He sold his SaaS for $128,000 - Startups.email
Here's the story of how Tony Dinh sold his SaaS for $128k and the lessons we can learn from it. Read also about The Peak sold for $5M and Scrap.so with $7,500 in Pre-orders👇
This week, I want to share two exciting stories that caught my attention.
Firstly, Tony Dinh, the founder of Backmagic, a Twitter tool, sold his SaaS for $128,000. At the time of the sale, he was making $14,000 MRR, which equates to $168,000 in annual recurring revenue (ARR). As we learned from Noah the following week, who sold his $6k MRR for around $300,000, usually the ARR of a solid business multiplies by a factor of five. Tony's case, however, was different, and he got significantly less than the ARR. The main reason for this is because Backmagic is dependent on Twitter's API, and Twitter introduced a monthly plan for about $42,000. This made it impossible for Tony to afford the API, and therefore, he was forced to sell Blackmagic for a fraction of its actual value. The buyer, Hypefurry, was able to get a very solid SaaS business for a relatively low price, although Twitter has since introduced a cheaper API plan for $5,000, it was too late for Tony.
This case brings to light an important lesson: if your app relies on a third-party API, you can be exposed to platform risk, and potential API pricing changes could cost you your business. This is a valuable lesson for solopreneurs, but I still believe that building on existing platforms is the easiest way to success.
The second story that I want to tell is about The Peak, a business newsletter for the Canadian market. Launched three years ago, the founders were able to sell this newsletter for $5 million. What's even more exciting is that the buyer paid around $45 per subscriber. This week, two other acquisitions happened in the newsletter market – Sparkloop and Duuce – showing that the newsletter business model can be very profitable. Sparkloop, a referral program for newsletters, was acquired by Convertkit, and Duuce, a marketplace similar to Acquire.com, was acquired by The Wisdom Group.
Let's move on to some other SaaS products that I want to share with you.
Airtrackbot ($14,200 in payouts/month)
Airtrackbot is a five-year-old business that enables you to find the best flights on Telegram messenger, and you get instant alerts when the flight price changes. This business model is quite simple – all you need is a backend and a connection to a couple of APIs. By using Telegram, you don't need to worry about frontend complexity, and with 550 million active users, you have a large user base at your disposal.
Yaco Progress Bar ($1,000 MRR)
This week, I added two Shopify apps that make around $1,000 in MRR, which might not seem like a lot of money, but as we know, a business that makes $6,000 can be sold for $300,000, so a business that makes $1,000 can easily be sold for $60,000. Yaco Progress Bar creates a progress bar at the checkout of your Shopify shop, which shows how much needs to be purchased in order to get a free shipping, free product, or anything else you want to give away. This helps increase the shop's average order value.
Scrap.so ($7,500 in pre-orders)
Scrap.so is the new project of self-taught developer Nico, who sold his other product, Makelogo.ai, for a whopping $65,000 in March. Scrap.so is an AI assistant that can browse the web and collect data automatically, and it has already received 300 pre-orders in two weeks. The scraping market is huge – MrScraper ($320 MRR) and ScrapingBee ($125k MRR) are just two examples of scraping products. The only issue with this business model is that costs can be high, due to the resource-intensive nature of scraping. Nonetheless, I wish Nico the best of luck with Scrap.so and hope he has an exit of at least $500,000.
Finally, let's take a look at the new SaaS stats I have published on the startups.email website this week:
Scrap.so: The AI-assistant that scrapes data and sends it wherever you want, founded in May 2023 and has a revenue of $7,500 (Presell, TTM, USD, Subscriptions).
The Peak: A newsletter with 5-minute daily emails on Canadian business, tech, and finance, founded in July 2020 and has a revenue of $12,500 in 2021 (MRR, Month, USD, Ads).
Stagetimer: Remote-controlled Countdown Timer, founded in November 2020 and has a revenue of $5,766 (MRR, Month, USD, Subscriptions).
Yaco Progress Bar: Boost sales and average order value with cart value goals, founded in March 2022 and has a revenue of $1,034 (MRR, Month, USD, Subscriptions).
Circle Menu: Create social media inspired menu, founded in July 2021 and has a revenue of $1,000 (MRR, Month, USD, Subscriptions).
Blackmagic: Twitter Analytics & CRM software, founded in May 2021 and has a revenue of $14,000 (MRR, Month, USD, Subscriptions).
Figma Export To Video: One-click Figma prototypes export, founded in December 2022 and has a revenue of $1,022 (MRR, Month, USD, Subscriptions).
Betterlegal: Set Up Your Business in Less Than 10 Minutes, founded in March 2014 and has a revenue of $72,100 (MRR, Month, USD, Subscriptions).
Airtrackbot: Find flight deals on Telegram messenger, founded in February 2018 and has a revenue of $14,166 (MRR, Month, USD, Affiliate).
Starterstory: Unlock secrets to 7-figures online businesses, founded in January 2018 and has a revenue of $1,500,000 (Total Revenue, Lifetime, USD, Sale).
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