Not speaking negatively of Trennd or Josh - this illustrates the point that marketing skills are critical to success in these kinds of ventures, much moreso than development skills.
Tenacity and willingness to expose oneself (at obvious risk of being told negative things) is requisite to achieving success like this so quickly (and probably also when done slowly).
To your defense, you're sharing a truth that is often difficult for many technical founders to hear/read. Many either over-estimate their non-technical skills or don't care to think about them at all, as "the better product always wins" myth remains present to this day. I am not personally exempt from this thinking, especially at the start of my entrepreneurial journey, where I wasted many months bringing products to market, to no avail. I am also certainly not the first person to make this observation.
If you aren't willing to hop on a demo of your product via video chat with a potential customer, per their request, you're directly lessening the chances of that product's success. With that said, once you realize that without marketing or sales, nobody will see your beautiful creation(s), you quickly realize the need for such. Personally, this lead to a desire to learn, practice, and master these skills. However, you can easily find others with a seemingly natural affinity for these skills and delegate these efforts to these individuals (whether partners or employees), enticing them with stock and/or salary should you have sufficient revenue and/or funding.
EDIT: I want to make it clear that I am not suggesting solo ventures succeed less often than those with more than one founder. There is research (see that from NYU and Wharton) pointing to exactly the opposite.
This 100%. Think of all the "bad" or "clunky" products out there (not to say that this is a bad product, it's a great idea) that we use every day at work - this is why there's the saying "Sales cures all."
We offer to businesses, have a few pilots, but the slickness of Trennd is probably something we'll copy. It was clearly easy to see how the UI helped here - congratz on the sale too (if you're reading this).
I’d like to give thanks to all the people here on Hacker News who supported the project during that launch and any questions or comments just let me know!
The short version (summarized from the article):
I spent 2 months building an app to detect trends. Launched as a Show HN and reached #1 on Hacker News (briefly!). Another 4 months growing and improving it but failed to monetize. But I got enough traction to get acquired by Brian Dean founder of Backlinko.
For the sake of all the other HN founders here building our own apps and trying to sell/monetize, how much did you get acquired for? I think it’d be super insightful to get a data point here.
Regarding the data granularity, I'm curious if you ever managed to figure out how to get high granularity (daily) data over a large timeframe. For those who don't know, google "helpfully" changes the granularity for you when you request longer ranges, and normalizes the response so that the largest datapoint in any given range is 100, so you can't just concatenate consecutive requests.
My very hacky attempt at solving this involves overlapping short range requests, and finding the scaling factor of best fit between them: https://github.com/bspammer/rebuild_trends
I'd be really interested in hearing if there are better approaches out there to squeeze this data out of Google.
Do you mind sharing the "x" multiple in the acquisition? I think in tech the norm is a 10-14x multiple for acquisitions...but this case seems different in a few way (6 months, no investors, etc...).
Why professional bloggers as your target audience? There are several institutions I can think of that would pay a lot of money for near exclusive access to a more specialized version of what you've built
Congratulations, Josh! This is a huge success for a six month project. Based on my experience with acquisitions, that was a very fair offer that you got.
> As for the acquisition number… that’s why you’ve read this far, right?!
Yes.
> We settled on an amount equivalent to how much I’d earn as a US-based engineer working 6 months, but then multiplied by X for the traction/success factor already achieved. And I also still have a stake in the project going forward.
Working where in the US? Software engineers can make wildly different amounts of money depending on where in the US they work. Even within SFBA and NYC, a subset of companies pay significantly more than others as well.
So why not just say the actual acquisition number?
> So why not just say the actual acquisition number?
Usually buyers don't want this information going public. Likely it was part of the deal terms. My guess is that what Josh said is as much as he's allowed to disclose per terms of the deal.
> We settled on an amount equivalent to how much I’d earn as a US-based engineer working 6 months, but then multiplied by X for the traction/success factor already achieved. And I also still have a stake in the project going forward.
Why not just, simply, put the price? You know that most people are only, barely, interested in the "acquisition" price rather than the story of how you got there.
Not always true. If you are a first time seller and you are trying to put a dollar amount on your product, it can sometimes be tough to do. There is the tangible value your thing provides but also all of the intangible value, the FOMO factor, etc... that can infuence things as well. This equation is totally unique to SV but the fundamentals transcend geography and industry.
I certainly appreciate candor when it comes to these sorts of things.
Neat result. I've sold a few side projects over the years, it's always nice at first, though I've then ended up wondering "what if" as the years go by :-)
This jumped out to me:
We settled on an amount equivalent to how much I’d earn as a US-based engineer working 6 months, but then multiplied by X for the traction/success factor already achieved.
It sounds like you have a pretty significant win here, considering there was no real revenue. I'm guessing we're talking at least $50k multiplied by something.. so not exactly pocket change :-)
This is a really cool project. To be honest, I think Brian got a steal on this. There's a ton of potential here, and I think if it was developed a bit more (developed from a business model point of view), there was potential to sell for a heck of a lot more.
I think it's possible to be a steal for both. Brian has the unique position of being able to leverage this business into something far more valuable than what he paid for it (a road that would have been much longer, difficult, and riskier for Josh), while Josh got a sum for the business that far exceeds typical super-early stage SAAS valuations. There are probably many owners of SAAS businesses generating up to, say $3k in MRR (obviously, exact numbers are impossible to pin down), that would be thrilled with such an exit.
It sounds like Josh also got to hold on to some of the upside while taking a bit of risk off the table. Seems like a win-win on the surface and with the experience Josh will get working with Brian, he may be able to grow his next venture to a later and more valuable stage. Kudos to both of them.
I'd love to try out this product. So just curious, is this another meta post to drive traffic to the site? Hehe. Congrats on the sale btw! It's not easy pulling the whole thing off.
looks like.
anybody knows where do they get the raw data from ? I had a brief look at Google's public APIs and the closest I could find was trends. However, they do label some charts with searches per month....
Cool app! Curious about the data sources, or is that a secret sauce?
For example, you have "google cloud platform" trends going back 15 years - does that mean you have 15 years of data from all your data sources? How do you backfill that?
"I needed something that could surface opportunities by automatically monitoring the web for new topics. So that I can then plug them into Google Trends.
Heck, it could even check Google Trends itself so I don’t have to."
Thank you! Yeah that's part of the secret sauce... but what I can say is that we monitor lots of different places: search, shopping, online communities looking for interesting topics and then we cross-check that against Google Trends data and curate topics ourselves.
A couple suggestions: 1) it would be nice to have mouse hover-overs on the charts that show the exact date. 2) If something is highly cyclical (e.g., Ring doorbells seem to spike every holiday season), it's probably not right to say they have "peaked". I would suggest instead looking at the Year-over-year percentage change in the trailing 1- or 2-month period, and if that is also significantly lower, then you can more accurately say if something has peaked. 3) if the query in question is for a commercial product/company (e.g., Victure), then why not add a direct link to the company, which could be an affiliate marketing link? Seems like an obvious way to monetize this.
Gee I remember when this was first posted. I remember being jealous for not thinking of the idea myself. Can't believe it's been 6 months and that you've been acquired already. Really kind of inspirational and makes me realize what wonderful things I could have built in that span of time instead of, well, not shipping.
Right now that's because of my founder bias, but we're looking to include more and more types of topics across health, business, marketing, fashion and so on.
Where do you source the data? Looking at Google Trends, the graphs don't match up at all with your graphs, so I assume you have another data source that you prioritize.
Hi there, the graphs do actually match up - it's just the Google Trends default time period is usually different to ours. Plus the width and height of their charts make the chart gradients look flatter than ours :)
[+] [-] blunte|6 years ago|reply
Tenacity and willingness to expose oneself (at obvious risk of being told negative things) is requisite to achieving success like this so quickly (and probably also when done slowly).
[+] [-] cfitz|6 years ago|reply
If you aren't willing to hop on a demo of your product via video chat with a potential customer, per their request, you're directly lessening the chances of that product's success. With that said, once you realize that without marketing or sales, nobody will see your beautiful creation(s), you quickly realize the need for such. Personally, this lead to a desire to learn, practice, and master these skills. However, you can easily find others with a seemingly natural affinity for these skills and delegate these efforts to these individuals (whether partners or employees), enticing them with stock and/or salary should you have sufficient revenue and/or funding.
EDIT: I want to make it clear that I am not suggesting solo ventures succeed less often than those with more than one founder. There is research (see that from NYU and Wharton) pointing to exactly the opposite.
[+] [-] j_kao|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] citilife|6 years ago|reply
We offer to businesses, have a few pilots, but the slickness of Trennd is probably something we'll copy. It was clearly easy to see how the UI helped here - congratz on the sale too (if you're reading this).
[+] [-] jhow15|6 years ago|reply
I’d like to give thanks to all the people here on Hacker News who supported the project during that launch and any questions or comments just let me know!
The short version (summarized from the article): I spent 2 months building an app to detect trends. Launched as a Show HN and reached #1 on Hacker News (briefly!). Another 4 months growing and improving it but failed to monetize. But I got enough traction to get acquired by Brian Dean founder of Backlinko.
[+] [-] tozeur|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bspammer|6 years ago|reply
My very hacky attempt at solving this involves overlapping short range requests, and finding the scaling factor of best fit between them: https://github.com/bspammer/rebuild_trends
I'd be really interested in hearing if there are better approaches out there to squeeze this data out of Google.
[+] [-] criddell|6 years ago|reply
Also, I had never heard of unreadit.com before reading your article and it looks exactly like something I've wanted. Thanks for that!
Congratulations and thanks for writing it up. It was a great read.
[+] [-] throwaway_tech|6 years ago|reply
Do you mind sharing the "x" multiple in the acquisition? I think in tech the norm is a 10-14x multiple for acquisitions...but this case seems different in a few way (6 months, no investors, etc...).
[+] [-] toomuchtodo|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pgutfreund|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] foo_in_bar|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] a_band|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] leetrout|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throwawaymath|6 years ago|reply
Yes.
> We settled on an amount equivalent to how much I’d earn as a US-based engineer working 6 months, but then multiplied by X for the traction/success factor already achieved. And I also still have a stake in the project going forward.
Working where in the US? Software engineers can make wildly different amounts of money depending on where in the US they work. Even within SFBA and NYC, a subset of companies pay significantly more than others as well.
So why not just say the actual acquisition number?
[+] [-] netsharc|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] a_band|6 years ago|reply
Usually buyers don't want this information going public. Likely it was part of the deal terms. My guess is that what Josh said is as much as he's allowed to disclose per terms of the deal.
[+] [-] gowld|6 years ago|reply
Doesn't matter, because it's multiplied by X plus equity.
> So why not just say the actual acquisition number?
Because he didn't want to say the number, but he wanted to say that it was high enough to justify his effort.
[+] [-] csomar|6 years ago|reply
Why not just, simply, put the price? You know that most people are only, barely, interested in the "acquisition" price rather than the story of how you got there.
[+] [-] whalesalad|6 years ago|reply
I certainly appreciate candor when it comes to these sorts of things.
[+] [-] wolco|6 years ago|reply
In the end he got paid 60k + the value of 3000 emails + brand.. 3 dollars an email? 10000+
My guess is 75,000 + 5%
[+] [-] ryanmercer|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] petercooper|6 years ago|reply
This jumped out to me:
We settled on an amount equivalent to how much I’d earn as a US-based engineer working 6 months, but then multiplied by X for the traction/success factor already achieved.
It sounds like you have a pretty significant win here, considering there was no real revenue. I'm guessing we're talking at least $50k multiplied by something.. so not exactly pocket change :-)
[+] [-] jhow15|6 years ago|reply
You're pretty close there yeah - so it was a huge win! Especially given it had no revenue like you say.
[+] [-] swalsh|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kohanz|6 years ago|reply
It sounds like Josh also got to hold on to some of the upside while taking a bit of risk off the table. Seems like a win-win on the surface and with the experience Josh will get working with Brian, he may be able to grow his next venture to a later and more valuable stage. Kudos to both of them.
[+] [-] jhow15|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dbancajas|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jhow15|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Geee|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Papirola|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] neonate|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jimmytucson|6 years ago|reply
For example, you have "google cloud platform" trends going back 15 years - does that mean you have 15 years of data from all your data sources? How do you backfill that?
[+] [-] omarhaneef|6 years ago|reply
"I needed something that could surface opportunities by automatically monitoring the web for new topics. So that I can then plug them into Google Trends.
Heck, it could even check Google Trends itself so I don’t have to."
[+] [-] jhow15|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] knicholes|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jhow15|6 years ago|reply
We both waved our hands up and down in the air like a handshake but we only had video... is there a name for that?! :D
[+] [-] eigenvalue|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tw1010|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] peteforde|6 years ago|reply
I've been subscribed to a similar service called Glimpse for some time. Who thought of it first? You seem to have very similar trends identified.
The most recent issue contained: Tiktok lights, Air Fryer Chicken, Chiropractic Y Strap, and Heated Razors.
[+] [-] Infinitesimus|6 years ago|reply
We often have so many "what if someone built xyz" thoughts and do nothing with them so I'm stoked you got off your bum and made this happen
PS: it'll be funny if you use this to find the idea for your next product
[+] [-] jhow15|6 years ago|reply
That's actually exactly why I built it in the first place, so definitely going to be "eating my own dog food" with this for the next project idea :)
[+] [-] pidg|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jhow15|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] psychometry|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] joshdance|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jhow15|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] losthobbies|6 years ago|reply
Need to get out of my head and start working on my side project now....
[+] [-] k__|6 years ago|reply
It only shows stuff from the past.
[+] [-] Nairus|6 years ago|reply