The Exchanges

Q monthly recurring revenue. And then, um, I signed up like four accounts. I was like, all right, you gotta quit your job now. So it was good to see, good to see how everything comes full circle. But, um, uh, so, so let's talk about potion. Um, what did, what problem did it solve? Why, what made you want to build it? Um, how'd you get it off the ground?

A Yeah. So I was, I really had this thesis back when I started it that like the best kind of business to build for like an indie hacker is to build on top of another platform. And I had seen some different people that had done this with like intercom and Shopify and, you know, WordPress, like there's those different platforms. Um, and so I was kind of looking for a platform to build on top of. And the other thing that I kind of noticed, you know, back then is that a lot of the kind of businesses that were early to those platforms were the, Were ones that like did well. Cause you know, they're kind of early to the space early to that platform. And, you know, I was a notion user for a year at that time. And I was starting to see like some people start to build on top of notion. There was this thing called fruition, which was. Kind of this way you could like really hackily like put, uh, basically point your own custom domain to a public notion page. So you can kind of have like your website on notion, but it's all hosted on notion. And it was like, you had to like hack this code together. Through Cloudflare to do it. Um, but when I looked at that, I saw there were hundreds of people that have, that had done that. And it was like this free little thing. And so that's kind of where the idea sparked of like, you know, people are trying to do this. It shows there's demand. Um, could I m…

AI assessment note: “could I make something that just makes it really easy to build like a website”

Q I got, I got some questions on that, but I'll, I'll save them for, um, the end. Let's, um, so let's go through, I, I just, I'm so curious about, um, the actual acquisition process. So, um, You list on, uh, acquire. Uh, what, what happens within like the first two weeks? How was your experience? Um, yeah, good, good and bad. Like what, how did that go first?

A Yeah, it went well. I, I first listed it at 400 K and I knew that was maybe a little bit higher, just kind of looking at different numbers. And I had a friend that kind of knew kind of, you know, what's normal for acquisitions and SAS and, and SAS like my size and stuff like that. So that was really helpful to talk to him. Um, Yeah. The first two weeks, I don't know, probably had 10 different people kind of come through that were kind of interested and kind of chatting with a couple of people. Um, but I kind of did get the vibe that like, maybe it was a little high. So after two weeks, I lowered it to 350 K, um, had more people come through. I think I had like 25 ish people sign the NDA to kind of see more data, see more info. And out of that talk to around six people on like a call. Um, and then out of that, three people like actually gave offers, um, two of them being more serious that I can kind of negotiate in between those two. Um, but yeah, I mean, it, it went pretty smoothly. Like I think it, from the time I listed to closing, I think was around two months. So it was decently, I guess I don't really know what's normal, but that seems fine to me.

AI assessment note: “The first two weeks, I don't know, probably had 10 different people kind of come through”

Q Nice. I mean, that sounds, I I've heard, uh, you know, you know, much bumpier than that. So that, that sounded smooth in terms of like, yeah, transferring, like, did you transfer the Stripe account or did you have other products in one Stripe account?

A Um, so at least, so I, you know, we went back even with like Stripe support a lot with this is like my, um, corporation entity was like connected to my Stripe account. I think because I use, what is it Atlas or whatever their, their product is called for that. Yeah. And apparently there's not a way that they can separate that from the whole like Stripe account. And so basically what we had to do was he had to create, the buyer had to create a new Stripe account. And then we had to, Stripe does have a, uh, you know, an easy interface to basically move products over, um, or no, to move customers over. But then we had to like write the code and the script to move all the subscriptions and the payments and that over. And then start those again on the new Stripe account. So that was kind of like the hard kind of tricky part just to make sure we did all right and didn't like mess something up. Um, but yeah, that's kind of what that ended up looking like just because like my entity was kind of connected to the Stripe account and there wasn't really a way to get around that apparently.

AI assessment note: “basically what we had to do was he had to create, the buyer had to create a new Stripe account”

Q One is, um, how is this business going to survive and how am I going to spend my millions? Like, that's Monday, that's Tuesday. Um, okay, so moving forward. So you found the buyer, um, you got to, um, terms, price, uh, you sign an LOI, you start moving into, um, due diligence. How did that go? How did you handle that to really, to really ensure that LOI closed?

A Yeah, so I, I'd say one thing that was really helpful was I, I really did appreciate my buyer, like just how transparent and open he was, and he was just very easy to work with. Um, another thing that was nice is like he, you know, he sold a SaaS business before, so he's kind of been on the other side. And, um, so he's definitely more like very founder friendly and he's also a software developer. So that, like, that was one of the things I was kind of worried about is like, like transitioning and stuff would just be, I feel like challenging if it was someone that just didn't really know anything about, you know, how to code and stuff himself, where, um, With him, like I could just kind of transition it over. He could kind of get up to speed pretty quickly and it wouldn't be like this big, hard, hard process. Um, let's see, the other parts of the transition is, you know, I, and this is probably where we came into a little, it didn't end up being any issues, but like, I probably could have done a better job of just like my booking, my books and stuff like that. I, you know, cause they want financial statements and things of, you know, revenue stuff and things like that, which I, I pretty much handled that all myself. I never had like a bookkeeper throughout the business, or, um, I did have like a tax advisor, but I did, you know, I didn't have things probably as professional as y…

AI assessment note: “So there was a little bit back and forth through that, just like making sure”

Q work and that sort of stuff. So you kind of want to make yourself, um, you know, as, as, as useless as possible, um, to, to a degree, um, that makes sense. But, um, okay, so you got, so it sounds like, you know, you passed through due diligence, um, Uh, things went, went smooth. Uh, you got, you know, money in the bank. What are you doing now, Noah?

A Yeah. So, um, I've been kind of just thinking about like, yeah, what I want to do. I mean, even in the last four-ish months, you know, kind of, again, kind of why I ended up like thinking even about selling is I was already starting to like prototype different ideas, test out different things. Like I was kind of already in that space in my head of wanting to do something else. Um, I think with this business, like I want to do something a little bit more ambitious. Um, you know, I, I still, again, I'm not trying to build like a unicorn or a huge startup or anything like that, but I'd like to kind of bootstrap a business to just be a little bit bigger, maybe get it to where I could have a couple of people like have a small team. I think that could be fun and just, it'd be a different experience and different growth and learning. Um, and so, yeah, that's, that's kind of the plan. And yeah, so I'm still figuring out, I'm still like doing a lot of exploring, um, just like doing a lot of research, trying to like figure out different ideas that I think could work. Um, and so, yeah, I, I haven't really landed specifically on something completely yet, but yeah, I'm just kind of exploring. Um, and you know, some people ask like, well, are you going to like take a break or something like that? And, and kind of the funny thing is I feel like I'm actually like really like just ready to get …

AI assessment note: “I'm still like doing a lot of exploring, um, just like doing a lot of research”

Q Nice. I, that is so beautiful. Like the part I love that you just said was you just saw all these people like doing something really manual and you're like, I'll make that much easier for everybody who's. So the, the problem was already validated before you even built the product. That's great. Um, so how'd you get your first customers?

A Yeah. So I have another thing. Actually with support man, that, that earlier kind of microstats that I did, you know, worked on that for only like six months, but I had started to like share stuff on Twitter about it. And so kind of another kind of just thing I was thinking about when, what I wanted to start next was like, what's something I could do where I could just like be very public about it. And it would be like, it'd be like a beneficial thing. Like I, I just found that I enjoyed like sharing stuff in public on Twitter. And so that was another reason I really liked the potion idea. Cause I felt like it just fit that really well, where A lot of my, like, target customers for Potion were other entrepreneurs, other creators, and those are typically the kind of people that enjoy following along, um, someone building in public and doing that kind of thing, and so that was kind of my strategy from the beginning of, like, I want to just, like, build this in public, share everything, be transparent about it, and, um, kind of from day one, I, I did that on, on Twitter, just kind of shared what I was doing, and, uh, I actually made, like, a tweet that was, like, something like, I'm gonna Build up SaaS in public starting tomorrow, or something like that, and that tweet, like, kind of went semi-viral, and I got like a thousand followers on day one from that tweet, and that was kind…

AI assessment note: “kind of my strategy from the beginning of, like, I want to just, like, build this in public”