Cult app Cheddar up for sale, solo hacker explains why

http://venturebeat.com/2013/01/05/cheddar-for-sale/

by iisbum • 14 years ago

33 34 14 years ago

fsiaf• 14 years ago

Because he got bored working alone and lost his motivation.

No offense, I love Sam, he is brilliant and cheddarapp is fantastic. But from a business side of things: Who in their right mind would buy a $12k/year revenue business for $125k?

kylefox2• 14 years ago

My feelings, too. I can understand why Sam feels it's worth $125k, based on the amount of hours he put into it, but a potential buyer will (most likely) evaluate this as buying a business -- and from that perspective the price looks really steep. You'd need to grow the business 10x just to break even.

That being said, there might be someone out there who's been contemplating building a task app business, and this would give them a really nice head start, product-wise. Or, perhaps it would make sense for a larger company (OmniGroup? Panic?) who can devote substantial marketing resources to it.

Nonetheless, I wish him the best of luck. He's a likeable guy and has obviously put a ton of love into this product -- it would be nice to see him enjoy some monetary return on his efforts.

ryguytilidie2• 14 years ago

I could see criticizing the price, but the reason you guys are criticizing it for are ridiculous. If you buy a company for 125k and make 125k/year in revenue you dont break even, unless your expenses are insane or if you think the business can't last more than a year.

The person who would most likely buy this app is maybe a company that thinks they could bring the revenues up, integrate this into something theyre working on, and add value. Is it worth 125k? I don't know, but I imagine we will know soon.

Turing_Machine• 14 years ago

Facebook bought a $0/year revenue business (Instagram) for $1B. :-)

oinksoft3• 14 years ago

If I recall, this is the same fellow who wanted to charge some astronomical fee for iOS project consulting. I suppose this strategy has paid dividends before for him?

onetwothreefour• 14 years ago

Obviously not.

flyosity2• 14 years ago

No, that was Mike Lee.

jcoder2• 14 years ago

"Cult classic"? I've only ever heard the name via self-promotion.

dcope• 14 years ago

I thought the same when I read the sensationalist title and opening remarks. Personally, I've always thought task warrior and org-mode were the most popular among hackers with OmniFocus being the go-to program for Mac die-hards.

It's also worth mentioning that the developer of Cheddar works for the author's husband as seen in the footnote.

jcoder2• 14 years ago

Thanks for reminding me of TaskWarrior, I'll take it as my annual reminder to check it out :-)

My entire life--from work and home projects, to future someday/maybes--is in OmniFocus, and it's been irreplaceable so far.

> It's also worth mentioning that the developer of Cheddar works for the author's husband as seen in the footnote.

Yeah, I guess it's just a silly fluff-piece.

mitchi• 14 years ago

a Ruby programmer is now a "hacker" too...

gfodor4• 14 years ago

Is this seriously a todo app that has a monthly subscription fee?

ricardobeat3• 14 years ago

Paying for sync services isn't weird at all. Apparently it has upwards of 600 paying customers.

gfodor4• 14 years ago

Sorry, it's weird to me. More power to the author for finding a revenue stream but it certainly brings out my cynicism. The revenue stream is on a house of cards since there is no "service" being paid for and the fact the author is asking $125k for such a fragile revenue steam is just strange.

melling• 14 years ago

I'm a paying customer. It's not that much money. The seamless/instant sync is why I pay. He could use a few more features, which I did email him about them.

The one lesson I think people should get out of this again is that it's really hard to get consumers to pay for a nice to have, here as if you solve a real business problem, companies will pay a lot more.

btipling• 14 years ago

Usually people open source their projects when they want to stop working on them.

oinksoft3• 14 years ago

This project is already open-source.

lyetzz• 14 years ago

$125,000 to buy everything? I can see why he'd ask for that, seeing as it's popular, has a growing user base, includes everything you need to continue operating.

$125,000+ to hire him or somebody else to build something similar? That's what seems slightly absurd to me.

msellout• 14 years ago

800 hours (20 weeks) of consulting service for $125k. That's about $6.25k per week, which seems reasonable for high-quality engineering. Some folks would charge more. The key is if you believe it would take 800 hours to re-create Cheddar.

nodesocket2• 14 years ago

I just switched from Asana to WorkFlowy which seems very similar to Cheddar. WorkFlowy is awesome, because it is so simple. In my mind, it is perfect for software development management and managing bugs, todo's, etc.

Here is a nice intro video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=...

Shameless, I know, but if you signup for an account use my referral code, we both get 250 more items a month free.

https://workflowy.com/?ref=eaca8a6

sergiotapia• 14 years ago

Is it free? I'm a solo freelancer and can't afford a 10$/month service.

nodesocket2• 14 years ago

Yeah it is free, with a premium version. The free version does everything I need so far though. They also have mobile versions.

jere• 14 years ago

I'll second WorkFlowy, but I don't know if the two are comparable. Worfklowy is completely freeform. There are no lists. Only one recursive list.

vowofnow• 14 years ago

The problem with Cheddar is that it's a todo app. There are a billion of them already. I wasted an entire afternoon trying to decide which productivity app to use (the irony was not lost on me). There's already too much choice.

FYI: I almost went with Nozbe but settled on Trello.

Cult app Cheddar up for sale, solo hacker explains why

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