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Sold my first company!

I started a E-commerce company in 2011 from scratch on a shoe string budget, ran it at for 4 years and just sold it for a Quarter Million Dollars to a large competitor. I was hoping to cash out for MUCH more but I realized that a business is ONLY worth what someone is willing to pay no matter what the numbers tell you..

I am very happy about selling this so I can move on to bigger stuff.

  • Tell us about about the selling experience! Did you approach a broker? Was the buyer someone you knew for a while? Was there multiple parties you could have sold to?

    Reply

    • I did not use a broker. This was someone I had never met. When I decided I wanted to sell I figured the BEST choice would be to a competitor. So I looked up the personal profile of the owner on LinkedIn and sent him a quick message: “Would you be interested in acquiring my Websites”

      He knew who I was because it is a fairly small niche market. I started out kind of high on the price because this was my baby after all. A potential buyer doesn’t care how connected I was to it and I began to understand that. Once we settled on a # I had my corporate lawyer make up a contract. We spent about 2 weeks making small changes to it and BAM. He actually traveled from the East Coast all the way to Sothern California to hand deliver the check and meet me.

      Everything was really smooth. I think that other business owners have more respect for each other then a investor does. Every investor I have ever met was a little rude and I refused their help.

      Reply

      • Appreciate the background. Glad to hear one of us had a positive outcome 🙂 Take your well deserved break and all the best in your next endeavor!

        Reply

      • Congratulations, yes that was a very smooth process and I agree that working directly with other owners is desirable – that unspoken respect and admiration plus the shared experience.

        Reply

  • Nice! You must be excited. I like how you went directly to the buyer. It seems disrespectful to avoid a conversation with the person who created this baby. Middlemen can be cold. Enjoy the spoils and flip that experience into something even greater. Nice to see a success story.

    Reply

  • Just wondering if you could share what types of valuation metrics people use to measure Web businesses?

    Revenue multiple? Profit multiple? Page views? What’s realistic and gets done versus too idealistic

    Reply
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