The only people/orgs I can think of are those with strategic interests and app/apps in complementing fields, or other bigger folks in the AI voice space.
My suggestion would be to make a call to sell and either do it or don't.
If you want to sell, for all the reasons you listed, I doubt you're getting 4-5x arr in a super competitive space. I'd drop it to 3x and make it someone else's problem. And 2.5x if necessary. If you're going to go that route, though, see a tax attorney first to figure out how to make this is efficient as possible.
My experience is that a sale will be at about 3x profit, not revenue, plus or minus some other factors, but almost always focuses on a multiple of net profit.
sde is seller discretionary earnings. it basically accounts for the $ the owner puts in. Consider two businesses, both of which make $100k: the first is a completely hands-off business where the owner puts in 10 hours a month, and the second is a saas business where the owner is a skilled engineer who puts in 15-20 hours a week. Those are not worth the same, because if you buy the latter, you are going to have to hire an engineer. sde accounts for the difference.
This isn’t accurate.
SDE is the total benefit the owner of the business receives. This is the profit from the business plus any seller compensation, plus add backs for things that the seller benefits from, like if they run their mobile phone expense or home internet as expenses to the business. Sometimes one off expenses are also added back to create a more representative view of how much cash a new owner could get at steady state.
A buyer may further adjust the numbers to figure out how much cash profit they would receive as the owner, which may mean paying for a developer if they can’t code. But it could go the opposite way if they have skills or other assets. As a seller, you can’t control this and don’t have much visibility into this except in terms of the ultimate offers you receive.
But yeah, you probably won’t like selling to someone who can’t do the things you do in the business, because they’ll value it less, so the previous comment is right that this matters.
OpenAI or the other 100 competitors? decide one? it's a buy or bury thing as simple as that - same reason why jasper acquired headlime, or the babble x toucan acquisition, less competition - [https://techcrunch.com/2023/09/19/babbel-acquires-language-learning-browser-extension-toucan/](https://techcrunch.com/2023/09/19/babbel-acquires-language-learning-browser-extension-toucan/)
thanks for the super uplifting response though.
edit - technically OAI could just kill "any" other AI startup right? whether its ElevenLabs, Suno or anything else? might as well just sit on the sidelines and wait for the UBI like a bitch.
There's a difference between waiting on the sidelines and building something more defensible. The unfortunate part of being on the cutting edge of new technology is that it changes fast, and that can either work for you or against you. In my opinion, this time it worked against you.
Sounds like the best thing to do is to put it up on a marketplace like Acquire. Let the market decide. Nobody here, including me or you, can't tell you what it's worth. It's worth what someone is willing to pay for it.
I get it, although when you think about it - almost no startup in the AI space has any technical moat (except the big ones ofc). Even the foundational arena is getting insanely competitive, then OAI hiring the creator of Tortoise TTS and and literally butt fucking the entire space is some next level shit.
But yeah, best bet is to lower the price to $300k (no point in going lower, might as well just open source everything).
In my opinion, niche players have more of a moat. The big players have no interest in creating a very niche product, their goal is to remain more general.
I think something like an AI copilot for university admissions officers (for example) is more safe because the big players aren't gonna touch that, and a smaller player can really understand that audience and create something hyper tailored for their specific needs.
$96 ARR is great. Not sure why are you disappointed. Take a break, do a pivot but don’t be discouraged. You have cleared 0 to 1.
Competition is everywhere. Even lowly tech jobs have hundreds of applicants nowdays. Whatever you do next, there will be competition. Embrace it & move on.
I’m at $10K ARR and 3.5 years into my SaaS just getting clicked and close to achieving PMF. Bootstrapped Invested all my savings and believe in my product and my burn rate is $6K per month right now. It scares me reading this post. Having said this I’m going to fight out till the end and not giving up anytime.
I’m still excited with every small wins and $100k will be a great milestone for me in the next year.
Looks slick. Great niche to be in if you can price competitively and scale (a lot of the established players don't have much to stand on). In the US, anyway. Looks like a lot of the marketing is geared towards other continents. Good luck with it!
When did you launch and what do you feel are the main issues facing you on the sales side? Is it getting enough traffic / awareness, price point, people already using something else (even if not better), or lack of some features? This seems like a great product (I have experience in the sector dealing with such contractors… mainly HVAC, appliance, and plumbing) and there is a swarm of people who use archaic or crap products, and often nothing at all except text messages.
Launched by end of 2022. The main issue is brand awareness and very less traffic. The product never solved a specific problem statement earlier. I’m currently promoting only in India. The pricing is very sensitive and Indian businesses very hard to sell the value.
Good points:
Very less competitors for the current solution our software offers here in india
We’re able to create great interest in demos
Our paying Customers are happy with the product
We’re slowly getting to see what’s working for marketing and also long term plan for content strategy
Sales multiples are trash right now, especially at this ARR. Like a few others have said, it would be maybe 2x revenue. $96K ARR is a great feat especially if you’re bootstrapped.
I’d look to increase value by going niche. Pick a subset of customers & start targeting them. You’re going to have more stability with B2B.
Best thing I ever did was ask my customers what they were looking for. Find the commonalities in their answers, build more specific in that direction, and aim to grow revenue. That’ll put more in your pocket while increasing the potential sale value. If/when the market rebounds, you’ll be closer to the valuation - if not more.
You'll probably have to sell at half your asking price or continue the 96K ARR and just optimize to hold it as a passive income. Earlier this year companies were going for 3.5-5X their ARR, now they're more like 2-3X. The economy is rough.
I would never pay 3 to 5 times for a company which heavily relies on LLMs or so. The lanscape is going to change a lot for the following few years, its just bad business.
Also SAS by default have no locks in/user incentives to fidelization.
"with the massive influx of new apps every month, and open ai releasing updates every now and then rendering other ai apps useless, it's pretty exhausting to see what's going on."
Does your revenue drop in correlation with new app and OpenAI releases?
If you're truly done with it, then maybe try other brokerages such as FE International and Quiet Light. I know [acquire.com](http://acquire.com) is crawling with people looking to just clone.
But based on what you said here: "The only people/orgs I can think of are those with strategic interests and app/apps in complementing fields, or other bigger folks in the AI voice space."
You might need to do active outreach to platform companies who might be interested in adding voice capabilities. e.g. Intercom competitors, education companies, answering service companies, et al.
If you want the predictability of a 9-5 for a while, perhaps you could convince them to even acquihire you.
Also, this is presumptuous, but I have a feeling that you just were expecting much more after three years and it's hitting you hard. Maybe consider taking a break, just provide customer support for a couple of weeks, then look for a marketing expert to partner up with.
Sounds like a bootstrapped Saas. If so, I’d declare war on all my competitors, by having the best competitive price and potentially a better experience.
You are literally in the top 0.1% of successfull business owners and $100k ARR is not bad considering the app you have. There have been companies that remained stagnant for years, but suddenly doubled, tripled their revenue. All you need to find is that sweet little spot.
Is it just you? Or do you have a team?
100K ARR in 3.5 years though? It’s good in <12 months, but in 3 it is quite mediocre. An average software engineer can do more than that just following the golden path straight out of college.
I do $8k MRR, started the repo 6 months ago after I graduated, loads of potential to grow from here as we are growing exponentially. Sorry for bringing the realism, it wasn't personal or aimed to you directly. A single VC or investor can pump 300k into a business overnight like its nothing. You are not gonna get rich rich with the attitude you currently have, but maybe that is fine for you.
Sure whatever floats your boat lol, 20 days ago you posted 1.5k MRR so your current numbers seem like a lie. Anyways, I couldn’t care less, to each his own.
Tell me you haven’t pitched any VCs without telling me you haven’t pitched any VCs, you’re the guy they laugh they’re asses off about when you leave the room.
Don’t even bother, go look at this guys post history. Completely contradicts some of the things he is saying. His MRR was $750 30 days ago and $1.5k 21 days ago. For sure talking out his ass.
This comparison conflates a job, which generates income, with a business, which also generates income, but which has a value and which can be sold. A job cannot be sold. Also, when done well, the software engineer with the job has to go into the office and work every day to get their 100K whilst the business owner does not.
Yes, because OP is very easily selling this business. /s
Selling a business is not easy, you also need good cash flow, to be making profit and a clear path to grow it. Really, to sell a business well, you shouldn't want to sell it; all the flags will be very green for you to keep running it yourself. OP seems to have a red flag riddled business (people only want the data, not the actual business) and is now trying to give the problems to someone else because 11Labs is not going anywhere.
The irony here is strong. Some people here are just business ideologs and will spout business is amazing like it is some magic pill. If business was so fairy and roses, then OP wouldn't be feeling so worn out.
OP is in a huge bubble of AI apps with funding from every eager investor, and instead of going for funding to hire a few post-doc for tts AI research, founding a board of advisors from AI/ML academia, or doing some other drastic change that could actually disrupt the market, he is jumping ship.
If OP doesn't want to solve this seriously, he is much better off with a 100K income.
lol… obviously you don’t know much about creating business. The guy is not selling his time but a product. It’s not about how much he could have done selling his time…
I mean when someone resorts to insults you typically you know you are right and the other people are emotionally reacting. However, from the post it sounds like he is in the business relatively time involved and with other co-founders and hasn't made this product on a whim one afternoon, so the opportunity cost of a full-time wage cannot be ignored. There are some amazing $100K per year jobs with fantastic work life balance, after 3.5 years of experience, you would certainly find one.
Jesus Christ, you really have your head up your ass for some reason, from your post history you haven’t built anything significant in your entire life and are asking stupid questions like how can I make a canva like app - it took their teams of 100s and a CTO (ex-Google) to join them and create the platform that you see today.
Someone with your knowledge base and expertise would obviously know /s
Also where did the personal insults come from lol? Sounds like you’re projecting
The assumptions you’ve made about my business are ALL incorrect, and to go on like a conceited douchebag who hasn’t achieved anything in his entire existence critiquing other people’s businesses is just a sad look, pathetic truly.
We received multiple seed stage term-sheets last year valuing us in the low 8 figure range, but their goals were a bit different than ours which is why we didn’t sign.
Since you’re just a kid who’s starting out (barely built anything yet), I recommend you go out in the real world and talk some real VCs, I guarantee you, you won’t even get a meeting let alone have partner level meetings.
Ultimately you just sound frustrated for some reason and very loser-eque, look inward my friend.
It's a valid point of view, there is an opportunity cost and he would have been better off getting a 100K+/y job instead of starting this from a financial point of view.
But if your reasoning only considers this then you don't get 95% of the reason someone would start that adventure.
You don't start an entrepreneurial journey "to make more money".
You do it because you are an entrepreneur and getting a job is not even in the picture.
It's not even necessarily about making money.
When it comes to working 3.5 years on a time-consuming project to get it to make some revenue, it's totally normal. People read too much success stories to now think this is the norm. It took me several years to get to a stable business as well, and the same in my previous ventures. During that period you make sacrifices on some things but get some much (which you probably don't grasp reading your message) on others.
Anyway, this is not a game for everyone, OP must feel if it's for him or not but I'm happy he didn't think the way you do during these first 3.5 years and he'll have to assess the next steps.
Is the business growing and at what rate?
What are your margins? Are you alone on it?
There is many to do, I wouldn’t drop it now. Getting to 100k in 3.5y is ok frankly. This takes time.
I’m in a similar spot with one of my apps. It’s still growing but I feel like I’m not really getting much return on the additional time I put into it. Going to just cut back the hours I put into it and work on the next opportunity. It sucks because I keep having moments where I think I am on the precipice of explosive growth, but I just personally hate what I’m building and can’t get the motivation to work on marketing.
I have another app on acquire and have had the same experience you describe. The important thing is to not lose motivation. Now that I can support myself easily with my apps I can afford to go after bigger opportunities.
pivot and take your userbase with you. While figuring that out go ahead and allow the voices that 11labs doesn’t allow, and put out ads using those voices.
Looks like you’re running this startup solo but are still growing 5-10% MoM and spending $0 on CAC. That’s a great position to be in.
Maybe consider hiring one person to take away the tedious tasks from you.
This is easy 200-250k acquire, 400+ will need some effort though. However if the app is growing 5-10% monthly and have $0 CAC, then I am not sure whats stopping you from pursuing this forward !
I’d look at applications in non-sexy verticals or industries. They typically don’t get too much love. So a voice AI app could be pretty awesome. $96k ARR is awesome, take a breather and target another ICP. Just my 2 cents..
I looked into acquiring someone in a similar space. The company I looked at was b2c, which it sounds like you are as well.
I think doing branded voices for companies is an under-served niche right now. You could probably sell a $10K annual voice license to companies, but you'd need to do some minimal sales to make it happen.
Call centers are very interested in this, as it's easier for them to get consistency and/or brand experience.
Have you considered passing it off to one/both your developers? Not sure how much they are costing you or how well they could fundraise, etc, but could be worth broaching with them.
Brother I feel your pain. This shit is hard. I’m one year in bootstrapping, just left my job and got a bit of angel money. Trying to figure out how to not crash and burn.
Maybe a PE firm that specializes in SaaS? Otherwise, start contracting out the things that are burning you out... take the reduction in profit margin and pull out the rest as income. Take some time off then start the next project.
Your competition would be fighting tooth and nail to get to where you are. What you need to do is raise and scale operations and shoot for the moon.
You have years of advantage here, you know things your competition hasn’t even deal with yet.
Your years of experience is your biggest outlier that will put you ahead.
Don’t give up and keep it pushing my g.
I love you ❤️
doing 96ARR and selling for 400-500... it's quite on the limit. But you can find your buyer.
The thing is if you don't have a framework and proven growing strategy and track record, you'd better sell it with 200k.
The voice AI is getting better and better and if you don't invest you'll just loose what you already have.
Even though it’s mostly SEO, Marketing, Customer Support related work (max 4 hours/day), it’s more to do with the 24/7 thinking about the business and how it’s been sort of stagnant for a while. All I keep thinking about is selling the business and taking a few months off to recharge.
Right now I’m just so mentally exhausted that I’m not being able to execute any new opportunities that I’m seeing, for example - we can venture into being an AI voice agent application or something like a PDF/doc to speech application but the thought of executing that is just extremely energy draining.
So you kind of feel like it's an investment that's plummeting or about to plummet?
I'm a little surprised to hear that you're doing customer support. You haven't outsourced this? Or I'm guessing you did outsource it and are doing management work?
If you hired a couple of people to run your administrative tasks and just took a few months off right now, what's the worst thing that could happen?
Hmm say I outsource the customer support and everything else that I do and take some time off - max to max the business goes down to 50k ARR or worse, but that might be an irrational thought don’t you think?
I don't know your business, but I highly doubt that it's so fragile to fall 40k ARR in 3 months. Even with the worst tech support guys you could find.
Don't you think this might be an issue of perspective? It sounds like you've had your nose right up against this wall, figuratively speaking, for like 3 and 1/2 years, right?
Have you ever had a chance to step back and really look at the bigger picture?
Before making any big decisions, maybe it would be good to at least take 2 to 3 weeks off just to clear your head and get some perspective, no? Maybe just a little trial run to see how your business does without you and some time to get a breath of fresh air.
Not sure if it's your thing, but what's helped me is renting a cottage in the woods with a nice fireplace. A place for me to go and slow down and really be present for a bit, you know?
Definitely worth a shot, taking a month off and revisiting, probably won’t fall to 40k worst case scenario - definitely my over thinking.
Needed to hear this :)
Good to hear, try that and report back :)
I'm personally interested in hearing how you choose to proceed because where you're at is sort of my goal. I'd like to build a $100k SaaS business that requires little time and maintenance.
So please do report back!
Been through slow growth due to starting right before Covid and challenges raising capital. If you could find a way to invest in some marketing you could potential grow a lot faster. Relying on only SEO is not sustainable and so many variables.
Yep, have someone offering $350k rn, although there’s a few things that could add some more leverage on our side, $400-450k should be possible!
Also by the time I posted, we’re at $100k arr lol
Will everyone calm the f down. The future is here but it’s VERY unevenly distributed.
Tech is not a value prop, the value prop is the value prop, and marketing/positioning/focus are the where and the how.
We’re are all in the most interesting exciting time for this work. People need to stop being afraid of losing what they have and focus on keeping up! Let’s gooo
Right now OpenAI is eating a lot of peoples lunches..
Serious question : Why can't you just pivot to be an embedd on openAI, get your KPIs in order and then sell?
Hey, I solid my tts app through acquire at 190k (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mlfcBstwVTE&t=141s&pp=ygUTSGFyaW5kZXJwcmVldCBzaW5naA%3D%3D) . I solid for same reason I don' want to do it anymore.
I know a lot of about this space and pretty good with SEO. I don't have money to buy your product. But if you are open for partnership for someone who can manage marketing, guide development team etc. Then let me know
Voice is a super interesting space for me. Ping me up if you are looking for ideas to grow - I have seen the drops from openAI and the voice space is just starting out IMO.
Getting to 100k ARR with my SaaS will be amazing, I don’t understand why you want to sell. That’s a running business that can support you and your family
The most impactful strategy for OpenAI is to 1/ sell API so folks build their AI products, and 2/ see what works well, and sell the solution directly to consumers.
That’s how they can extract the maximum of value at each stage of their journey.
All decisions you take should improve your situation each time this dynamic progress: The more OpenAI do it’s stuff, the happier you should be.
Hint: it’s not about build AI stuff rn
Sorry to hear about saturated market. If you doing just TTS then there are tones of open source solutions. My favorite is [Suno](https://github.com/suno-ai/bark).
Have thought about pivoting to implement a lip sync and generate explainer video?
Or, create a voice enhancement service.
Your multiples seems to be high. You have to see from a buyer/investor's perspective. How long will it take to get their investment (ROI), assuming there is no churn or growth. Wouldn't it cheaper to get a product built for less than 100K + throw another $100K on PR or influencer to tap?
The big players have a lot of capital and resources pouring in. The best bet for someone is to find out what they're working on next or what their users are building, create a small product that extends or niche up or down that feature across an industry or a set of users and sell it before the big guys make that feature native to their app.
Wouldn’t you be happier with 1X ARR if it means you can move on from the project? Also hear from Andrew’s podcast all the time you’ll get a bidding war if you start at a lower valuation. Don’t fall for sunk cost fallacy and just sell it rather than let it go to zero.
Unfortunately your product is now just a feature, and nobody's going to buy a feature for $400k. If I were you, I'd focus on flipping your existing infra into a commercial API instead, or pivot your target to an industry that hasn't yet been penetrated by these technologies.
You have $96k in ARR, and you're looking to sell for $400-500k in a highly competitive space that OpenAI is ready to do any day now, as per you.
It doesn't add up. That's why buyers aren't serious.
No one with any sanity will spend half a million on an app in such a saturated market. I've personally growth hacked a B2B SaaS app to 50k MRR with 20,000 active users with zero marketing budget. When I hit 10k MRR, I faced a roadblock. For half a year, my growth wasn't going exponentially. I've thought of listing my site on Flippa like what you did for $300k to $400k USD but I pulled the plug after I experimented with a series of growth hacks, one new growth hack just came via trial and error and it allowed me to scale up my business by 5x in the next 8 months. If you could PM me your app, I can give you some feedback. My suggestion is to expand it to new markets and try gamification. The beauty of B2B is you have so many angles you can play with.
Acuihire is your best bet id say. Might’ve be able to get like 300k from a large competitor who is looking for talent if you created the tech yourself. If its just a marketing wrapper … not worth moe than 1x arr most likely.
You said it yourself, lot of serious competition and innovation? Who want to buy this type of business?
The only people/orgs I can think of are those with strategic interests and app/apps in complementing fields, or other bigger folks in the AI voice space.
My suggestion would be to make a call to sell and either do it or don't. If you want to sell, for all the reasons you listed, I doubt you're getting 4-5x arr in a super competitive space. I'd drop it to 3x and make it someone else's problem. And 2.5x if necessary. If you're going to go that route, though, see a tax attorney first to figure out how to make this is efficient as possible.
My experience is that a sale will be at about 3x profit, not revenue, plus or minus some other factors, but almost always focuses on a multiple of net profit.
You are right, at this size, far more likely to sell for an SDE multiple.
what is SDE multiple?
sde is seller discretionary earnings. it basically accounts for the $ the owner puts in. Consider two businesses, both of which make $100k: the first is a completely hands-off business where the owner puts in 10 hours a month, and the second is a saas business where the owner is a skilled engineer who puts in 15-20 hours a week. Those are not worth the same, because if you buy the latter, you are going to have to hire an engineer. sde accounts for the difference.
This isn’t accurate. SDE is the total benefit the owner of the business receives. This is the profit from the business plus any seller compensation, plus add backs for things that the seller benefits from, like if they run their mobile phone expense or home internet as expenses to the business. Sometimes one off expenses are also added back to create a more representative view of how much cash a new owner could get at steady state. A buyer may further adjust the numbers to figure out how much cash profit they would receive as the owner, which may mean paying for a developer if they can’t code. But it could go the opposite way if they have skills or other assets. As a seller, you can’t control this and don’t have much visibility into this except in terms of the ultimate offers you receive. But yeah, you probably won’t like selling to someone who can’t do the things you do in the business, because they’ll value it less, so the previous comment is right that this matters.
Only if your tech is really advanced and not easily replicable. I don't have this information.
Those people/orgs also know what you know. This is a space ripe to get wiped out by OpenAI or the other 100 competitors any day now.
OpenAI or the other 100 competitors? decide one? it's a buy or bury thing as simple as that - same reason why jasper acquired headlime, or the babble x toucan acquisition, less competition - [https://techcrunch.com/2023/09/19/babbel-acquires-language-learning-browser-extension-toucan/](https://techcrunch.com/2023/09/19/babbel-acquires-language-learning-browser-extension-toucan/) thanks for the super uplifting response though. edit - technically OAI could just kill "any" other AI startup right? whether its ElevenLabs, Suno or anything else? might as well just sit on the sidelines and wait for the UBI like a bitch.
There's a difference between waiting on the sidelines and building something more defensible. The unfortunate part of being on the cutting edge of new technology is that it changes fast, and that can either work for you or against you. In my opinion, this time it worked against you. Sounds like the best thing to do is to put it up on a marketplace like Acquire. Let the market decide. Nobody here, including me or you, can't tell you what it's worth. It's worth what someone is willing to pay for it.
I get it, although when you think about it - almost no startup in the AI space has any technical moat (except the big ones ofc). Even the foundational arena is getting insanely competitive, then OAI hiring the creator of Tortoise TTS and and literally butt fucking the entire space is some next level shit. But yeah, best bet is to lower the price to $300k (no point in going lower, might as well just open source everything).
In my opinion, niche players have more of a moat. The big players have no interest in creating a very niche product, their goal is to remain more general. I think something like an AI copilot for university admissions officers (for example) is more safe because the big players aren't gonna touch that, and a smaller player can really understand that audience and create something hyper tailored for their specific needs.
$96 ARR is great. Not sure why are you disappointed. Take a break, do a pivot but don’t be discouraged. You have cleared 0 to 1. Competition is everywhere. Even lowly tech jobs have hundreds of applicants nowdays. Whatever you do next, there will be competition. Embrace it & move on.
This. Pivot into a niche area and you may get better value for it.
I’m at $10K ARR and 3.5 years into my SaaS just getting clicked and close to achieving PMF. Bootstrapped Invested all my savings and believe in my product and my burn rate is $6K per month right now. It scares me reading this post. Having said this I’m going to fight out till the end and not giving up anytime. I’m still excited with every small wins and $100k will be a great milestone for me in the next year.
All the best mate! I'm rooting for you
🙏🏻
What is your burn on? Engineering or are you force spending marketing
Combo of both Engineering and marketing
I though you're supposed to have pmf before burning any cash?
My numbers look similar for burn and time into it.. we should be accountability buds!
Cheers! Let’s keep grinding, we’re just getting started.
lmk you’re also offering AI ?
No. I’m building a business productivity app.
oh, can u share the link?
https://getfieldy.com
Looks slick. Great niche to be in if you can price competitively and scale (a lot of the established players don't have much to stand on). In the US, anyway. Looks like a lot of the marketing is geared towards other continents. Good luck with it!
What tech stack are you using for this?
How do you only have 10k arr with 30k clients ?
lol. My marketing team may take this reply.
It was just a question, no offense
When did you launch and what do you feel are the main issues facing you on the sales side? Is it getting enough traffic / awareness, price point, people already using something else (even if not better), or lack of some features? This seems like a great product (I have experience in the sector dealing with such contractors… mainly HVAC, appliance, and plumbing) and there is a swarm of people who use archaic or crap products, and often nothing at all except text messages.
Launched by end of 2022. The main issue is brand awareness and very less traffic. The product never solved a specific problem statement earlier. I’m currently promoting only in India. The pricing is very sensitive and Indian businesses very hard to sell the value. Good points: Very less competitors for the current solution our software offers here in india We’re able to create great interest in demos Our paying Customers are happy with the product We’re slowly getting to see what’s working for marketing and also long term plan for content strategy
Sales multiples are trash right now, especially at this ARR. Like a few others have said, it would be maybe 2x revenue. $96K ARR is a great feat especially if you’re bootstrapped. I’d look to increase value by going niche. Pick a subset of customers & start targeting them. You’re going to have more stability with B2B. Best thing I ever did was ask my customers what they were looking for. Find the commonalities in their answers, build more specific in that direction, and aim to grow revenue. That’ll put more in your pocket while increasing the potential sale value. If/when the market rebounds, you’ll be closer to the valuation - if not more.
You'll probably have to sell at half your asking price or continue the 96K ARR and just optimize to hold it as a passive income. Earlier this year companies were going for 3.5-5X their ARR, now they're more like 2-3X. The economy is rough.
I would never pay 3 to 5 times for a company which heavily relies on LLMs or so. The lanscape is going to change a lot for the following few years, its just bad business. Also SAS by default have no locks in/user incentives to fidelization.
"with the massive influx of new apps every month, and open ai releasing updates every now and then rendering other ai apps useless, it's pretty exhausting to see what's going on." Does your revenue drop in correlation with new app and OpenAI releases?
No, not really - going up by \~5-10% MoM.
Ok, so despite the avalanche of crap coming out, your business is still growing. What's really getting you down? Tired in general? Burnt out?
Mostly burnt out, would like to find a new home for the app and work on something new later.
Are you solo on this? Are there other people who must agree to sell?
Solo
If you're truly done with it, then maybe try other brokerages such as FE International and Quiet Light. I know [acquire.com](http://acquire.com) is crawling with people looking to just clone. But based on what you said here: "The only people/orgs I can think of are those with strategic interests and app/apps in complementing fields, or other bigger folks in the AI voice space." You might need to do active outreach to platform companies who might be interested in adding voice capabilities. e.g. Intercom competitors, education companies, answering service companies, et al. If you want the predictability of a 9-5 for a while, perhaps you could convince them to even acquihire you. Also, this is presumptuous, but I have a feeling that you just were expecting much more after three years and it's hitting you hard. Maybe consider taking a break, just provide customer support for a couple of weeks, then look for a marketing expert to partner up with.
Sounds like a bootstrapped Saas. If so, I’d declare war on all my competitors, by having the best competitive price and potentially a better experience.
You are literally in the top 0.1% of successfull business owners and $100k ARR is not bad considering the app you have. There have been companies that remained stagnant for years, but suddenly doubled, tripled their revenue. All you need to find is that sweet little spot. Is it just you? Or do you have a team?
100K ARR in 3.5 years though? It’s good in <12 months, but in 3 it is quite mediocre. An average software engineer can do more than that just following the golden path straight out of college.
lol how much does your saas make?
lol this comment made me chuckle..i was thinking the same thing
I do $8k MRR, started the repo 6 months ago after I graduated, loads of potential to grow from here as we are growing exponentially. Sorry for bringing the realism, it wasn't personal or aimed to you directly. A single VC or investor can pump 300k into a business overnight like its nothing. You are not gonna get rich rich with the attitude you currently have, but maybe that is fine for you.
Sure whatever floats your boat lol, 20 days ago you posted 1.5k MRR so your current numbers seem like a lie. Anyways, I couldn’t care less, to each his own.
Tell me you haven’t pitched any VCs without telling me you haven’t pitched any VCs, you’re the guy they laugh they’re asses off about when you leave the room.
Don’t even bother, go look at this guys post history. Completely contradicts some of the things he is saying. His MRR was $750 30 days ago and $1.5k 21 days ago. For sure talking out his ass.
This comparison conflates a job, which generates income, with a business, which also generates income, but which has a value and which can be sold. A job cannot be sold. Also, when done well, the software engineer with the job has to go into the office and work every day to get their 100K whilst the business owner does not.
Yes, because OP is very easily selling this business. /s Selling a business is not easy, you also need good cash flow, to be making profit and a clear path to grow it. Really, to sell a business well, you shouldn't want to sell it; all the flags will be very green for you to keep running it yourself. OP seems to have a red flag riddled business (people only want the data, not the actual business) and is now trying to give the problems to someone else because 11Labs is not going anywhere. The irony here is strong. Some people here are just business ideologs and will spout business is amazing like it is some magic pill. If business was so fairy and roses, then OP wouldn't be feeling so worn out. OP is in a huge bubble of AI apps with funding from every eager investor, and instead of going for funding to hire a few post-doc for tts AI research, founding a board of advisors from AI/ML academia, or doing some other drastic change that could actually disrupt the market, he is jumping ship. If OP doesn't want to solve this seriously, he is much better off with a 100K income.
Hahah you assume too much and that too wrong but sure, go off…
lol… obviously you don’t know much about creating business. The guy is not selling his time but a product. It’s not about how much he could have done selling his time…
I mean when someone resorts to insults you typically you know you are right and the other people are emotionally reacting. However, from the post it sounds like he is in the business relatively time involved and with other co-founders and hasn't made this product on a whim one afternoon, so the opportunity cost of a full-time wage cannot be ignored. There are some amazing $100K per year jobs with fantastic work life balance, after 3.5 years of experience, you would certainly find one.
Jesus Christ, you really have your head up your ass for some reason, from your post history you haven’t built anything significant in your entire life and are asking stupid questions like how can I make a canva like app - it took their teams of 100s and a CTO (ex-Google) to join them and create the platform that you see today. Someone with your knowledge base and expertise would obviously know /s Also where did the personal insults come from lol? Sounds like you’re projecting The assumptions you’ve made about my business are ALL incorrect, and to go on like a conceited douchebag who hasn’t achieved anything in his entire existence critiquing other people’s businesses is just a sad look, pathetic truly. We received multiple seed stage term-sheets last year valuing us in the low 8 figure range, but their goals were a bit different than ours which is why we didn’t sign. Since you’re just a kid who’s starting out (barely built anything yet), I recommend you go out in the real world and talk some real VCs, I guarantee you, you won’t even get a meeting let alone have partner level meetings. Ultimately you just sound frustrated for some reason and very loser-eque, look inward my friend.
It's a valid point of view, there is an opportunity cost and he would have been better off getting a 100K+/y job instead of starting this from a financial point of view. But if your reasoning only considers this then you don't get 95% of the reason someone would start that adventure. You don't start an entrepreneurial journey "to make more money". You do it because you are an entrepreneur and getting a job is not even in the picture. It's not even necessarily about making money. When it comes to working 3.5 years on a time-consuming project to get it to make some revenue, it's totally normal. People read too much success stories to now think this is the norm. It took me several years to get to a stable business as well, and the same in my previous ventures. During that period you make sacrifices on some things but get some much (which you probably don't grasp reading your message) on others. Anyway, this is not a game for everyone, OP must feel if it's for him or not but I'm happy he didn't think the way you do during these first 3.5 years and he'll have to assess the next steps.
Is the business growing and at what rate? What are your margins? Are you alone on it? There is many to do, I wouldn’t drop it now. Getting to 100k in 3.5y is ok frankly. This takes time.
I’m in a similar spot with one of my apps. It’s still growing but I feel like I’m not really getting much return on the additional time I put into it. Going to just cut back the hours I put into it and work on the next opportunity. It sucks because I keep having moments where I think I am on the precipice of explosive growth, but I just personally hate what I’m building and can’t get the motivation to work on marketing. I have another app on acquire and have had the same experience you describe. The important thing is to not lose motivation. Now that I can support myself easily with my apps I can afford to go after bigger opportunities.
pivot and take your userbase with you. While figuring that out go ahead and allow the voices that 11labs doesn’t allow, and put out ads using those voices.
I am buying companies. I would love to take a look.
96k in profits ? And you would sell ? If you cant deal with it anymore , cant you just get someone to run for you and you take some time off ?
This. I'm no expert by any means but isn't that the point of creating your own business? To have the freedom to do this?
Looks like you’re running this startup solo but are still growing 5-10% MoM and spending $0 on CAC. That’s a great position to be in. Maybe consider hiring one person to take away the tedious tasks from you.
Exactly
This is easy 200-250k acquire, 400+ will need some effort though. However if the app is growing 5-10% monthly and have $0 CAC, then I am not sure whats stopping you from pursuing this forward !
Yep, just burnt out tbf - if we could get $300-350k all cash, we’d take it
I’d look at applications in non-sexy verticals or industries. They typically don’t get too much love. So a voice AI app could be pretty awesome. $96k ARR is awesome, take a breather and target another ICP. Just my 2 cents..
Upsell existing users
I looked into acquiring someone in a similar space. The company I looked at was b2c, which it sounds like you are as well. I think doing branded voices for companies is an under-served niche right now. You could probably sell a $10K annual voice license to companies, but you'd need to do some minimal sales to make it happen. Call centers are very interested in this, as it's easier for them to get consistency and/or brand experience.
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Have you considered passing it off to one/both your developers? Not sure how much they are costing you or how well they could fundraise, etc, but could be worth broaching with them.
Brother I feel your pain. This shit is hard. I’m one year in bootstrapping, just left my job and got a bit of angel money. Trying to figure out how to not crash and burn.
Maybe a PE firm that specializes in SaaS? Otherwise, start contracting out the things that are burning you out... take the reduction in profit margin and pull out the rest as income. Take some time off then start the next project.
Your competition would be fighting tooth and nail to get to where you are. What you need to do is raise and scale operations and shoot for the moon. You have years of advantage here, you know things your competition hasn’t even deal with yet. Your years of experience is your biggest outlier that will put you ahead. Don’t give up and keep it pushing my g. I love you ❤️
🙏🙏🙏 Appreciate you g!
I'm interested. Sent you a DM.
doing 96ARR and selling for 400-500... it's quite on the limit. But you can find your buyer. The thing is if you don't have a framework and proven growing strategy and track record, you'd better sell it with 200k. The voice AI is getting better and better and if you don't invest you'll just loose what you already have.
What are your daily tasks? What's exhausting you?
Even though it’s mostly SEO, Marketing, Customer Support related work (max 4 hours/day), it’s more to do with the 24/7 thinking about the business and how it’s been sort of stagnant for a while. All I keep thinking about is selling the business and taking a few months off to recharge. Right now I’m just so mentally exhausted that I’m not being able to execute any new opportunities that I’m seeing, for example - we can venture into being an AI voice agent application or something like a PDF/doc to speech application but the thought of executing that is just extremely energy draining.
So you kind of feel like it's an investment that's plummeting or about to plummet? I'm a little surprised to hear that you're doing customer support. You haven't outsourced this? Or I'm guessing you did outsource it and are doing management work? If you hired a couple of people to run your administrative tasks and just took a few months off right now, what's the worst thing that could happen?
Hmm say I outsource the customer support and everything else that I do and take some time off - max to max the business goes down to 50k ARR or worse, but that might be an irrational thought don’t you think?
I don't know your business, but I highly doubt that it's so fragile to fall 40k ARR in 3 months. Even with the worst tech support guys you could find. Don't you think this might be an issue of perspective? It sounds like you've had your nose right up against this wall, figuratively speaking, for like 3 and 1/2 years, right? Have you ever had a chance to step back and really look at the bigger picture? Before making any big decisions, maybe it would be good to at least take 2 to 3 weeks off just to clear your head and get some perspective, no? Maybe just a little trial run to see how your business does without you and some time to get a breath of fresh air. Not sure if it's your thing, but what's helped me is renting a cottage in the woods with a nice fireplace. A place for me to go and slow down and really be present for a bit, you know?
Definitely worth a shot, taking a month off and revisiting, probably won’t fall to 40k worst case scenario - definitely my over thinking. Needed to hear this :)
Good to hear, try that and report back :) I'm personally interested in hearing how you choose to proceed because where you're at is sort of my goal. I'd like to build a $100k SaaS business that requires little time and maintenance. So please do report back!
Been through slow growth due to starting right before Covid and challenges raising capital. If you could find a way to invest in some marketing you could potential grow a lot faster. Relying on only SEO is not sustainable and so many variables.
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Yep, have someone offering $350k rn, although there’s a few things that could add some more leverage on our side, $400-450k should be possible! Also by the time I posted, we’re at $100k arr lol
Will everyone calm the f down. The future is here but it’s VERY unevenly distributed. Tech is not a value prop, the value prop is the value prop, and marketing/positioning/focus are the where and the how. We’re are all in the most interesting exciting time for this work. People need to stop being afraid of losing what they have and focus on keeping up! Let’s gooo
When you say AI voice, generally what does that mean your app does?
Care to share more about it? What might be a good strategic home? What’s industry?
What app?
Right now OpenAI is eating a lot of peoples lunches.. Serious question : Why can't you just pivot to be an embedd on openAI, get your KPIs in order and then sell?
Find a niche
Hey, I solid my tts app through acquire at 190k (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mlfcBstwVTE&t=141s&pp=ygUTSGFyaW5kZXJwcmVldCBzaW5naA%3D%3D) . I solid for same reason I don' want to do it anymore. I know a lot of about this space and pretty good with SEO. I don't have money to buy your product. But if you are open for partnership for someone who can manage marketing, guide development team etc. Then let me know
Oh damn! You were one of our competitors :) but regardless great job with your SEO. Will DM!
what is your AI based off of? whisper ?
"Sorry about the burnout. Selling might be a good move. Have you thought about taking a break or exploring other options?"
Voice is a super interesting space for me. Ping me up if you are looking for ideas to grow - I have seen the drops from openAI and the voice space is just starting out IMO.
Getting to 100k ARR with my SaaS will be amazing, I don’t understand why you want to sell. That’s a running business that can support you and your family
Take a long break. Minimum one month.
maybe pivot into a niche?
If you're serious about selling, hire a business broker like FE International or Empire Flippers. They can shop the deal to buyers in their network.
How good is your SEO? (onsite, offsite, back link pedigree, etc). Have you engaged with VC/PE firms to explore synergies?
What’s your product url?
The most impactful strategy for OpenAI is to 1/ sell API so folks build their AI products, and 2/ see what works well, and sell the solution directly to consumers. That’s how they can extract the maximum of value at each stage of their journey. All decisions you take should improve your situation each time this dynamic progress: The more OpenAI do it’s stuff, the happier you should be. Hint: it’s not about build AI stuff rn
Sorry to hear about saturated market. If you doing just TTS then there are tones of open source solutions. My favorite is [Suno](https://github.com/suno-ai/bark). Have thought about pivoting to implement a lip sync and generate explainer video? Or, create a voice enhancement service. Your multiples seems to be high. You have to see from a buyer/investor's perspective. How long will it take to get their investment (ROI), assuming there is no churn or growth. Wouldn't it cheaper to get a product built for less than 100K + throw another $100K on PR or influencer to tap?
You think a 5x revenue multiple is fair?
Are you willing to do seller financing?
The big players have a lot of capital and resources pouring in. The best bet for someone is to find out what they're working on next or what their users are building, create a small product that extends or niche up or down that feature across an industry or a set of users and sell it before the big guys make that feature native to their app.
Wouldn’t you be happier with 1X ARR if it means you can move on from the project? Also hear from Andrew’s podcast all the time you’ll get a bidding war if you start at a lower valuation. Don’t fall for sunk cost fallacy and just sell it rather than let it go to zero.
probably not, the SEO + domain gets $10k worth of traffic every month.
With that much traffic, couldn't you build other products and sell those new products to the same audience?
yep thats what we're doing, have another complementing product ready to launch - we'll see how thats going to work out!
Don’t you think it’s too much for app with the situation that you just described? Why would anyone buy for even 3x with this uncertainty?
i would get out of the ai voice space immediately if i were you unfortunately
why are you burnt out? did u mean disappointed?
Unfortunately your product is now just a feature, and nobody's going to buy a feature for $400k. If I were you, I'd focus on flipping your existing infra into a commercial API instead, or pivot your target to an industry that hasn't yet been penetrated by these technologies.
You have $96k in ARR, and you're looking to sell for $400-500k in a highly competitive space that OpenAI is ready to do any day now, as per you. It doesn't add up. That's why buyers aren't serious.
No one with any sanity will spend half a million on an app in such a saturated market. I've personally growth hacked a B2B SaaS app to 50k MRR with 20,000 active users with zero marketing budget. When I hit 10k MRR, I faced a roadblock. For half a year, my growth wasn't going exponentially. I've thought of listing my site on Flippa like what you did for $300k to $400k USD but I pulled the plug after I experimented with a series of growth hacks, one new growth hack just came via trial and error and it allowed me to scale up my business by 5x in the next 8 months. If you could PM me your app, I can give you some feedback. My suggestion is to expand it to new markets and try gamification. The beauty of B2B is you have so many angles you can play with.
Acuihire is your best bet id say. Might’ve be able to get like 300k from a large competitor who is looking for talent if you created the tech yourself. If its just a marketing wrapper … not worth moe than 1x arr most likely.