Keeping an app running requires personnel, personnel is expensive, and good personnel is unlikely to cool their heels on an EOL'd app at an EOL'd company.
It really doesn’t though. You could scale down to a 1-3 person team. Stop building new features. Keep a full stack dev on for 1year to fix bugs and the remaining team does customer support.
Hiring a contracting company for 3 mo per year to perform updates.
My guess is the decision maker doesn’t think it’s worth their time to run a business like this. Instead of rapidly shifting focus into a higher growth area, they would continue to be attached to a shrinking product
A 1-3 person team in the US is a half million per annum proposition, and, again, even if you could make the payroll, you have to retain qualified engineers for a role that has zero growth potential.
cool, so you hire one for 2x the the price of a full time one for 1 week per month. 12 weeks * 2x price < 52 weeks * 1x the price.
I've done this job for a 3-4 startups before. they can't afford a full time engineer, so they hire someone to work part-time to keep the lights on. its not a hard job and many engineers appreciate the consistent work and extra cash.
Hiring a contracting company for 3 mo per year to perform updates.
My guess is the decision maker doesn’t think it’s worth their time to run a business like this. Instead of rapidly shifting focus into a higher growth area, they would continue to be attached to a shrinking product