mtlynch

50 ms·

1. 661.▲
   by mtlynch 2y ago

   Thanks! > Why do you think hardware doesn't generally have the same level of 'respect' as software? From what I can see, it should be held in much higher regard with a correspondingly higher level of compensation. Is it li
2. 662.▲
   by mtlynch 2y ago

   Oh, awesome! Glad to hear it was helpful.
3. 663.▲
   by mtlynch 2y ago

   Thanks for reading! > How did you get people to trust your product? If I see something like this from a small outfit for a cheap price, I will assume that the price is being made up some where else. How did you assure you customers you c
4. 664.▲
   by mtlynch 2y ago

   Yeah, a bit of extra context is that the four months that I was talking to ServerCo also overlapped with my wedding and honeymoon last year. I would have pushed for a quicker decision, but I didn't want to be in serious negotiations ab
5. 665.▲
   by mtlynch 2y ago

   I'm still working with my accountant on that, so I don't have the final figure. I'm expecting the taxes to be relatively low due to expenses that I had to amortize in the last couple of years: https://news.ycombina
6. 666.▲
   by mtlynch 2y ago

   Hey Nick, good to hear from you again! > You know it must have been stressful when you were compelled to list your desserts in order. Haha, that's true, but I also get more excited than the average person about desserts. > Now t
7. 667.▲
   by mtlynch 2y ago

   Thanks, Zeke! > Would you build another hardware business, or are you going to try for a software business next? No, I don't think I'd try hardware again. It's a shame because I learned so much about hardware and selling
8. 668.▲
   by mtlynch 2y ago

   Thanks for reading! > Once manufacturing (and other tedium) was outsourced, I'd have thought that's "making it". More or less "passive income" presuming the employees took care of everything else. If the rev
9. 669.▲
   by mtlynch 2y ago

   It's a hardware product, so profit is much lower than revenue. SaaS businesses can often sell as a multiple of revenue because they have relatively low costs, but with hardware, there's a lot of overhead.
10. 670.▲
    by mtlynch 2y ago

    Thanks for reading! > You mentioned that building tinypilot suddenly sparked way more interest than your other attempts. Do you have a plan for your next product? Try out different things and hope you find something that gains similar tr
11. 671.▲
    by mtlynch 2y ago

    Yes, definitely agree. I didn't mean to say that the buyer has no skin in the game, just that the seller receives no compensation if the buyer pulls out of the deal. In this case, the buyer probably spent more on the deal than I did, b
12. 672.▲
    by mtlynch 2y ago

    Thanks for reading! > My question is, did you change anything on your strategy after you were set on selling? Or the goal was still the same, optimize earnings? Once I started the process of preparing the company for sale, it did change
13. 673.▲
    by mtlynch 2y ago

    Thanks for reading! > Why wouldn't you go back to a corporation and try to make a software product there, as an employee? Oh, boy. So many reasons! The thing I really love about running a company of my own is that I don't have
14. 674.▲
    by mtlynch 2y ago

    Thanks so much, William! Great to hear from you.
15. 675.▲
    by mtlynch 2y ago

    Thanks for reading! > Do you ever calculate your GOOG salary and multiply it by the number of years you've been bootstrapping and have any regrets? I've definitely thought about the number, but no, honestly no regrets at this
16. 676.▲
    by mtlynch 2y ago

    Haha, great question, Cory! It was over three days (dinner, dinner, lunch), and I was splitting them with friends. Although, I do love dessert and probably could have eaten those all solo.
17. 677.▲
    by mtlynch 2y ago

    No, the broker found the buyer. I see how it's confusing because I say in the post that the buyer read my retrospectives, but that was after he had discovered the company through Quiet Light. I've just edited the article to clarif
18. 678.▲
    by mtlynch 2y ago

    Thanks so much for reading! > You mentioned having trouble working with vendors, was this for ex: having boards assembled? I guess I've probably gotten "lucky" with relatively low scale so far, but been happy with the asso
19. 679.▲
    by mtlynch 2y ago

    No, I didn't pay myself a salary. TinyPilot was a single-member LLC, so all the profits were pass-through income on my personal taxes. I share more about the finances in my annual review posts: https://mtlynch.io/solo-d
20. 680.▲
    by mtlynch 2y ago

    Thanks for reading! > What was the time split between the sale process and running day-to-day operations? I know bigger companies have dedicated teams for that, but I'm curious how does it look like in smaller ones. It varied from
21. 681.▲
    by mtlynch 2y ago

    Thanks so much! Yes, I'm definitely planning to spend less time on work over the coming years.
22. 682.▲
    by mtlynch 2y ago

    Thanks for reading! Yes, you're correct. The buyer takes out the loan. This was an asset sale, so assets transferred over but not any debts. The seller (me) can approach a loan broker and show their financials, and the loan broker can
23. 683.▲
    by mtlynch 2y ago

    Author here. For me, the value of the broker was just someone to guide me through the whole process because I'd never done it before. It was good to have someone whose interests were pretty aligned with mine and who answered questions
24. 684.▲
    by mtlynch 2y ago

    Thanks! > I do have to say, I was somewhat surprised by the low multiple on the valuation, but perhaps that's just what the range is for a business of this nature. We're spoiled in the world of software and recurring revenue.
25. 685.▲
    by mtlynch 2y ago

    Thanks for reading! > What do you think is next for you? Next is either an educational product or a SaaS business I can build either fully solo or with 1-2 teammates in customer support roles. > Would you do it all over? No, not kno
26. 686.▲
    by mtlynch 2y ago

    Thanks for reading! > you think you will bootstrap something again? Yes, definitely. Not hardware again because I think getting to the scale where you can use external vendors is so difficult and risky that it requires more specialized
27. 687.▲
    by mtlynch 2y ago

    Author here. I'm happy to answer any questions about this post, the sale process, or my time running TinyPilot.
28. 688.▲
    I sold TinyPilot, my first successful business(mtlynch.io)

    1016 points by mtlynch 2y ago|316 comments
29. 689.▲
    by mtlynch 2y ago

    The author is Rand Fishkin, who's not a journalist. He's the founder of SparkToro and Moz, both companies that provide tooling and analytics for SEO. I haven't looked deeply into Fishkin's companies, but I wouldn't
30. 690.▲
    by mtlynch 2y ago

    I thought you were confusing this with an episode of Seinfeld , when Kramer has seizures in response to Mary Hart's voice.[1] But you're right. This was a real case that Seinfeld must have been referencing.[2] The doctor, Venka