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Comment by dhh | Hacker News Reader

Here's another wild theory: The buyers contacted us directly, got the answers to the questions they sought, and closed the deal.

Also, this is not out of the blue. We lost interest in considering all sorts of complicated deals a while back. So we told everyone that the price was $480K and that the deadline for closing a deal was July 1st: http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3172-sortfolio-going-once-goi...

So there was really no "bidding" after that point. It was quite simple: Give us $480K and the site is yours. The new buyer's did just that. End of story.

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Why are you always so bitter to people asking straight questions?

If you didn't want people to draw their own conclusions then you should have acted responsibly and made some attempt to answer and respond to the questions posted on sale page.

If you had no intention of providing this additional information because it was not worth your time, then you should have made it clear to people that no additional information would be forthcoming.

Instead, all the "chinese whispers" of people throwing ideas around seems to have really got you disgruntled, when you only have yourself to blame, and then you take your arrogance out on people asking straight and to point questions.

Do I think you got the $480k asking price? shrugs

Bitter? No. Offended? Sure. We share everything that's going on with the sale. Multiple write-ups. And yet still the default HN hive-mind behavior is to jump to a conspiracy theory!? Come on.

You didn't really share anything someone would need to valuate the site publicly. You (well, Jason) posted an auction with no information about costs or profit, traffic sources or subscriber turnover, handover or whether the billing info of the customers would transfer, etc. These are the most basic pieces of information you'd expect to see in any listing of a site for sale there. Nobody responded to questions on the listing, and nobody accepted any of the pending bids (and people did try to bid on that auction).

https://flippa.com/2739829-sortfolio-com-web-design-marketpl...

What was the point of a public auction if you were only going to answer questions to private bidders contacting you directly? And why list it at all when you were trying to sell outside Flippa, in violation of their listing terms? Assuming that you were acting in bad faith, abusing Flippa as a mere marketing tool for a private sale, would be uncharacteristic for 37S.

For some backstory...

Flippa contacted us after we posted Sortfolio for sale on our blog (http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3172-sortfolio-going-once-goi...). They asked us to list on Flippa too. So I said, sure, we'll list it on Flippa too. I couldn't include specific information the way I wanted to include it, so I didn't include everything in that listing. I got a few private inquiries, they didn't go anywhere, and they seemed lower quality than the leads we were getting from our blog. So we turned most of our attention to leads generated on our blog since they were of higher quality and better qualified (fielding qualified leads properly is time consuming).

Flippa may not have been a great fit for Sortfolio, or we may not have been a good fit for Flippa. I could have tried harder on Flippa, but I have limited time and when one source generates significantly better leads than another source, you have to make a decision where to spend most of your time.

The people behind Flippa were great - they were helpful and kind. I don't have anything bad to say about the experience. If nothing else, we didn't give it enough of our attention. Lesson learned.

I hope that was helpful.

Did anyone who actually bid on the site take issue?

I'd think that anyone ready to spend $400k on a site would have the willingness to get in direct contact with the seller, and that this "Rise of the White Knights" episode on HN is not based in reality.

Shucks Jason ... now we're blushing! ;-) Happy to confirm all this. Great to hear you were able to find a qualified buyer.

Your comments on buyers needing to qualify themselves to get a response is right on. Professional buyers pitch themselves to sellers as much as the other way around.

This is the most helpful information here. Perhaps the best take-away for everyone is learning what doing something so public without enough attention can easily lead to.

Success to you!

Given several potential dates, you don't court them all equally.

I think it's unfair to expect any of us on HN to understand this metaphor.

But you could respond to dates' questions just to be polite (in this case on Flippa) or head off further questions by inviting potential datees to contact you via email and deal with them there.

That's the only thing that irked me - having the property on Flippa but ignoring the questions submitted there. Other than that, the price was openly disclosed and the operators interacted on HN, etc.

Do I think you got the $480k asking price? shrugs

This is answered in the comments on the post.

That's a nice theory.

Would be nice if it was an actual update in the original thread instead of leaving us to speculate, though.

Edit: Thanks for this update at least. Congrats on the sale.

For as many sales that exist behind closed doors with b/s valuations, here's a few guys who used standard metrics (sales, gasp!) for valuing their company and made multiple attempts to sell it properly.

How about this? Nice job guys. Congrats on sticking to your guns and getting the price you felt was fair.

I would have sold for less.

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