37signals lists web designer directory Sortfolio on Flippa

dangrossman 14 years ago |

This is one of the worst listings on Flippa. There's no information at all. No breakdown of traffic over time or by source. Nothing about how the transition to a new owner will be handled. No information about how billing is done and what information, if any, will be transferred to the new owner -- if everyone had to re-subscribe under new ownership most of that revenue is going to disappear. No information about the site architecture and what kind of resources are required to run it. No information about the customer service load generated.

It's like listing a house for sale with no photos, no description, and a fence around the property so you can't go check it out in person either. Just a lot number and a price tag. And we really are talking about the price of a house here...

moe 14 years ago | |

But... it's from 37Signals!!

How can you possibly need any more information than that?

DavidAbrams 14 years ago | |

So this headline says that something undefined is "listed" on something else undefined.

Talk about lazy and useless.

DodgyEggplant 14 years ago |

Sortfolio without the 37signals brand is not the same asset.

neovive 14 years ago | |

That would be my concern as well. Without their brand and following behind the service, it would be hard to sustain it at that level.

ssharp 14 years ago |

Has 37s indicated how the billings will transfer? If by default, after the sale, users have to opt-in and provide their billing information again, there will be a substantial loss of customers, well beyond typical churn.

Additionally, if I were interested in purchasing Sortfolio, I'd want a clear picture of their customer acquisition practices. If most customers are being acquired through the 37s website and/or branding, you cannot count on continued revenue streams. If customers are being acquired by channels that don't rely on 37s, I'd be much more comfortable with it.

jcc80 14 years ago |

I must be missing something because I don't understand why they are so desperate to get rid of it. If it's really making $200,000+ per year just hire someone for 1/4 to 1/3 that to handle it.

bennylope 14 years ago | |

It's not a core service for them. It might be running on its own now but at some point it's going to need some attention which means distraction.

moe 14 years ago | | |

It seems you missed the part where he said "hire someone to handle it".

That someone doesn't need to be in the same office.

I personally would happily take that role - I'm on a different continent and won't ask for their phone number.

runako 14 years ago | | |

Hiring and managing a person is not a zero-cost effort, even after you account for direct compensation costs. If you value giving employees great jobs, and a chance to do excellent work, then hiring someone on a different continent and not letting them contact you is not aligned with your values. Further, management bandwidth is one of the most expensive resources at any company, and spending it on a non-core product is not smart.

Focus matters. It's one reason why most successful businesses aren't do-everything conglomerates.

moe 14 years ago | | |

management bandwidth

There is no management.

After the handover (which would be needed for a sale as well) there is no need to ever talk again. Just put the guy on auto-pay and have the contract automatically terminate when the revenue falls below a defined threshold (i.e. the site has fizzled out) or when the SLA is not met. Not rocket science really, should take all of 15 minutes to write a shell-script to send out the notification when it happens.

Of course if you pick the wrong person you might have to do it again, but I'd hope 37s would be able to gauge the competency of a candidate for that role. It doesn't take a genius to keep a trivial rails-site running, and motivation shouldn't be an issue with that kind of compensation.

But sure, if throwing away $100k/year in passive income better "aligns with your values" then you have bigger problems anyway...

mipapage 14 years ago | |

Yeah, or let someone in-house make it their pet project. Tied with the 37s name/links etc and that revenue, what a great side project for someone to run...

tocomment 14 years ago |

I don't have 500K, are there any other good deals on Flippa? I'd love to buy an autopilot business for that rate of return.

Any advice? Has anyone bought a site on Flippa?

amoore 14 years ago | |

flippa is a cesspool of worthless sites, scams, and con-men.

But, there are some occasional transactions that are worth looking at, if only to get ideas of things to build.

Here's a recent sale of thecupcakeblog.com: https://flippa.com/2736282-over-1000-ad-rev-199k-visits-475k...

Those come along about once or twice a month.

Flippa_com 14 years ago | | |

I'm obviously biased but this sold list shows that we regularly sell awesome websites: http://bit.ly/JDV1hg

Try out our advanced search and you can very easily drill into sites that meet your quality definition: https://flippa.com/search

pavs 14 years ago | |

I sold a silly blog for $15,000 just before they changed their name to flippa.

drsintoma 14 years ago | | |

could you give us the URL?

lost-theory 14 years ago |

There's an article on the 37signals blog as well:

http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3172-sortfolio-going-once-goi...

drumdance 14 years ago |

A friend of mine with lots of experience angel investing and running profitable B2B companies told me he looked at Sortfolio last Fall and passed. He didn't go into detail, but he said they're asking too much.

ricardobeat 14 years ago |

I'd lease it. 50% split until the 480k is paid off, or the site dies.