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by jasonkester
3770 days ago
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This is by far the most useful, most actionable article to come through here in months. Hope we see more like this. My takeaway from the article is that you don't really ever want to sell a SaaS business if you don't have something more profitable to replace it with. If you're growing, you'll easily beat a 4X multiplier by simply holding on to it for a few years. If you're declining or stable, nobody will want to give you a good price so it's almost not worth selling. The best strategy is to either keep at it or coast and milk. Worst case, you're declining/stable and still in the "20-40 hour weeks needed" phase, in which case it might make more sense to simply abandon the thing. The only thing that changes the equation is having something else so successful that those few hours a week spent on your old thing are just a distraction. One other thing I notice is that businesses are a lot like houses. If you wait to fix that weak, drippy shower until right before you sell, the only guy who benefits is the buyer. If you fix it today, you get to have nice hot powerful showers every morning from here until you sell. Same with fixing your churn, documenting & outsourcing your first line support, etc. Fix it today and keep the profits for yourself, leaving yourself that much stronger when you do decide to get out. |
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Not really. There's plenty of reasons to sell an illiquid asset, such as a growing business, or shares in a company. Maybe you want to buy a house, or you want to put it all in the S&P 500 to be completely passive and have much lower risk. Maybe you just want to swap your company for a yacht and sail around the caribbean for a while.