BingoCardCreator.com Sale Page
feinternational.com
feinternational.com
I'm going to be blogging a bit about the sale later but have been holding off to wait for it to finalize (handover day was last Monday) and attempting to not step on a forthcoming Starfighter announcement.
If I had had my affairs in better order it would have been closer to one week of work spread over a few weeks of calendar time. Most of the unskippable process was due diligence, which was a real eye opener. Imagine an ex-Goldman employee quizzing you about a CC chargeback which was reflected in Stripe but not in the revenue books, which he had discovered by examining every transaction for 12 months with a microscope.
I'm told, somewhat to my surprise, that BCC was much better documented than most acquisitions handled by FEI, particularly in this price range. While the infra was lacking it was a major help to have nice clean books.
I didn't get my accountant or lawyer involved aside from a mentioning that I was selling BCC, as it wouldn't have been cost-effective. The deal was executed on FEI's standard purchase agreement with 2~3 clauses added at the buyer's request. Yes, the domains were escrowed.
Also, he may not have known it would take 3 full weeks at the onset (eg; if Rackspace had waved a magic wand on the accounts it probably would have saved a week)
Same for not knowing how much work it would be, it makes sense to stop when you realize it's going to be more work than it's worth, even if it creeps up on you.
For certain people, myself and perhaps patio11 included, it'd be worth that $30k of opportunity cost.
I'm sure Patrick felt a certain obligation to his users to ensure BCC was transitioned to someone who would look after them.
He could just stop answering support requests or flip off the domain, but then he's just paying with his integrity.
I don't do any of those things right now because, like Patrick, I'm building a pretty complicated piece of software, and don't want to spend the time and energy it takes to get a consulting practice into steady state and keep it there.
We both decided we wanted a break from consulting. Lots of people do that. It's not suspicious; in fact: thinking that it is suspicious is a pretty good tell that someone hasn't ever run a consultancy.
It feels like lots of people on this subthread chose an extreme interpretation of Patrick's story about his consulting practice: that running a practice with an X0k/wk average bill rate means that he also claims to be able to generate X0k/40 on any given hour. Anybody who claims that also probably hasn't run a consulting practice.
I'm not Patrick so it's a bit weird for me to be chiming in like this, but, on the other hand, it's pretty easy for me to point to a pretty big consulting practice that works the way I say it does (hi, NCC US people!), so maybe I can be more helpful in clearing this stuff up and not ratholing on "I've never run a high-value consultancy at scale and all this stuff sounds pretty fishy to me hmmm" stuff.
† Thinking more about why this is the case, it occurs to me that the consultancy running several years in also generates BATNAs for contract negotiations, which makes it easy to walk rates up --- you pay my full fee, or I have my choice of several other clients to give a discount to.
What? Sure, saying "I made $30k/week under one engagement" is cute, but that doesn't mean your rate is $30k/week. When the stars align, you take the nice gigs, but clients aren't standing outside your door begging to pay $750/hr every day of the year.
You also seem to think 30k is the 100% bill rate. A successful consultancy looks to be closer to 70% (and successful in this case means that they don't actively seek customers). The other 30% doesn't come from vacation, it comes from overhead.
The Bingo Card Creator falls into the same spectrum of charge out as Patrick's posted consulting engagements. Whether it was more or less is largely immaterial because consulting engagements are things he's been actively avoiding for a long time, while being done with Bingo Card Creator is something he's actively engaged in.
I'm not 100% sure I agree with Stavros' point, and I'd guess that there was a lot of downtime in the 3-week sale in which Patrick was doing other things, but if you read the situation as Stavros proposed it, the economics are the same -- as $63,000 > $57,000, it cost more to sell BCC than to keep it.
I won't speak for him, but is it really that hard to understand? Once you hit a certain income level, doing work that is interesting trumps maximizing paychecks by several orders of magnitude (at least I found that to be true).
Putting a nice little bow on a hobby project he's run for a decade and getting paid for it sound pretty good to me. Not to mention all the new learning he's just leveled up on.
The second is that when you've spend this much time working on a project, watching it die because you no longer have the time/focus to work on it is painful.
I've been in this situation several times, and being able to hand a project off to someone who will take decent care of it is far better than seeing it go under. There is a personal connection to projects like this, to the point where the time invested in selling it might not make sense to an outside observer.
His story has been all about contribution to the community. Since the BOS days he's been writing about his adventures and people who have earned far more have used his writings to make money.
One of his writing tricks is to over-contribute. He sometimes responds to an HN question with overwhelming value that often surprises the asker. Fuck 30k a week. Measure something else.
(Primary benefit of his mentioning gig weekly cost: you can probably charge more. Focus on the value you provide and up your rates. That's been his message for years.)
Was this thanks to Stripe, or another service, or another way you documented transactions? Or just the fact that you documented them at all?
More time for podcasts now eh? :)
Scratch all that jealousy. Grow up and be happy for his sake instead! HN is richer because of people like him. Here's my real comment on this news:
Congratulations Patrick! I'm looking forward to hearing more about Starfighter. You said a few weeks ago a couple of months ago, so you better push something soon ;)
You may be right, it may be jealousy to critique such a thing when many of those critiquing likely have never: 1. taken an idea and turned it into a viable commercial product; 2. maintained a company in the black for multiple years; or 3. sold an entire company they created from scratch. Then again when one has never done any of the three of those things and they are just seeing dollars (as you say it is magic to them anyway), it is probably very difficult to understand the inherent value in the actual experience of doing any one of those things. In the single comment I saw Patio11 write in this thread, it was very clear he gained knowledge/experience taking part in this exit and moving forward I doubt he is ever going to look back and think to himself, "gee I really made a mistake by selling BCC b/c of the opportunity cost", if anything on his future exit he will probably be thinking "this is such a larger deal by orders of magnitude, yet it is going much smoother, I am glad I have been here before."
If anything, I think it's preferable that the community engage in pattern matching and question where their heroes come from. It doesn't mean Patrick is a fraud, but it might mean that he's not the god everyone makes him out to be.
I will admit that when I first arrived here on HN, I too believed that his 'status' was a reflection of BCC's success. The way I saw it evolve was that the consulting discussions were only made possible by the fact that BCC was touted as a model product for bootstrapping success.
That could very well be my mistake, but judging by this discussion, it seems I was not the only one to make it.
I think this is why so many people are surprised by the low revenue numbers.
As for the sale itself...3x on a dying business is a pretty good deal if I must say so myself. Questioning the time he put into making the sale is silly. You can't put a price on peace of mind.
A lot of commenters seem to have missed the fact that BCC hasn't been Patrick's primary business for over 5 years.
He did a whole different product, after getting his consultancy off the ground, that is not Bingo Card Creator.
I'm not going to name names, but I'm pretty sure most of the community knows the few I am referring to. It just so happens that they've also been speaking at conferences, including Microconf and others like it.
The point is this:
1. Person A builds up a persona on HN as a guru, product person, consulting expert, etc. 2. This person then sells an e-book, leaning upon that reputation. 3. This person's uses the launch as an example of being successful. 4. The cycle repeats.
This is an obvious manifestation of the age old Mass Control, Product Launch Formula, etc, and I have no problem with that. My point above is that it's OK for people to vet the parties behind these products, and I think it's lazy to immediately dismiss criticism as jealousy.
But a lot of people rightly view him very highly personally, and view his advice as very good advice.
Some people in this thread are calling it into question, and a few of us are trying to get across the fact that we've known him online for many years, lots of people around here have known him in person for many years, and the accusations that his claims are exaggerated is wrong.
Also, his advice is very good - I speak as a former consultant.
Why did he abandon BCC?
Reminds me of Tim Ferris and Rich Dad Poor Dad.... those guys make their money selling their brand, seminars, ebooks, etc. and not via the methods/techniques they preach.
I'm not sure the opportunity costs are that high... especially when you're 1. Only spending a handful of hours on it (his claim) and 2. Your whole schtick for your consulting services is how you deserve $$$$ because using your A/B optimization whatever skills you can improve conversion/traction by xxxx%!
He spent 9 years on BCC that resulted in ~30K (edited, misread as 60K) in ARR.
I think his ideas and insights are valid. I just find it odd the contrast between his curated HN celebrity image as an uber-hacker with his actual results.
Doesn't seem like his skills resulted in much success with BCC but it sure helps his consulting career...
Sorry I'm the awkward guy at the party that makes people feel uncomfortable :)
"Yearly Revenue: $31,000"
Where did you get $60k from?
Those skills are clearly that which people envy, even though it's not hacking.
BCC seems to have been a learning playground that gave him a real business on which to sharpen the skills he's now known for, and which produced a bit of profit on top to boot. But a small competitive market is still a small competitive market. There's only so far optimization can take you in that scenario--if you have the skills, you're better off seeking a bigger pie to apply them to.
Not to say I don't find it strange in some ways too - I've had passive projects make more with less effort - but I don't talk about it, thus no profile.
You're the awkward guy at the party who likes to think he's making people uncomfortable with his comments but failing at it.
I too don't see the point of optimising a product you don't want to work with anymore, if there are more lucrative projects on the horizon.
To spend more time on Starfighter I'm guessing: http://www.kalzumeus.com/2015/03/09/announcing-starfighter/
> Reminds me of Tim Ferris and Rich Dad Poor Dad.... those guys make their money selling their brand, seminars, ebooks, etc. and not via the methods/techniques they preach.
What does that have to do with selling BCC?
Nothing at all. Just a general observation.
I just find it interesting that he couldn't apply the very skills he has (which he is certainly talented at - no doubt) to save his business.
I wish he would do a detailed writeup about why. He makes it sound like neglect (only spending a few hours on it last year) and opportunity cost (his booming consulting work), but I wonder if he tried to slow down / reverse the declining revenue and just failed or whatever.
I mean, it's Bingo Card Creator, that's not exactly a $10b market.
I think the answer is perfectly simple - he's making much more money from Appointment Reminder, launching Starfighter will take up a great deal of his time, and he has just had a baby. Selling BCC now makes more sense than just letting it wind down through neglect. According to his last Year in Review, BCC accounted for only about 15% of his income. Selling up strikes me as a classic Patio11 optimisation.
http://www.kalzumeus.com/2014/12/22/kalzumeus-software-year-...
The other 30% goes into time spent that would be problematic to bill for. Writing notes, updating documents, attending conferences, doing specs for the next projects etc.
Finally, even if you can keep your stack full of work, a few things are always true in consultancies:
1) Once you stop it takes some time to fire the machine back up. Patrick has said he hasn't been doing this work. Getting the consultancy started up again would most probably take more than the 3 weeks selling Bingo Card Creator did.
2) You are, of necessity, working on projects for other people. If you've got a burning desire to work on your own projects, you simply can't and keep the consultancy going.
3) Once you become your own boss, the idea of "down time" or "idle time" where you can devote resources to things you aren't interested in or aren't your focus (like Bingo Card Creator) becomes much less concrete. If you truly choose what hours you work and what you work on, why would you spend any of it on work you don't want to do or that is not driving forward your primary goals. Consulting gets in the way of that.
Is this really so difficult to understand?
Imagine this scenario. I consult at $1000/h. On the weekend I need my lawn mowed which will take an hour. Should I do it myself, or pay someone $100 to do it? I guess you could make the argument that if I was consulting all weekend then I could pay someone else to do it. But the likely scenario is that I'm going to carve out an hour of personal time and do it myself.
If Bill Gates drops $1000 on the sidewalk it does make sense for him to pick it up (though whether or not he'd notice..). The 3 seconds it takes him to pick it up isn't actually costing him anything, even though his passive income/worth might be more than $1000/3-seconds.
Opportunity cost is only a cost if there is an opportunity foregone. And sometimes you might come out financially worse, but in a better position strategically, socially, or personally.
This is an actual situation that happens to me, by the way. I don't understand why people suggest this, it makes no sense. Bill Gates also ostensibly enjoys picking up his money more than not, so it's no trouble for him.
Just because Patrick can charge 30k a week, doesn't mean he necessarily had a client lined up to give him 30k that week. Also, when these numbers get thrown around, there is legwork that happens ahead time that isn't actually getting counted (at least not when you state 30k/week rate). It might be a month of discussion and emails and phone calls and proposals and then 30k for a week of "work". Also, sometimes those emails, and phone calls, and proposals get turned down and that time ends up being $0/hour.
Finally, HE DOES CONSULT ANYMORE! He's the CEO of a new startup, and going forward he likely wants to focus his energy on that, and not on BCC.
You don't have to do it yourself. You might decide that it's worth paying someone else $20/hr so that you can do something else with your time, whether that is working, spending time on a hobby, or just sitting in front of the tv relaxing. One of those 3 scenarios is better financially, the other 2 are worse off financially but may be better for your health or happiness.
FWIW, I also use the services of a cleaner every couple of weeks because I judge that a worthy expense.
I was trying to make the point that not every hour of every day is "worth" exactly the same financially. My very last sentence was key, and probably should have been more prominent.
> And sometimes you might come out financially worse, but in a better position strategically, socially, or personally.
It takes a lot of effort to keep multiple projects in the air. Even something that "runs itself" never really does. I've got Draft going while I work on Highrise, and Draft works very well on its own, but I still have to deal with support requests, downtime, upgrades, refunds, and more.
The guy wants to focus on his other projects. Patrick's never hidden the fact that selling Bingo Cards isn't as lucrative as his other projects. He's super honest and open about what goes down. https://www.bingocardcreator.com/stats Tons of good lessons he's learned that he's now applied to other business via consulting, Appointment Reminder, and now at Starfighter (http://www.kalzumeus.com/2015/03/09/announcing-starfighter/)
Look at 37signals. They decided they needed to focus on Basecamp to make it as good as they want. http://37signals.com/
We all should be shedding more and more stuff in our lives to focus on the bits we want to grow and see further through. Nothing at all wrong about that.
I find it interesting that his goals for 2015 seem to be focused on selling his courseware, etc. on optimization, etc.
This is where the Tim Ferris comment comes from...
He claims to have spent only a handful of hours on BCC last year. So spending less than say 20 hours on a project and having it generate ~30% of revenue, passively, seems like a pretty good deal.
Another poster mentioned focus, but that doesn't really seem to be the case here.
Of course all this is conjecture.
[1] http://www.kalzumeus.com/2014/12/22/kalzumeus-software-year-...
"Focus" is a very valid reason. Even assuming just one hour per week, that's 52 hours he can spend on something else. Plus having BCC around is a mental burden. Even while you're not working actively on it, you're thinking about it.
[1] http://www.kalzumeus.com/2015/05/01/talking-about-money/
The main message is fairly basic. Spending money and effort on things like investment property is the way to accumulate wealth. He sprinkled in a healthy dose of self help woo and nonsense, but no more than life hacking, dieting, fitness or any other self help best seller type book.
Second (and far more importantly), Patio11 is about 12 rungs above any of that. His level of transparency and mystery-free writing is almost unheard of. This kind of "If you're so awesome why don't you.." criticism is such a pity. It can and does deter people from sharing (I know it would deter me).
You have the full story available to you. The history of this site/business. The stuff that it led to. The financials. The effort required. The eventual sell price. An underhanded comment implying self serving dishonesty is so unjustified and unfair, nevermind uncharitable. It's a cheap shot and it's depressing.
I would say, even at lesser levels of transparency we need to encourage such people rather than tearing them a new one.
Here's the HN discussion link: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1720244
And here's Sebastian's original post: http://sebastianmarshall.com/the-genius-and-tragedy-of-patri...
I'd say that, if Patrick had believed in charging more from the start, he wouldn't be nearly as outspoken about it now. It is presumably (close to) the #1 thing he wishes he could tell younger-Patrick—but, since he can't, he's telling everyone else who'll listen.
Actually, now that I think about it, I wonder what Patrick would have to say to the HN community at the time, the one who stood up to defend his undervaluation-of-self? I mean, maybe they'd have defended him no matter what side of the coin he was on, given that he's a pretty central member of the HN "tribe"—but I'd be interested in a corollary post to the "charge more" posts that goes more like "don't praise people for charging less."
I remember Joel Spolsky most prominently for the idea of making a workplace that programmers love, which will bring revenues later. Interestingly enough, Patrick hasn't had any employees in his businesses, and has really modeled it differently in many ways.
Then again, Joel Spolsky has written on many other topics, many of them more business oriented, e.g. the Ben & Jerry's vs. If you're reading this comment and haven't read articles by Joel Spolsky, you should really go read them now.
Are you sure it's HN tribal thinking that resulted in the vehement defense of patio11? Because I have a different theory: I think a slightly different crowd is now the majority (most entrepreneurial, more money-oriented) from the old more hacker-oriented crowd at HN.
(I'm one of his cofounders now, and have talked to him a lot about this, so I'll speak up for him while he's on his flight back to Tokyo).
I got the impression that the consulting work started after those old posts, possibly even because of them.
I don't think those ideas are incompatible. When you're selling mostly to teachers and people who have fun with kids you're not going to make millions.
I like Sebastian, so I didn't rip him a new poop chute for his post. I think he unquestionably meant well. But it's a good lesson about being very careful in how you shine a spotlight on what you think someone else's issues are.
IIRC it was tptacek that had a face-to-face with Patrick who changed his thinking the most on what he was worth after Patrick did some consulting for Matasano. tptacek has a pretty deft hand with that sort of thing.
(Upvoted you, even though we disagree on what that thread was about it's still an interesting thing to point out.)
Patrick's 'brand' certainly has value, at least to me (I've learnt much valuable information from him over the years). And while homo economicus knows this brand doesn't change the underlying business fundamentals, especially as Patrick was exiting, I believe it would have created acquisition competition and therefore a higher multiple than Px3.
The missing 'one more piece of information' in this instance may be Patrick's desire that BCC went 'to a good home', someone who saw potential in what it is, not bought it because of who he is.
Either way, he's now had a successful exit! Congratulations (again) Patrick - feels like only yesterday you stepped out of your salaryman role https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1230156
Assuming it mattered, and I don't know if it does or not honestly, he may not have wanted it to be known that bcc did the amount of sales that it did because that could hurt his brand not help it. Not that he ever called it anything more than iirc "wee" but honestly I kind of expected that the sales and/or profit was more than what the sale page said and that assumes that sales have been going up and not down.
As far as the patio11 brand that only matters to people on HN nobody in the rest of the world cares about that at all. All they care about is what the business will make and what the product is and what they see as the potential. Which, quite honestly given the product (and especially since Patrick ran it) seems nominal to me, given the amount of time it was in operation.
Obviously there was a reason he didn't publicize the sale on HN and the brand. You can draw your own conclusions.
Patrick has published annual BCC revenue, to the dollar, since it started:
http://www.kalzumeus.com/2014/12/22/kalzumeus-software-year-...
http://www.kalzumeus.com/2014/01/06/kalzumeus-software-year-...
http://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/12/29/bingo-card-creator-and-o...
http://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/12/21/bingo-card-creator-etc-y...
http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/12/17/bingo-card-creator-etc-y...
http://www.kalzumeus.com/2009/12/18/bingo-card-creator-year-...
http://www.kalzumeus.com/2008/12/21/bingo-card-creator-year-...
http://www.kalzumeus.com/2008/01/13/year-2007-stats-and-year...
People quote things like "2x revenue" all the way up to "15x revenue."
If these stats are correct, patio11 sold his for roughly 1.8x yearly revenue.
If revenue and margins stay stable, the new owner will recoup their investment in 3 years. This seems reasonable to me.
Anyway, I remember hearing the same argument when Youtube exploded. It's one thing to have a product (Bingo Cards, Youtube or whatever) but distribution and an existing client base is another.
It wouldn't be an _impossible_ task to outcompete BCC I suspect, especially if the new owner just lets it coast and wind down instead of staying on top of the game (which Patrick readily admits he hasn't done for some time), but I suspect you'd probably need a PPC budget of around the same magnitude that the new owner just paid to kick-start a competitor - even if you already had production-ready code and a suitable hosting platform ready-to-go.
I think you're right - in that assuming "it'll be paid off in three years" is a naive view of the way SaaS businesses age - but I also suspect there are already several "exactly the same product"s out there already, none of which have got the traction BCC has, and that the value here is not in a bunch of code that makes PDFs from lists, but in the business backend and the historical web presence and SEO.
* There's a fairly liquid market for sites of any sort that have a demonstrated ability to generate revenue.
* The valuation of those sites goes up when revenue is recurring.
* The valuation goes up with history/track record.
* That market is not especially oriented towards teachers.
Given the universe of different sites you could build that would charge a subscription fee to serve some niche of customers, it would be pretty weird to compete for the Bingo Card space.
(I was surprised at how liquid the market for this stuff was.)
I guess the only counter argument is that there's now a "product market validation" that says a Bingo Card site is "worth" $60k to someone. If I had nothing else to do and - for example - a Wordpress plugin that'd let me create one of these in a weekend, it'd be a not insane idea...
Not an accurate assessment, but at least a vaguely supportable "here's why I'm going this side project!" claim...
I'm fairly surprised by this too. Why do you think that market is so liquid?
I will note that in Software, Entrepreneurship == Innovation in many people's minds (i.e. a startup inventing something new).
In non-software entrepreneurship, buying an existing business and running it is considered a very common path to becoming a business owner. As is starting a copy of other existing businesses (e.g. another restaurant), or even flat-out extending an existing business (e.g. the amazingly successful business innovation of "franchising).
Further, the income generated from BCC is extremely seasonal and its not anti-seasonal with other education based markets. All in all, I'm as interested (if not more so) in hearing from the purchasers as I am from Patrick.
You're right: http://www.kalzumeus.com/2014/12/22/kalzumeus-software-year-...
"I worked less than five hours on Bingo Card Creator this year. It runs itself… not particularly well, but it runs."
I wish the new owners luck, but it is definitely a project needing active effort at this point, not just a side income stream.
Aren't we all...
Patrick posted that BCC's 2014 sales declined 33% from 2013. If sales keep declining at that rate, $19k turns into $13k for 2015 which turns into $9k for 2016, $6k for 2017, and $4k for 2018. At that point, the business really isn't generating much and it would take well over a decade to recoup even without accounting for interest and opportunity cost.
But it might level off. It might go up if the new owner puts some love into it. However, I think the most likely scenario is that revenue and profits continue to fall. That's not to say $57k is a bad deal for the site, but I don't think it means easy-money. It seems like a sane deal.
I think a buyer doing due diligence would have to look at the site, calculate (or guess) at a declining revenue curve assuming ~$12-18k in profits for 2015 and maybe seeing the rate of decline flatten out in the future and see some profits to be had. I know, $19k/year with a $57k price-tag looks really appealing on paper and makes it seem like easy money ($19k/year forever!). By Patrick's own writings, BCC's visits, sales, and revenue are all declining by a third year-over-year. He hasn't invested in the product for a while. There will definitely be some auto-pilot money, but not $19k/year for three years. It can still be a good deal. It's just important to go into deals eyes-open.
$57k seems like a fair price for BCC. If the new owner does good marketing and customer acquisition, profits might level off quickly, but that also means really working on the project. There's a decent amount of risk in a project this small and so charging too much for it doesn't really account for that risk and the current downward trend. That said, it seems like a bit of work could go a long way and recoup the investment in the 5-10 year time-frame and make a reasonable amount of money. It can be a good business, but it isn't free money.
I think if the profits were stable year-over-year, Patrick wouldn't be selling it (or he'd be selling it for a lot more money). If it had brought in $19k/year since 2010 totally stable, I could see a six-figure price tag on the site (maybe $150k, maybe more). But according to Patrick, BCC "has been on a steady decline since [2012/early 2013]. This decline accelerated in 2014."
* None of this is meant to be negative about patio11. It's just meant to be realistic about the likely future profits of BCC based on the decline noted by patio11 in his 2014 Year in Review: http://www.kalzumeus.com/2014/12/22/kalzumeus-software-year-....
I always find it unfortunate that it is necessary to walk on eggshells around a person in any online community for fear of some kind of retribution by other members. It doesn't really serve any learning purpose for people to hold back on comments that might be helpful just because a particular member happens to be well liked.
It's the politics of HN. If you say anything bad about Patrick (no matter how true or constructive) or say anything against the status quo (example: legalizing MJ), you will be down voted.
Looks like there are very few corporations out there, that are able and willing to buy such SaaS products. Remember how long 37Signals tried to get rid of their jobs-site and various non-Basecamp products? Nobody wanted to pay the price despite that the businesses were profitable.
Maybe the USP of those products is tied to extensive niche knowledge and networking. Both is very hard to transfer. Potential acquirers usually know nothing about the market and also know, that they will need some very good developers and marketers to keep the revenue stream alive, because the previous owners really set a high benchmark for that.
In both cases I personally would have tried to transfer the business to current employees in exchange for a commission based on the future revenues paid over 5 years. Both parties involved know how the business works and can project the future success better than everyone else out there. There is usually also enough trust and communication culture in place.
However, this is not a "quick" exit and the seller is still connected to the business/people for a long time. That risk needs to be covered by the commission, of course.
Profile: https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=patio11
"Author:patio11" in Algolia: https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&date...
"Patio11 fan club" in hnapp: http://hnapp.com/?q=author%3Apatio11%20%7C%20host%3Akalzumeu...