May I ask why you would want to sell such a business? Running such a business is my dream and I just have a hard time understanding why someone would sell a profitable business unless you're set for life?
I haven't had a vacation from being on-call 24/7/365 for the past 15+ years. I've been woken up by texts from server monitoring systems more nights than I can count. My wife and I had to plan our honeymoon around internet availability. I'm tired. I have other businesses that don't require the constant vigilance of an SaaS where every minute of downtime is costing hundreds of customers money.
I was in a similar predicament, and it was one of the reasons I considered selling the business.
I never hired. I should have hired. I had alerts waking me at night dozens of times as well. I planned family trips around internet availability. I thought I was needed to solve any problem. That's why I never hired. I thought it would be too much effort to train someone.
Selling the business resolved all these issues at once. Hiring someone to take care of these things for you will allow you to have time to yourself and wind down. I trained my replacement. Turns out other people can do this job.
You don't have to start with the sale. You can start with delegating.
If that's the case, can you describe how you ended up with customers?
Whenever I consider entrepreneurship as an option for myself, it is always the customer-facing sales part which leaves me feeling like I would struggle.
People come to the website and sign up, from ads, affiliates, social media, or through word of mouth from other customers. Most business does not involve any "customer-facing sales".
Lots of reasons, although as i said in my post, unless it's a "strategic acquisition" at a huge multiple, it's usually not because "the math" of selling makes more sense than holding it. In my case, having the liquid capital from the sale allowed me to start a fund to invest in more companies like this (https://earnestcapital.com/). Something I probably couldn't have done while operating my SaaS and just out of the business's profits. Other reasons are that the acquirer is a better fit to take the business to the next level, so if you hold it the business will likely degrade whereas a buyer has the capacity to invest in and grow it... also to create opportunities for growth for talented employees who may otherwise get bored and leave.