[jamess]

How much money are you making now? If the answer is nothing then you can pretty much forget about selling your business as a going concern, what you have is a pile of software not a business.

Kiko is a special case, essentially what they did was not build a company but rather an extended exercise in building consultingware. It's very easy to see how to fit a flashy calendar component in to any number of existing businesses (not that I've seen hide nor hair of it since the acquisition... does Kiko still exist in any meaningful form?) but that probably doesn't apply to what ever it is you've built.

The best way to sell your business is to not need to sell your business. If you just continue as you are, building a decent revenue stream then eventually you'll almost certainly start getting offers. Most of the time, though, acquisitions are made as much to acquire the talent as the technology. Not including the people who built a successful product in the deal substantially reduces your value.

[forgotpassword]

"The best way to sell your business is to not need to sell your business."

I agree. That would be the ideal scenario. But we think a different product would work out better for us. So selling the product and starting fresh is tempting.

As for the money we're making. Not much at all. Our customers are just friends and family at this point. We haven't really tried to sell the product. No marketing campaign to speak of - once again because we're a bit "inexperienced".

[jamess]

Well, the way to become experienced isn't by giving up at the first hurdle that's for sure. If you haven't tried to sell the product, then there's nothing anyone can do to pin a value to what you've created.

What you're trying to do is very difficult to begin with. Very few people will be interested in buying a piece of software without also having the people who built it continue to work on it. Added to that you're trying to foist the burden of marketing a completely untried product too. Purchasers are going to need at least some track record, people using it, revenue earned, that sort of thing. It's a completely unattractive proposition, to say the least.

You really have only two options, either make some effort to push the product in the marketplace and do at least one marketing, sales, feedback, improvement cycle or just forget about selling it, write it off and move on to the next thing you want to do.

If nothing else, writing it off as a commercial product gives you the opportunity to make it open source, and use it as a show piece for your talent.