The Exchanges

Q Nice. And then with text as well, what was the growth levers that you saw on that one? And then also what did text do just from a high level?

A Yeah, so with text.runner, it's a, it's a, again, it had the two same tiers. I didn't change anything there. Basically, it allowed users to kind of create a personal website with, you know, links to socials and things, and it, it kind of displays in the format of, um, like a text chat message system, so really simple website to spin up. Yeah, I, I didn't actually, so with that, I just kind of maintained support and helped people out When needed, I didn't have the time to grow that one before I sold it. It was more of a maintenance project, but I definitely did have some thoughts on how it could grow out that, you know, I put forward when I was able to sell it on Acquire.

AI assessment note: “allowed users to kind of create a personal website with, you know, links to socials”

Q Nice. If you only could pick like three different growth levers, what do you think those would be? Like, like when you looked at these applications, what are like the first areas that you look at? Uh, if you're seeing if it's a good app for you to grow.

A Yeah, sure. I think, um, one thing that worked really well was just throwing it out organically in index sites, especially when it's a micro SaaS and sharing it on, you know, socials and Reddit. I, I, they had been launched on product hunt previously, but I redid that as well. So I think just getting eyes on the product is probably the first growth lever to try and pull. And that way, you know, if the product's something people want, you'll organically get those customers to start coming through. So that's probably the first, the first thing I'd do. Second, I guess would be to, yeah, I think it's a long game. Luckily for me, because it was an established project, SEO was great. It was ranking really highly organically with, with kind of, you know, minimal blogging content there. The keywords were just optimized really well. So I think that was bringing in quite a lot of traffic also, which helped. I think that's a really strong play if you can do it, but that's long term. And obviously if you're, you're trying to hit growth quickly, it's not always the best, but it's a good strategy to always keep in mind and keep running. And then again, I guess the third thing is what you mentioned first is, um, making sure you're communicating with your users, getting their feedback on, you know, what's working, what's not, and what, what features they kind of want you to build out.

AI assessment note: “just getting eyes on the product is probably the first growth lever to try and pull”

Q Yeah. That's good advice. So it sounds like the apps were growing. They were doing well. Why'd you decide to sell both of them?

A Yeah. So they're both doing well and, you know, bringing in some passive income for me, which was nice, but, uh, I kind of just wanted to, well, both of them for me were kind of like a learning process, which was really great. I, I, because they weren't my products initially, uh, I wanted to kind of go off and grow my own thing. So growing my agency, almost human digital, I wanted to kind of put some more time and, um, money into that. So I was able to kind of flip them both, go through the learning process of meeting other founders and, you know, what it's like to sell, sell a business and staff and also get that capital to help kind of inject into future endeavors.

AI assessment note: “growing my agency, almost human digital, I wanted to kind of put some more time”

Q What's your thoughts on lifetime plans for products like this initially? I've heard both cases where downside is obviously you got to support the person lifetime. The other hand is you get, you know, an influx of revenue to support other things, maybe paid ads or something like that. What was like your thought process for having a lifetime plan and do you regret it? Would you do it again?

A I would do it again. It didn't bring in a ton of revenue. So I, I had two strategies actually. One of them is I was offering it when I did my product hunt relaunch. So that brought a bit of revenue in. And then I did partner with deal fuel, which was like an alternative to, um, AppSumo. The, the, one of my growth plans afterwards was to, to go on with AppSumo, but it didn't get around to that before I sold it, which I think at the state for me, because it was, you know, solo founder supporting this app. My, my plan was, I just wanted it in flux of revenue at the time, so I think if that's your goal, to enable you to grow, it's a good, good idea. One way to mitigate risk is to make sure that, you know, maybe it's a, maybe you create a specific tier for that lifetime plan, and maybe it covers it, you know, upgrades for a year, and then it's, you know, ongoing features, it separates it, so I think as long as you're upfront about it, and don't try and hide it, there's different ways you can mitigate risk there, but I think if, if it's kind of a make or break, or you want that really fast user base or revenue growth, then it's, it's a really good, uh, lever to engage, but, uh, obviously it's not for everyone, and it doesn't always play out the way you want, and it can lead to, you know, massive influx of having to, you know, support users with, um, feature requests or any, any minor…

AI assessment note: “I would do it again. It didn't bring in a ton of revenue.”

Q Nice. What did you do with the existing users? Did you talk to them? Did you learn anything from them? Or did you decide a new customer would be the way to go? Like, how did you learn from, uh, the people already using the app?

A Yeah, sure. So, um, I did reach out to some of them asking, you know, what features they specifically use. One way to encourage people to respond as well is, so, to take a step back a bit. Initially, the, the, had two pricing tiers. One was pre- And then there was a paid pricing tier, which was a monthly revenue, which, uh, enabled, you know, some AI features as well as adding custom metadata. So additional fields in collecting the data initially, rather than just kind of emails and names. And I kind of had a look there and I, you know, I've been following a lot of, um, founders on Twitter that are the solopreneurs like Peter Levels and, um, You know, Mark Lubion and kind of eliminated that pre-pricing tier initially, which helped. And then based, based on that, also reached out to kind of users and offered them, um, free pro tier for life and also to try and get them to reach out. And that way I kind of learned what different features would be best and was able to kind of kickstart off continuing the growth there.

AI assessment note: “I did reach out to some of them asking, you know, what features they specifically use.”

Q Nice. How was the process on acquire? What did the first week look like? I mean, buyers reached out. How many offers did you get? That's right there.

A So I'll split it out into both of them. So the text run is the one I sold first. So that was one I was just maintaining. I think it was pretty similar. We both project really, it was quite, I sold it at quite a low price because at the time it wasn't turning any profit, but it had proven profit in the past when it had been created. And, um, Yeah, I mean, I had multiple buyers within the first couple of days, first week. I'd say the story is the same with both products I sold. It was, um, yeah, immediately having people reaching out, asking questions, and I think, um, yeah, both times within the space of a week or a couple of weeks, I had a deal where I was kind of moving forward. I didn't have any buyers for it at either, either with either product. It was, um, Yeah, really smooth sailing for both of them. So it was going through listing the product, kind of determining the pricing at what I was happy with and wanted to sell it. And yeah, because I think because they're small projects, there wasn't a huge amount of due diligence, but so it made it really smooth and quick processes in both cases.

AI assessment note: “I had multiple buyers within the first couple of days, first week.”

Q Nice. What were you using AI for during the process? Like, what is a letter of intent? What's a transition guide? Do you do any of that?

A Yeah, so just, just for the learnings, really, and also, um, again, because, because the sites really, you know, it really helps in terms of all the different steps of due diligence and what's recommended, it helped to kind of break down for the smaller deals what's, what's required and what's maybe, like, not as important, so that kind of helped streamline that process there and helped me communicate, I guess, with the thousands as well, but also in helping to make sure that You know, I had a proper process plan in place because handing over a whole bunch of assets and, you know, authentication systems and databases make sure that that's all done securely and everything's kind of backed up and nothing can kind of go awry in the process.

AI assessment note: “just for the learnings, really, and also... it really helps in terms of all the different steps”