I sold Paperweight. To Anders. Through the Deal Room. AMA

It closed on Friday. Paperweight (PDF generation API, $7.4k MRR, four years old) now belongs to Nyberg Holdings, which is Anders and a very thorough accountant.

As far as anyone can tell this is the first time one member here has bought another member's company, so I want to write down how it went while it is fresh.

• I posted in the Deal Room in June saying I was tired. Not "exploring options". Tired.
• Anders replied in 40 minutes asking for churn by cohort.
• We did the whole thing in eleven weeks. No broker.
• Multiple was 3.9x annual profit. I had hoped for more. Nadia told me privately that I was not going to get more, and she was right.

Ask me anything. Anders can answer the things I am not allowed to.

He was a pleasure to buy from. The codebase had tests. Do you know how rare that is.

I will say publicly what I said privately: he should have asked for a longer handover fee. I would have paid it.

NOW you tell me.

3.9x for a single-founder API business with 2.1% monthly churn and no sales motion is a fair price. I would have told you the same thing if you were my brother. Congratulations, properly.

Former co-founder of Colm here (the company before this one, long story, we are fine). Delighted for you. You were always going to build something someone wanted to buy.

We are fine! We keep saying it and it keeps being true.

Unpopular opinion: selling at 3.9x is leaving money on the table when the thing is throwing off cash. You could have held it for four years and had the same money plus the company.

Gus, I've held one too long and sold one too early. The one I held too long cost me more. A tired founder is a liability on the balance sheet. He said he was tired. Believe people when they say that.

Fair. I withdraw half of it.

CONGRATULATIONS COLM!! And Anders!! This is so cool, both of you in the same forum, I love this place!!

Practical question: what did due diligence actually ask for? I keep hearing "have your books in order" and nobody says what that means.

What I asked Colm for, in order:

1. Stripe export, all time, raw. Not a dashboard screenshot.
2. Bank statements matching the Stripe payouts for 24 months.
3. A list of every third-party service with the login owner and the monthly cost.
4. Support inbox access, read only, for a week. This tells me more than the revenue does.
5. Who the top ten customers are and when each last logged in.
6. Anything he was embarrassed about. He sent a list. It was a good list.

If you can produce items 1 to 5 in an afternoon, your books are in order.

Six-month update since people keep asking: I took four months off, got bored in the second, and I am building again. It is a changelog tool. Anders is my first customer, which he says is a conflict of interest and I say is karma.