The $12 startup that was sold on Twitter for about $100,000 | Hacker News Reader

The $12 startup that was sold on Twitter for about $100,000

mixergy.com

57 pointsbemmu23 comments

It's a $12 startup only if his time was worth nothing.

It's a $12 startup because somebody thought it made a catchy headline.

4 hour workweek, etc etc. It all screams 'bs' though.

If you know the most sensational aspect of a story it gives you a good idea of the range of the story.

I like the title 'Four Hour Workweek' because it tells me right off the bat that it'll probably have some extreme stories of increasing productivity and working for smaller amounts of income. When you know the extreme you have a better idea of the story.

He found a pretty unlikely niche and made a good bit of money in a relatively short amount of time, which is commendable.

Since it is a market that is probably easy to saturate (who would ever think that as many people would want a European vanity plate) selling it was probably a good decision.

It certainly doesn't sound like a must-have item in a growth market.

The big trick now will be to leverage the take of the sale in to something bigger.

Am I the only person who hates reading/visiting/watching/listening to Mixergy interviews?

I think they're great. Andrew has a knack for asking good questions, including ones that the interviewees may not really want to answer.

I like the format that he uses, and the transcripts are pretty decent if I want to revisit later to see what someone said.

Some of them are better than others, but given the sheer number of interviews that Andrew does that's inevitable.

What's your issue with them? Andrew reads HN, maybe if you offered some feedback about what you didn't like he could take it into consideration, instead of just saying that you hate Mixergy for some unknown reason. If anything, he's shown that he constantly modifies how he does things, perhaps you can raise a point that he hasn't considered previously.

Yeah, he pinged me on Twitter.

My problem with Mixergy is that there's a ton of enthusiasm and it gets to be a bit much. The design of the site also screams "I will show you how to make money online", and is a bit of a turnoff.

i accidentally upvoted you instead of downvoting you. I find the Mixergy interviews to be awesome. The interviewer always asks the questions people want to know, rather than the questions the interviewee wants to be asked.

and extra points for transcripts.

I agree, Andrew does a great job and provides information that you may not get in any other environment

A lot of the content is inspiring and very good for idea generation

Meh. I enjoyed the Owen Byrne and Alexis Ohanian interviews, among others. I do feel that Warner comes off a little too strong on the enthusiastic side though, during an interview.

$100,000 != a successful deal. Surely an interesting experience for the founder, that was able to put his hands in what startup means, but... after months of work and customers I think 100k are ok and will not change your life.

It may not be a major league win, but it's hard to say 100k != successful deal considering a lot of ventures crash+burn. It was also started on the side with little capital investment. He also had the profits which he made.

I sincerely wished that every two bit project that I start would net me $100K.

How many > $100K exits have you had? What fields were they in?

Because you asked, I did 3 > $100K exists, but this is not the point. I just think that the essence of startups, when they succeed, is more about working hard on what you build and finally be able to get a good living out of it or do an important deal that gives you a lot more than $100k.

Don't get me wrong, what this guy did is great. A side project that got actual customers using smart expedients instead of money and finally sold for a decent amount compared to the work / money invested. But just this should not be the example to follow, it's better to work hard on something for a lot of time having as a goal to do a much bigger deal, or even better IMHO, be able to turn your company into a profitable one and avoid the deal at all.

Also I think that another very good reason to create a startup is to build something that people will love and yourself like to build, without compromises, and if this is the point it's perfectly ok to just earn the minimum to live in a decent way, as what you don't get as money you are getting as freedom for you and your users.

Took the words out of my mouth. it's easy to get caught up being an armchair entrepreneur and a lot harder to see a 100k opportunity in a tiny market and actually make a legitimate exit.

Kudos to this guy. Technology as a means to an end, now there's a concept

$100k is more than what most people make in a year. Considering his startup was lean in the first place he could probably invest in his next idea more with that sort of nest egg.

He's not in the UK[1], but if he were selling would make a sensible choice.

Here in the UK, capital gains of these types of transactions is taxed at 0% for your first £1M[2] and then at 18%.

So if he sells it for $100,000, he'd get to keep it all.

If you were to take that as wages/earnings tax rate on that (£80 approx) would be over 33%

Not bad to sell at $100K... not bad at all.

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[1] US looks ok too: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_gains_tax_in_the_United...

[2] Entrepreneurs relief : http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/helpsheets/hs275.pdf

It was a successful deal in regard to getting back the time and effort spent in building up the business. I have worked many times on projects that end in no money and the code was essentially a technology demo - definitely not successful.

There's a grasshopper ad frozen on the embedded video in this article. The title is "Sound Professional and Stay Connected." At first I though this was a quote by the license plate guy about how he sold his website, then I realized it was Grasshopper's slogan. Anyway, I have noticed that successful business folks seem to take themselves very seriously, often to the point of being annoying, but it seems to be a recipe for success, since potential customers are so bombarded with noise that they are looking for any reason to write you off.

The format of the raw transcript instantly turned me off from reading it.

I have wondered why there is no vanity licence plate market in the US. Do the US laws not allow them to be transferred to other people? Or maybe it's not allowed with money involved?

Here in Australia, or at least my state of Victoria, the local road body realised how much money this could generate and "euro plates" were introduced in 2005. They've really taken off this last year especially.

http://www.vplates.com.au/euro-plates/

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