make the entire flow seamless.
- somenewaccount1 4y agoNice
- XCSme 4y agoThe page is very confusing to me because it looks like a Trello/Kanban board.
- kangaroodingo 4y agoare there any speicifc solutions you have found over complicated in this space?
- heyarviind2 4y ago- not showing listing before logging in - Not showing actual PROFIT LOSS STATEMENT numbers - Wanted to switch to monthly recurring profit from MRR
- moneywoes 4y agoHow do you factor in a founders time in that profit equation? Let’s say the solo founder spends 80 hour a week running sales marketing ops dev and then sells. He could artificially make his profit high if he isn’t billing for his time
- quirk 4y agoThis is great. What are the current solutions that you find over complicated? You could reach out to posters there to get more projects onto your platform.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- heyarviind2 4y agoI am sending messages to the posters, hopefully will get few listings by next week :)
- ISL 4y agoMight check the ToS of the existing players before doing that en masse.
- whoomp12342 4y agoexisting players might have works not yet submitted to current platform, even if ToS is a jerk
- willswire 4y agoCouldn’t agree more - current solutions are way over complicated. As someone who develops iOS apps on the side, I’ve always been looking for (but never found) a simple solution for offloading some of my projects. I will certainly be submitting some projects here this morning! Thanks!
- heyarviind2 4y agoI will be more than happy if this project helps you in any way :)
- tr1ll10nb1ll 4y agoJust submitted my project! :)
- heyarviind2 4y agoIt's live on the website
- alexdejeu 4y agoNice! As an aside, could you please improve the error message for "password length invalid" - took me a few tries to figure out how short it has to be. Best of luck!
- heyarviind2 4y agooops sorry about that, fixing it now!
- prox 4y agoExcellent idea!
- heyarviind2 4y agoThanks Man!
- Varqu 4y agoVery cool, do you do any vetting / background checks of the projects that are submitted?
- heyarviind2 4y agoyes I manually go thorough the projects and contact with the poster if there is something wrong
- bwb 4y agoFrom what I have seen the challenge with something like this isn't building the app, it is stocking one side of the marketplace and then the other... Looks great though!
- kubami 4y agoSome call it "chicken and egg problem". Classic of two-sided marketplaces!
- xEnOnn 4y agoWhat are usually the solutions to such problems with a two-sided marketplace?
- noahl 4y agoThe solution is posting this marketplace on a forum full of people who might like to buy and sell side projects
- cldellow 4y ago- Start in a niche where you can lean on your own personal connections to kickstart the demand/supply side. Once you've established yourself as the best platform in that niche, go broader. - Outsource/"borrow" supply from other people until you can bootstrap the demand side (eg: scrape/syndicate other marketplaces; subcontract services) - Heavily incent the supply side of the marketplace (eg: offer a guaranteed base pay to subcontractors regardless of demand) - Bootstrap the supply side yourself (eg: for a forum, use sockpuppet accounts to create the appearance of of a thriving community) It's hard!
- dinom 4y agoI like the bootstrapping idea... github projects may appreciate getting buyout offers out of the clear blue! And, submitted offers could be fed back into the valuation model for fine-tuning.
- 4y ago
- imglorp 4y agoI bailed at the first engagement popup, sorry. That could be an item in the hamburger menu if people are looking for it
- heyarviind2 4y agoRemoved!
- orliesaurus 4y agoI am going to add this to my list of side projects selling platforms!
- heyarviind2 4y agoSure please do!
- djbusby 4y agoPlease share that list with everyone.
- orliesaurus 4y agoHere we go from my notes: MicroAcquire (favorite of mine), Flippa (favorite of mine), Empire Flippers, Motion invest, Investors.club, BuySellEmpire, Quiet Light Brokerage...
- slurpmaker 4y agoCan someone give the TL;DR here? What kinds of projects go on here?
- imvza 4y agoMostly one-man band MVP's, side-hustles, Apps, sites with or without revenue/profit that is looking for a 100% buyout. We will be expanding to connect project owners with 2nd Founders looking to join, and not just do a buy out. ~ 2nd Founder of SF
- goldenkey 4y agoPlease put this platform on the platform and enforce that the buyer has to do so as well, contractually. Infinite inception.
- moneywoes 4y agoHow do you validate the revenue is authentic?
- bsaul 4y agoi'm surprised there isn't a market for software already. Being able to price a stack would probably let software developer get easier access to funding or borrowing since at least you'd have some way to use the code as a collateral. it would probably also helps developers develop products using more decomposed, standardized and documented components (to facilitate selling them in parts) which is always a really good thing.
- capableweb 4y agoSounds like the name/domain is a bit misaligned from what the actual purpose is. The name hints at finding a co-founder, while you describe it as a platform for selling projects (transferring the project from one founder to another)
- imvza 4y agoHi, I'm the 2nd Founder of SF. We have identified this potential arena and been discussing expanding our ways to help project owners find that 2nd Founder, and not just a platform to sell a side project. Thanks for the validation.
- boutell 4y agoI popped this open on my phone and I must say the browsing experience feels good. You really did keep it tight and simple. You’re on to something. But if you feel burnt out, now you have a place to sell it
- heyarviind2 4y agohaha yes!
- maxbond 4y agoI'm curious to hear from people who buy or sell projects on sites like these about how they value the projects. I look at prices on sites like this from time to time, and no two of them seem to be valued according to the same principles. I'd be interested in participating in this market, but when the prices seem arbitrary like that I assume I'll end up a sucker, and stay out.
- heyarviind2 4y agoI am going to introduce a 2nd param - valuation (calculated by the team) which would be calculated by the algorithm. Buyer would have a choice if they want to consider our valuation or user's. This is the rough idea tough, will try to get feedback on the same and improve it further.
- djbusby 4y agoValuation is a hard topic, at least four well know methods with lots of fuzzy parts. Sites like this require you do do your own diligence - which itself is hard work. It takes a lot of practice.
- nickbyfleet 4y agoGet rid of the email popup. Nobody wants that. Other than that, cool!
- gmjosack 4y agoI was reading through some of the posts when the modal takeover happened and my natural instinct to close the page kicked in. I have so little patience for modals these days. If you want some kind of delayed call to action maybe some kind of toast at the bottom would be better. As it is today I'm primed to abandon sites that do a full screen take-over while i'm reading.
- nixcraft 4y agoHow is the project making $399 per month while asking for $20,000? Is such an asking price accurate?
- mmastrac 4y agoProbably off by a factor of 5-10
- yomkippur 4y agoWhat if I told you that it has been making that much money for the past 8 years and likely to keep making money for the next 10, 20 years?
- ddmichael 4y agoStill irrationally expensive. You need 4 years to break even and then you may make another 20k in 4 years. 8 years full of risk to make a profit of 20k while the platform is going to be 16 years old? Not worth it.
- yomkippur 4y agobut this is the exact multiple most SaaS are using, what makes mine different? I don't get it. At least mine is making net profit, most SaaS trading on stock exchanges with the same multiples are losing money and unlikely to remain at current market caps if not already.
- vasco 4y agoI hope you realize valuation of public companies has nothing to do with a random one person side project that's been up for a few years.
- csa 4y ago> I hope you realize valuation of public companies has nothing to do with a random one person side project that's been up for a few years Four years of seller discretionary income is not an unusual sale price for small solo projects that have traction. Iirc, Patio11’s bingo card creator sold for something around this multiple. That said, it’s unclear if this project has as much traction as others that sell for this multiple. If there are only a few clients, especially if they are friends of the current owner, then the business is fragile.
- hasperdi 4y agoAnnoying subscribe pop-up. Bye!
- heyarviind2 4y agoremoved popup. Hii!
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- atum47 4y agoNice, just submitted my game Qubes. There were some people trying to buy it from mean few months ago but the offer was low. The game right now is free to play with no ads, so it generates no money. But it has over 7k installs, which is pretty neat.
- alangibson 4y agoI'm happy to be corrected, but IIRC the value of any asset is the present discounted value of future revenues. These valuations seem ... much higher. You could argue that future growth justifies higher valuation, but that's hard to swallow when revenues are in 3 and 4 digits. Also, the idea of selling a business that is pre-revenue is kind of laughable. That'll never be anything but people trying to get a few grand for abandoned side projects
- canadiantim 4y agoYou should add ability to search projects by type of code used. Eg I specifically went to see if any Django projects were for sale and theoretically would be interested depending on what was there, but no way for me to search it. Cool idea tho
- heyarviind2 4y agothis is on the roadmap, will add it soon!
- bag_boy 4y agoAhhh this is a great idea
- adamzerner 4y agoHow did you handle design stuff? It looks pretty good! I'm a programmer without design training and always end up using Bootstrap.
- heyarviind2 4y agoI just use tailwindcss and get some inspiration from Dribbble. :) Thank you for your kind words
- jdiganginoho 4y agoNice site. Clean design. Like that you used tailwindcss and Dribbble. Was hoping for a site that allows you to search the technology stack used to create a project (i.e. search for React apps that are for sale). Congrats!
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- dingleberry420 4y agoNo thanks, my side projects exist to bring me joy. Corrupting them by trying to monetize them would take away all the fun.
- barnabees 4y agoI'm sure some people feel this way and others feel differently. If it's not for you it's not for you—no need for a snarky comment
- heyarviind2 4y agoYeah side projects are like therapy but there are people who are trying to make a living from side projects and end up selling them for quick money.
- solardev 4y agoI like your UX! It's simple, clear, and fast. Thank you for focusing on usability :) Some minor feedback: - I wonder if the pre-revenue column should be left, and the >5k MRR should be right, so it goes from least expensive to most? - Can the category dropdown be checkboxes (so you can choose more than one) and also have an "All" category if you're just casually browsing? - Some measures of time might be useful, like how long a project has been active ("since 2019") and how long it's been listed for - Could you please add some tooltips or similar to explain what MRP and MPP are? Just a one-sentence description like "Monthly recurring profit is ____, as reported by the company/calculated by our algorithms/whatever".
- heyarviind2 4y agoThese are very valuable points, thank you! Adding them to the roadmap.
- zakokor 4y agoGood job! Looks great.
- nathancahill 4y agoAny difference from IndieMaker (https://indiemaker.co https://indiemaker.co)?
- bemmu 4y agoI tried to make a listing, but it kept saying to keep description under 280 characters, even though it was. Anyway if someone wants to make me an offer for the domain and text content of Candy Japan (candyjapan.com), email me. Gets ~2000 clicks on Google per month, 7000 uniques. It's the oldest Japanese candy subscription box domain on the internet, but the service itself hasn't been running for 2 years.
- heyarviind2 4y agocan you send the description here please?
- bemmu 4y ago# Description Japanese candy subscription box. Includes domain and right to use text content only. Specifically does not include any code, customer list, or anything else. # Asking price. $6942 # Why sell? It's the oldest candy subscription box domain in the world! And there's old content with decent backlinks as well. In other words: Google likes it. I used to run this subscription box, but shut it down after Covid made global shipping impossible. If it's extremely low effort for me, then I would be willing to sell the domain and site content to someone who wants to start a similar site, or to use as lead generation for a competing service. I am selling this site, because I know it still has value. Despite the service being down for 2 years, the site still gets ~2000 clicks on Google each month, and ~7000 unique visitors. From past experience, this would convert to a few (let's say 5) new paying subscribers each month with no marketing at all. With an LTV of ~$40, should have lead generation value of at around ~$2400/year. But I won't set up your website for you. I'll just transfer the domain to you, and sign a poorly worded document telling that I allow you to keep using the site content. You will not get the code. Because it's terrible, and I don't want you to punch me or have even a remote risk of having to set it up for you or maintain it. You will get the rights to use the blog text content, but you'll have to copy paste them yourself from the website. Because they are in some bizarro combination of two different formats in a database I barely remember how to log in to. Again, you only get: the domain name, and the right to use the blog content text. But no right to ask me time-consuming questions. After I have transferred the domain to you, I consider my work to be 100% done. # Competition? The Japanese candy subscription box scene is admittedly intensely (ridiculously?) competitive. See here for a full list: https://www.candyjapan.com/wow/japanese-candy-boxes https://www.candyjapan.com/wow/japanese-candy-boxes
- espadrine 4y agoVery neat website. I love that it gets you right into it with no presentation homepage. Regarding the market system: why did you pick a lump price rather than a bidding system? A few notes for improvement: the “My projects” page feels empty at first: it could use a call-to-action with a quick explainer and a button. The “Go home” button has an odd wording; maybe “Main page”? Clicking on the logo to go to the main page is a classic, but not everyone is used to it; adding a link from the hamburger menu could be good. The website pricing and the way to settle are a bit unclear.
- mNovak 4y agoInteresting, and congrats on launching! On the one hand it sounds nice for me to be able to sell a side project and have finality. But also I've never had the patience to actually advertise/monetize them, so the valuation a pre-revenue service would get is too low for me to accept the sunk-cost fallacy. I suppose that's the small-project catch 22
- danielunited 4y agoThanks. Will try later
- swyx 4y agohow do you solve the lemon problem? https://www.investopedia.com/terms/l/lemons-problem.asp https://www.investopedia.com/terms/l/lemons-problem.asp
- readme 4y agoneeds pictures model it after the already successful site that exists for this (flippa) if you want to compete with it you must at least match it first then you need to find a way to have an advantage over them (one way would be to curry favor with users here)
- 8organicbits 4y agoDisagree, don't chase the features of a competitor. Find the features your customers need and the features you can build better than others. We don't need another flippa clone.
- t_mann 4y agoLooks really neat! Some ideas/questions/suggestions: 1 Are you taking a fee on sales completed through the platform? Couldn't find this at a quick glance, but it's important info. 2 Did you look into legal / liability aspects regarding the veracity of expense / revenue / profit claims? Do you vet projects/owners before listing them? How do you ensure that the offer is legit (ie the seller actually owns the project)? 3 Does the platform facilitate safe transactions (eg deposit access credentials / purchase price in an escrow service)? 4 Any reason that only sellers can post a public ask price? Using eg a second-price public auction system could make sense here. Happy to support btw, feel free to reach out, contact info is in my profile.
- nlh 4y agoCongrats on launching and site looks and works great. Care to share the stack you built it / are hosting it on? Always curious to hear the technical details :)
- KaoruAoiShiho 4y agoYou are aware of microacquire.com?
- __john 4y agoI think you meant microacquire.com , you forgot the 'c'. The domain you're linking to is hella scammy.
- bluehorseray 4y agoHaha I've never seen a site require you to install a chrome extension to visit
- KaoruAoiShiho 4y agoIndeed thanks for the correction.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- pyromaker 4y agoI've used SideProjectors in the past. It's probably one of the more established ones. https://www.sideprojectors.com https://www.sideprojectors.com
- outcoldman 4y agoRSS would be nice to have, don’t want to give my email to anybody ;)
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]