165: Why You Shouldn’t Sell Your Business

The Bootstrapped Founder

11/18/22

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14m

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I was talking to Damon Chen, who built Testimonial.to to $400.000 in ARR this week, and at one point, he mentioned that he isn’t looking into selling his business just yet. Maybe even never.
That got me thinking.

While we all want to build sellable businesses, is there such a thing as selling too early? How can we determine when that phase ends and when it’s time to get acquired? Should we even do that, ever?

Let’s look into why we might want to hold on to our business even when acquirers come knocking.

And by the way, if you’re just starting out on your founder journey and you think that this would be a nice champagne problem to have, don’t underestimate having these things figured out in advance.

- Why You Shouldn’t Sell Your Business
- Find your Following, my Twitter course — now with Find your Following Essentials, the 7-day Twitter crash course
- Zero to Sold & The Embedded Entrepreneur, my books on entrepreneurship

This episode is sponsored by MicroAcquire.

You can also watch this episode as a video on YouTube.

Previous Episode

164: Damon Chen — Building a $400k/year SaaS

November 16, 2022

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60m

Today, I am talking to Damon Chen, the founder behind Testimonial.to, a social proof tool that has recently reached $400.000 in annual recurring revenue. Now that’s extremely impressive, particularly considering that Damon got it there all by himself.

So, let’s just ask him how this family man accomplished such growth while living in one of the most expensive places you could build a business in. Here’s Damon Chen.

LonelyDev is a community that I built to solve my own problem. 1:01

Lonely Dev turned into IndieLog. 4:09

How to get out of a full-time job to start a business. 12:55

Why you need to be healthy and whole to be able to build a good business. 19:33

Why you need to add video reviews to your landing page. 26:31

Video and authenticity 31:30

There is a point where you reach saturation and you need help. 36:20

What is your exit plan for your business? 42:27

The importance of having a good exit strategy. 47:18

The importance of having a community to support bootstrappers. 51:16

This episode is sponsored by MicroAcquire.

Here's the blog post for this episode.
You can also watch this episode as a video on YouTube.

Next Episode

166: Daniel Vassallo — Building a Portfolio of Small Bets

November 23, 2022

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61m

Today, I am talking to Daniel Vassallo, writer, founder, and person with very strong opinions. He is building a portfolio of small bets in public, on Twitter. I will talk to him about the importance of making money in diversified ways, how to structure your life around being a founder, and how to figure out which business ideas might actually work.

Here is Daniel Vassallo.

What is the lifetime value of a subscription business? 1:12

Different kinds of software fit different pricing models. 5:04

What is a portfolio of small bets? 9:30

Business is unpredictable. You need to radically reduce the input. 13:48

What common things do you share with other entrepreneurs? 17:46

Don’t try to be too novel. 21:31

What’s a good approach to spreading out your experiments? 26:14

What is the best price for your business? 40:08

How Pieter Levels’ portfolio has changed over time. 45:58

How you can use social media to get new ideas. 51:26

Sometimes it’s something seemingly unrelated that opens your eyes to a new way of doing things. 55:01