Chris Achard, founder of MeetingPlace and AcornChat, speaks with MicroAcquire founder Andrew Gazdecki about why he chose to sell MeetingPlace instead of continuing as a solo bootstrapped developer.
0:00 / 0:15exact quote · 15.7s
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“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 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.”
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More from Chris Achard
AssertionNot yet assessed · timeframe Sep 2022
Achard: WeWork-owned Meetup tested charging free users $2 to RSVP
“This was when meetup was owned by WeWork, and they were going to do something very strange. They were going to try to charge free users two dollars to RSVP, to free events, They were calling it a pricing test.”
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Insight
Achard: Never skip formal escrow services in micro-startup acquisitions
“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 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 w…”
Chris AchardSep 7, 2022▶ 7:49Startup Acquisition Stories with Chris Achard, Founder of AcornChat
“So if you kind of outline the things that you know are wrong with the app, then they can, like, figure out some quick wins as soon as they buy it, and so I think that helped in that case.”
Chris AchardSep 7, 2022▶ 10:39Startup Acquisition Stories with Chris Achard, Founder of AcornChat
Insight
Achard: Founders should build apps on dedicated, standalone AWS accounts
“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 and that would have gone much, much cleaner”
Chris AchardSep 7, 2022▶ 9:22Startup Acquisition Stories with Chris Achard, Founder of AcornChat
Disclosure
Achard accepted a lower all-cash acquisition offer to avoid seller financing
“So I got maybe 15 requests in, like, under a week and then I got two really serious people talked to them on on Zoom, and they, so I got Offers from both of them. And one of them was more like he was a developer like me. He wanted to pay all cash. He was like …”
Chris AchardSep 7, 2022▶ 4:39Startup Acquisition Stories with Chris Achard, Founder of AcornChat
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