Thomas Smale – How to Build an App You Can Sell – MicroConf Europe 2014

The MicroConf Europe 2014 Hub Page has notes on all the talks and additional information.

Website: FEInternational.com
Twitter: @thomassmale
Slides: here

  • Having an exit plan is an insurance – in case you NEED to move on
  • You should always be prepared to sell your business
  • Looks can be deceiving – a lot of work is hidden beneath the surface
    • Support
    • Complexity
    • Diversity
    • Owner Responsibility
  • Be proactive instead of reactive
  • unsellable business: old business with a lot of support and few sales
  • Rational investors won’t pay for “known” potential
  • Recurring beats one-time sales
  • lessons from successful sales: 
    • know your metrics
    • stable or growing MRR
    • evergreen niche
    • Track record
    • Helpful owner
  • What does the average buyer want? 
    • Month-on-month increasing MRR
    • Upwardly trending niche
    • Outsourced support
    • Documented production roadmaps/codebase
    • Transferability
      • separate PayPal/Stripe/Mailchimp/etc accounts

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About Christoph

Christoph lives in Munich, Germany and is bootstrapping his own SaaS application as a part-time entrepreneur.

He likes to write on this blog about anything of relevance to single-founder bootstrapped software startups.

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