I (Finally) Sold My Micro Startup
TL;DR automix.ai has been acquired for $8,5k with already bagged $260 MRR in an average of 5 months.
Even though it is not a big number, I felt what it was like to sell a startup that I raised myself from its first day. There is something sentimental in this article and I will share it with you.
May 2023, I have already been working in the same company for 4 years and 4 months. I had no idea where my career journey wanted to go and felt stuck at that moment. And, at that moment too I finally found the best time to resign. Before I was really out of the company, my brain had a billion ideas about what I wanted to build next with only my hands.
"It would be fun", I thought to myself.
Long story short, there is no fun. I built many things such as Blazter — a browser extension for broadcast messages to WhatsApp, Nugget — another browser extension with multiple productivity tools, Imaginr — an AI-powered web app to enhance images, and many failed products. Every week I launch a new startup and it makes me insane.
My last attempt was with automix.ai — a resume review and mock interview service using AI. It has finally found a market fit and has a solid business model. The conversion rate is about 60% in the first month and revenue is coming in steadily at around $200–300 monthly, even though it uses a one-time payment with a token-based model. Much positive feedback and good suggestions have come to me, allowing me to improve the review analysis and user experience.
It became popular in the B2C market but that is not enough. Yes, it is already profitable with minimum operational costs but I can’t make my life depend solely on this. I already tried to take more initiative, build features, enhance everything, and hope a big company needs this. The result was nil.
On the other hand, it is the best moment to sell automix.ai with these considerations:
- The revenue is relatively stable and predictable, but not enough.
- I can’t make it 10x revenue in the next year, at least in my assumption.
- The effort is not commensurate with the results.
Of course, I had another option such as making it a side project and building something else. Until I found a best-fit buyer on Acquire.com on November 5th. He has been the co-founder of an HR technology company for a long time — Adaca. My initial offer was $10k and he bid at $8.5k. When I learned his background, I thought automix.ai would be in better hands with him. It was a win-win situation.
- Letter of Intent, signed ✅
- Asset Purchase Agreement, signed ✅
- Drum roll…, acquired 🥳
If you are curious enough, how I calculate my micro startup. I follow Marc Lou’s newsletter. The formula is:
Valuation = Annualised Revenue x 3
Why do I know today is the best moment?
This is not the first time I have tried to sell a startup. In 2021–2022, I built TeleDrive — an unlimited cloud storage service using the Telegram API, which had high traffic and paid customers around the world. I had no time to maintain it because I still had a full-time job, so I tried to sell it. However, at that moment Telegram contacted me and asked me to take down the application because it was in a gray area in terms of service. The acquisition was almost completed but sadly I needed to cancel it, and the current state is unmaintainable.
I learned from the past and took a quick initiative today.
Last thing, thank you very much for your support until now! Next? Let’s see where the boat sails ⛵️
Originally published at Medium on November 21, 2023.