How I sold my app for +$100k via email (and why I regret it)

https://shadowysupercoder.com/how-i-sold-my-app-for-100k-via-email-and-why-i-regret-it/

14 20 5 years ago

Good lord why is there a 5 line gap between each sentences

555553• 5 years ago

He has copywriter syndrome. It's an increasingly prevalent affliction most commonly found in young people who work in online sales. Other symptoms include narcissism, saying "crushing it", disregarding haters who are only going to hold you back, and finding potential mentors attractive a degree that's almost sexual in nature.

gandalfian• 5 years ago

There is not on my phone? What it does have on mine is almost no content supporting the title...

aequitas• 5 years ago

To give you the nice experience of reading it as a Twitter thread maybe? /s

luckylion• 5 years ago

These things must come out of a generator somewhere, they're all written in the same style, but people upvote for the clickbait headline.

craig_asp• 5 years ago

I know the author and I can tell you that the story is completely real.

isomorph• 5 years ago

What’s the app?

ModernMech• 5 years ago

This seems like a huge humble brag. Guy graduates, makes a successful startup with his friend, lives on exotic beaches coding all day, sells the app for 6 figures, and in the end this is the second biggest regret of his life? Are you kidding me? Would really love to hear what his #1 regret is...

edit: the more I think about it the more I'm not buying this story.

By the time they left the accelerator (of course they were the #1 startup of the batch), they had a startup with an app that had traction, they had paying customers, they had thousands of downloads a day, and were pulling in at least $55k per year, revenue the author describes as "stable". The author claims at that point he was demotivated (why??) and decided to backpack across the world (which was funded by the app income, I would assume).

Then he gets a mysterious offer out of the blue from a faceless, nameless buyer, who the author never saw or even talked to personally even after the eventual sale. The buyer stays engaged for an entire year despite being ghosted in an attempt to buy this thing (because it's just that amazing?), and somehow the founders manage to talk him up to 2x the original offer! Afterwards, the app goes on to be a great success, and the author attributes that all to himself, and not anything the buyer did with the app ("The buyer is doing minimal updates, just enough to keep the app alive.")

I'm sorry but this whole story just seems fantastical. At every stage, the author paints himself in the best light possible, and everything good happens to him, despite this being a cautionary tale of woe and regret. Nothing bad happened in this whole story. Add to it the author offers no personal details in order to corroborate the story, and his entire online presence seems to be one of self-promotion, and I'm just not buying it. I mean, his pseudonym is "shadowy", which is pretty on the nose here.

CamelCaseName• 5 years ago

Sounds like he sold the app for $110K after being demotivated by a shitty accelerator... and then the app went on to gross $110K+ a year with minimal maintenance.

I'd be salty too.

555553• 5 years ago

No, it's real. Selling something feels good on day 1, but once the profit it continues to generate surpasses the price you sold it for, you naturally have regrets. Especially if the buyer does almost nothing but maintain it.

shadowysupercdr4• 5 years ago

Or I worked my ass off for 2 years, basically for nothing, and then some guy made bank with the app I built :) Depends how you look at it I guess. Like I said, I was young and naive and had a wrong mindset. But what can I say, the whole story is true.

cube002• 5 years ago

Some context about this post from their Twitter:

Mini-challenge: I currently have 198 followers on Twitter. Going to try to double that by Friday
I'm going to do 4 experiments.
#4: write a good blog post with a call to action and try to get on the front page of Hackernews

https://twitter.com/shadowysupercdr/status/14272263341582827...

tester34• 5 years ago

we took the bait apparently

shadowysupercdr4• 5 years ago

Literally every article appearing here has an "ulterior motive", whether it's building an audience, selling something or whatever :) I'm just publicly talking about it

joshmanders• 5 years ago

Deleted the tweet.

cube002• 5 years ago

It would remiss of me not to repair dead links: https://web.archive.org/web/20210816111051/https://twitter.c...

Must be time for my annual donation.

shadowysupercdr4• 5 years ago

I guess it's frowned upon to try to get on the front page? I feel like as long as it's actually good content providing value, that that shouldn't matter? Trying to be transparent with the whole process of building projects and building an audience :)

EricE• 5 years ago

Interesting story. I chuckled when I got to

We had been brainwashed by the go-big-or-go-home unicorn VC mentality.

Making money takes work, and often the things that bring in the most revenue aren't the most exciting tasks to do. Like bug fixes, customer service and other such drudgery. So many I work with in tech want to be able to chase the latest tooling, change the world with a killer app and other pie in the sky fantasies - and nothing wrong with those, they serve a purpose. But the vast majority of revenue out there is in the boring stuff. The details. Or not being a sportsball kid growing up but constantly hearing sports casters rant about "the fundamentals". Yeah, now I get that the fundamentals permeate every aspect of life and are key to success - no matter the subject area.

If this guy would have treated his app as a long term commitment and been prepared to really work it and not be mentally checked out looking for the "big sell", he'd probably still be growing it. Chasing the unicorn of striking it rich is like planning to play the lottery as your full time job. Yeah you could get lucky but more than likely you are not going to.

shadowysupercdr4• 5 years ago

Live and learn I guess :) Like I said, I was young and naive.

555553• 5 years ago

This is a pretty common story. You can make a lot of money just buying things that are slowly going up and to the right at good prices. This guy might be the warren buffet of SAAS/apps.

How I sold my app for +$100k via email (and why I regret it)

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