[johng]

We've sold off what we call "Verticals" of our company to a competitor in the past. A competitor that previously we had helped co-found and had very horrible interactions with. So we had zero trust in dealing with them and wanted the contracts to be rock solid. The process took forever to agree on a contract, the payment process, putting the money in escrow, etc.... Part of us didn't want to have anything to do with selling something to this company because we despised them. But business is business and their offer was higher than what we could get from anyone else.

Long story short, the process went fine. We ended up selling another vertical to them, and then another. All 3 sales went through fine.

This is the lawyer we used and he also happened to be local.

https://www.gregorprivate.com/

[codegeek]

If selling, you can get away with bad buyers as long as the deal is mostly cash upfront. However, I would highly advise against buying from a seller you cannot trust. Imagine they already showed you during the deal process when they have an incentive to be nicer. Once you wire the money, you are in for a lot more surprises. I would never buy from a seller who gave me bad vibes. Regardless of how good the deal sounds.

Source: I have bought 3 smaller projects (one for 500k so i guess not indie but still small) and in all 3 cases, the sellers were incredible genuine and truly cared about their company/product. Just because of how trustworthy and helpful they were, I closed the deals quickly after fair negotiations.

I declined 1 deal where the product was a great fit to my exiting business and it would have been a great transition but the seller was too arrogant and I just couldn't trust him. I backed out after exchanging a couple of messages with him.

[johng]

I can see that. We were the sellers and the deals were all cash, after the handoff with the money in escrow prior and a binding arbitration clause if there were disagreements on the hand off. We had zero issues though.