My name is Seth, and I’m the co-founder and sole developer of Bolsteroo, a 100% Bubble-built AI-powered social media content creation and scheduling platform (think ChatGPT + Canva + Hootsuite). I’ve spent the last 3 years (part-time) building and growing Bolsteroo, but no longer have the ability to maintain it or put the time into it that it needs to reach its potential.
I don’t know if there’s much of a market here on the forum for larger sales like this, but thought I’d give it a shot with my fellow Bubble community before expanding elsewhere.
We’re currently bringing in ~$18,000 in ARR from our subscribers, which would value us around $180K via traditional software valuation methods - but being a Bubble app vs traditional code will obviously bring that down.
This is a perfect baby startup for someone to pickup and grow into a major business. The overhead is low. The platform essentially runs itself.
Hey @creatorbee That is awesome! So glad you are profitable. I think this is a great place to start since most people here are entrepreneurs. I have a few questions for you.
Where do you get this from?
For small companies, typical revenue multiples range between 1x and 5x, depending on the industry, growth rate, and stability of revenue. Since $18,000 is relatively low, it would likely fall on the lower end of the multiple range, possibly around 1x–2x, valuing it between $18,000 and $36,000.
Can you provide more details? If you are profitable, why not keep it? Great passive income.
What are your expenses? What is your actual profit on this? Can we get more information? Thanks!
Thanks for the thoughts! Obviously there are a lot of valuation methods and at the end of the day it comes down to what someone is willing to pay. We can only speak from our own experience as this isn’t our first startup exit, 1x-2x would be incredibly low for SaaS, maybe you’re referencing startups in general instead of SaaS specifically? The growth is exponential in SaaS, which is why the multiplier typically goes up. (ie. Imagine selling for $18K, it would make no sense because we’d make more than that by just waiting a year for revenue to come in, and then we’d make that again if we just wait another year.) But you’re right in that it depends on how everything else is going (growth rate, etc).
As far as costs for us, it’s primarily the Bubble platform (which is now a lot more expensive as we built it before worrying about optimizing workflow units…). Last month was the first month charging WF for us and cost us $285. Everything else (SendGrid, OpenAI, etc) probably lands around $100 total per month.
As far as “why not keep it?”, it comes down to not having time to maintain it like I mentioned. As passive as it is, customers still have needs and bugs still pop up. If I could let it sit and be able to maintain a customer base and attract new customers I would, but it’s not at that point yet. It will require active marketing obviously to bring in new customers. I also have a couple of co-founders so it’s not really worth it for us to let it sit and take small cuts every month vs selling it. But it is nice that we do have that to fall back on
@J805 - would be happy to go over more specifics over a call or chat sometime if you’re interested. Don’t want to put all the specifics in here.
That makes sense. I am not sure I would be able to offer anything close to $180k. I will be in touch if I think it is something I might be interested in though.
@johndurso We’ve spent less and less time over the past 6 months as we refocused on other projects. I’m the only one who really spends any time on it now as the only Bubble dev, and I put in as little as possible just fixing any critical issues that come up basically for our customers. Probably 2-5 hours a week. Shoot me over a DM and I’ll send you an audit with more detail on revenue/expenses and subscribers.
Just thought I’d give my two cents on this, hope you don’t mind my input.
Definitely agree that the 8-10x range on revenue for SaaS would typically be very high if revenue / the business is still early stage.
Considering costs outside of acquiring customers:
$4-5k in product costs annually (by your own estimates of $385 pm)
Post sale / COGS managing bugs, customer support, etc, let’s say very low end 2 hours a week at $40 an hour, that’s another $4k annually
Even without CAC calculations, would I be right to assume profit is <$10k annually?
Meaning $180k sale price would be 18x (or more) on profit in a start up that’s only just moved beyond preseed.
Unless it’s a strategic acquistion you’ll have a hard time convincing someone to purchase it as a cashflow business considering a rough estimate says it would take 18 years to recoup costs currently.
With low churn and decent LTV, you could maybe squeeze 3-4x revenue but I’d be suprised if someone went north of 6x on profit for a business doing less than $100k ARR.
With decent metrics why not pump capital into getting ARR up as high as possible then strip costs and sell? Metrics sound decent, it’s just super early.
@build.marshall Thanks for the feedback! The thing with SaaS startup valuation is that you’re partly paying up front for future valuation because growth is exponential. For example, our revenue now is $18K and costs are $3K. If we double our user base in a year (going from 42 to 84 is not a big leap), our revenue is $36K (every year) but our costs only maybe go up to $4K, and so on. Plus, that extra goes into additional marketing efforts which brings in more customers and so the machine goes.
The reason they value SaaS startups based on annual recurring revenue and not profits is that you really shouldn’t ever have any profit because that should be flowing straight into that money making cycle of adding customers thus providing more marketing spend to add more customers. It’s the reason you wonder how a tech company that’s technically losing money is bought for millions of dollars - future value.
I will say, you’re right in that we are really early though. It probably would be smart to boost ARR for a while and then make an exit at a higher valuation.
Exponential growth is always dependant on industry and company specific variables though. If doubling growth is as simple as investing further into current distribution channels then a potential buyer might question why you’re selling early stage before doing that.
Applying a fixed cost model to growth at that rate also raises some questions, because as any user base / stress on a system grows (whether code or no code) there’s associated product costs, and it would be strange to see growth double with a disproportionate increase in post sale costs.
I think the biggest factor though (and the driver of everything else) is probably the reason for purchase, for example, profit would certainly be front of mind for anyone looking to acquire a cashflow business.
With your points on start ups not operating with profit I think it’s somewhat reductionist to say that they shouldn’t, because ultimately it’s down to the strategic approach of the business in question and outcomes of the founders / board that determines that. You can also be operating with extreme capital inefficiency while generating strong revenue which would likely impact a valuation during a due diligence process.
Start up valuations also take into consideration cash on hand, IP, and other factors - by the sounds of it you’re only selling the product.
Just my thoughts on it though, not looking to stir things up just giving my position on it which will hopefully support you to make a stronger case in your sale.
Nicely built app @creatorbee! However, was playing around and found a bug quite quickly. Specifically, as a user. I can’t figure out how to create a new post. Please see screen shot below. There is text that reads, “create a new post” but nothing is clickable.
I have 15 years of marketing experience and have used Canva etc. extensively to create content for clients so I was curious about your app.
What is your trial-to-paying customer conversion rate? If I were considering the app, I wouldn’t be anymore after using it for 5 minutes and already coming across a bug. Sorry to say, I wish that weren’t the case, but alas, unless I knew it was in beta or something like that my expectations would be that it functions properly if I were going to pay for it.
Maybe you are driving enough traffic to your marketing page and getting trials, it’s just that the trials don’t convert to paying customers? Perhaps you could do customer interviews to find out why? Was it bug-related or something else?
I do wish you the best of luck and greatly admire you Bubble skills! Nice job.
@laura5 This isn’t a bug, although perhaps an oversight. The post creation kicks off from the Dashboard, not the Drafts page. Didn’t expect users to miss the giant “What would you like to create today?”
Hi Seth, thank you for your response. Yes, I did indeed see the screen pictured in your post above and first played around there. However, I then closed that draft and was taken to the dashboard and from the dashboard, clicked around, and then wanted to create something else, but could not find a button to do so. Does that explain my user journey a bit more?
Thanks!
