The Exchanges

Q that. Um, I guess, uh, my next question would be, um, so you, you transferred, um, or no, excuse me, can you walk me through, how did you, um, transfer, uh, the assets? Um, how, how, how long did it take? Um, any sort of tips for that? Did you just have like a list of all the assets that you were going to move over one at a time?

A Yep. Yeah, so as part of the due diligence, he wanted basically a list of every account, or every technology, every account, you know, like, where everything was running, so that if he chose to buy it, we basically had an exact list of what we had to transfer. So, um, so yeah, that list was already made, and then we basically set up a series of meetings over a few days where he and I just sat down and transferred everything. Um, most of it was okay. Some of the harder things were, like, uh, two-factor off was tied to my personal cell phone, so we had to, like, do the dance where, like, I turned two-factor off, or I switched it to his phone, and then, like, you know, he read the code to me and stuff, so there's sort of a dance around some of the accounts, and then the other thing that was tricky was AWS. I have, like, a lot of projects in AWS, and you can't just transfer a bucket to someone else, so we had to, like, download all of the assets and re-upload them, and it's only, like, one step, but it has the potential to take down the app while you do that, so if I was going to do that again, I would set up a separate, for any app I wanted to sell, I would set up a separate AWS account, an entire account, um, and that would have gone much, much cleaner, but everything else was just transferring account.

AI assessment note: “we basically set up a series of meetings over a few days where he and I just sat down and transferred everything”

Q drop, as if, like, the CEO was indicted for fraud if it was a public company. Um, it was rough for a lot of Event-based companies. So glad to, glad to hear you weathered the storm. Um, tell me about, um, your, your experience on, on MicroQuire. So, uh, first I'd love to know, how'd you hear about it? Um, and what made you decide to, to list, uh, MeetingPlace?

A Yeah, so I've been in the sort of micro SaaS space for a while. Like, I've had other small projects, and I heard about, and I knew about some of the, like, the larger, like, firms that do, you know, brokerage firms and things like that. Um, but this project was always sort of a side project. Like, I threw out most of the time I was consulting. I actually wasn't doing this full time, and so it didn't really make sense to sell on one of the big, like, through one of the big firms. Um, so I think I heard about you through, um, MicroConf, but, uh, like, heard people there, and, uh, yeah, I, I also, I do a podcast with someone else who does, like, SaaS kind of stuff, and he was like, you should just try to list it, because at the time, I kind of run out of steam on it. Um, it's really, I was trying to do it as a solo dev, but it's the type of business that I think Makes more sense to, like, build a team for or raise money for, because, um, it was a freemium app, and so there was, like, there were a lot of free groups, and to really get the word out, I would have had to spend a lot more time doing things that I just didn't have time to do. Um, anyway, so he said, you should just try to listen on Microquire, uh, and so I did. Um, I tell the story, like, your onboarding is really great, because I was just, like, filling out, you know, my profile, and I was like, we'll see where this go…

AI assessment note: “I think I heard about you through, um, MicroConf”

Q been. Um, uh, I guess my second question would be in terms of, you know, you know, buyers start reaching out. Um, how did you find the right buyer? How did you know he or she was, um, a good match? And, um, how did you kind of weed out maybe, um, some of the ones that may have been tire kickers or you knew might be wasting your time?

A Yeah, so I tried to, anyone who responded, I tried to engage like they were fully invested, um, but that, yeah, I did find a lot of them, like they would reach out once, I'd give them some information, and I just wouldn't hear back, um, which is okay, I guess, right, you know, if you're, if you're reaching out to a bunch of people, um, but I did get two, so I got maybe 15, uh, requests in, like, under a week, um, and then I got two really serious people, um, talked to them on, um, on Zoom, and, um, they, so I got Offers from both of them. And one of them was more like, um, he was a developer like me. He wanted to pay all cash. He was like excited about the product. Um, and then the other one was a little, um, it, it seemed like he was building a portfolio of things. He wanted some more like ongoing support for me. Um, and like I mentioned, so I just started a master's program as well. So I had a master's program at consulting. And so I kind of just wanted to be done with it. Right. Um, so he wanted to pay out over time and it was actually more money, but over a longer period of time. Um, so those were kind of my two options. Um, and, uh, yeah, so I chose the all cash up front.

AI assessment note: “I kind of just wanted to be done with it... so I chose the all cash”

Q doubt, I was like, let's go with that. It's cleaner. You know, you can walk, walk away faster. Um, obviously, I'm still in touch with the buyer, but, um, good move there. Um, and then, I guess my next question would be was, um, how did you handle due diligence? Can you walk me through just like the steps or maybe some, some learnings from, uh, going through that process?

A Yeah. Um, in a lot of ways it was a good, like first sale. Um, it was my first time selling something and the buyer's first time buying something. And so we kind of like, didn't really know what we were doing. So, um, I think micro require is great here. You have like a list of things that you should ask for and due diligence, I think. So he asked for several things, um, Like, screenshots of different things, uh, screenshots of, like, Stripe, and, um, uh, a quick code walkthrough, I think, just to make sure it wasn't, like, all spaghetti, and, uh, then, you know, financials and stuff like that. Um, but it went pretty quickly because, like, it wasn't, it wasn't like I was selling a business with a bunch of employees, and so, like, there were, you know, small, fixed set of things he wanted to see, um, and, and, yeah, that's, so that's how due diligence went for us. It was, it was pretty painless, really.

AI assessment note: “So he asked for several things... screenshots of, like, Stripe, and, um, a quick code walkthrough”

Q Nice. And then, in terms of, uh, did you use escrow?

A Uh, no, we didn't. Uh, we sort of did our own escrow kind of on accident because, so he was in Canada, and I'm in the U.S., and there was, like, a fixed, or there was, like, a cap on the amount he could send per day, like, wire per day to the U.S. without doing something fancy or incurring more fees or whatever, and so he would send me some one day, and I did, I did, like, one account transfer, and he sent some more, and I did another account transfer, so it's kind of like we did our own escrow, um, and we, Kind of, we're just acting in good faith. Like part of it, it's, you know, it's not like a million dollar sale or anything like that, and so we didn't feel like we needed, uh, like a real escrow, I guess, which, you know, probably goes right a lot of the time, and I don't recommend it, because if it goes wrong, then it really goes wrong, but it went right for us, so yeah.

AI assessment note: “Uh, no, we didn't. Uh, we sort of did our own escrow”

Q little bit of data on kind of what's working, what's not working. Um, but yeah, just having like those growth opportunities on how you would continue growing this startup with a buyer, I think is a, is a huge selling point because you, you kind of just give them a roadmap. Um, so that's, that's awesome. Um, what are you building now? I have a feeling you're a serial builder.

A Um, yeah, yeah, I always have stuff going on. Um, like I mentioned, I'm doing my master's program. I'm also, I'm sort of transitioning from web development into AI. So I've been doing a lot of AI the last couple of years. Um, so I'm doing a lot of, a lot of that, um, like data science contests and stuff like that. Um, but I do have another SAS that's going, uh, so it's a, it's a Slack app. It's like, it's like the intercom chat widget, but just that. So it's like super simple. Um, I chose it for a few reasons. Uh, one, I know there's lots of competition out there, but like I wanted to do something that's already been done before several times to sort of get that experience. Um, And since I'm doing all this stuff with my masters and everything, I wanted something in an app store so that hopefully that provides some of the marketing because like I knew I wasn't going to be able to do, you know, full-time like marketing pushes on it. So, uh, yeah, that just got approved actually recently in the Slack app store and I got my first paying customer. So one paying customer on my new thing.

AI assessment note: “I do have another SAS that's going, uh, so it's a Slack app.”