We built a tool that does $5k/month which we are _shutting_ down today (end of 2022) after 8 years. Kind of the opposite but thought I’d share.
From this page: https://getsandbox.com/shutting-down
>it has been running mostly on autopilot for the last few years and increasingly we don't have the time to dedicate to the maintenance or improvement of it
I don't understand how it was on autopilot yet, at the same time, represented too big of a time sink maintenance wise.
>and the process of selling it off too high friction for the reward.
Have you tried some services that get shared here to sell/buy SaaS companies/products?
Learnt a bunch across so many dimensions and set us up for ongoing success with that knowledge, but this specific thing has no future and selling it appeared too hard.
It was on autopilot for sure but that baked in an assumption that customers self solved, and had no new needs. We felt bad that we were delivering a decaying service to users in silence, users could use an alternative and get better service for their $ (in theory) and we would stop taking $ for what we see as delivering a subpar result.
I haven't used them and I'm not affiliated with them, but:
- https://microconf.com/quietlight they appear to be a brokerage partner for MicroConf, which is a conference for those who follow the self-funded/bootstrapped route such as yourself.
- https://feinternational.com that one was recommended by Patrick McKenzie here https://youtu.be/-Tg48MVnBeQ?t=3021 and how it helped him especially as he had new family obligations and had started another business simultaneously.
I don't know if it's all said and done, after all, we're 31 December, but putting this here just in case. I don't like to see a service that provided value go to the waste bin, though I don't want to overstep either.
Too. Hard. That plus the complexity of other things in our lives to deal with means that some $ just to see through a sale isn’t worth it.
The software is the thing we built and a testbed which we cut our teeth on, and learnt so much, took that knowledge and folded into other newer projects an incredible platform for learning and iteration, but we’ve moved on to bigger and better already so don’t too feel bad about turning it off (it was our first baby tho..).