Startup Sphere Weekly #15

Hey all, welcome back to Startup Sphere, a weekly 5-minute digest about online businesses selling for life-changing amounts of money.

I’m writing this newsletter a day later than usual, so you should be reading this on Thursday instead of Wednesday.

I recently got good feedback on a Reddit post I made where I analyzed a company for sale and talked about the product features I would add, how I’d market it, and the potential challenges of running the business.

I wanted to see if the newsletter audience would be interested in seeing similar case studies. Just vote below 👇

Without any further ado, let’s get into this week’s business listings.

Analytics platform for franchise site selection

Asking Price: $145,000
Monthly Revenue: $2,000
Monthly Profit: $2,000

This business for sale is a location data analytics platform that helps local businesses and franchises make location-based business decisions. The software uses something called geospatial data analytics.

The current customer base currently includes franchisors in food, retail, and home services.

This is a B2B business, so it has certain advantages over a B2C business. Mainly, your customers actually have money to spend. This business charges $250 - $750 per month.

There are some red flags with this business though. Firstly, the selling multiple is pretty high (8.3x profit). Secondly, the company is venture-funded and is still only making $2,000 per month. To me, this is a sign that it’s difficult to make money in this space.

Some competitors include Esri, Placer.ai, Buxton, and SiteZeus.

👉 View the listing here

Website building platform for rental businesses

Asking Price: $998,000
Monthly Revenue: $33,800
Monthly Profit: $16,500

I’m a big fan of niche solutions, and this is a great example of that.

The business for sale is a website-building platform that specializes in building software for rental companies. I like this business model and offering because it isn’t just a generic “we build custom software“ offer. This company specializes in helping a specific niche.

I assume that the business has some sort of systemized process for building this type of software. They likely have a prespecified tech stack and system which they just reskin and adjust based on their client needs.

👉 View the listing here

WordPress lead gen and email marketing plugin

Asking Price: $610,000
Monthly Revenue: $14,000
Monthly Profit: $12,000

This bootstrapped software business is a WordPress plugin that helps companies grow their email list by displaying targeted popups, opt-in forms, notification bars, etc.

WordPress powers over 40% of websites on the internet. This business is able to ride that popularity and offer websites a solution that will increase customer engagement and make the client’s company more money.

Email marketing and newsletters have only grown in popularity over the last couple of years. I can see a company like this benefiting from that growth. This is also a good opportunity to introduce some new product features in a space that hasn’t seen much innovation in the past.

The sell price is quite high, at a 4.5x profit multiple. But overall I think this is a great opportunity to acquire a healthy business in a popular space.

Some competitors include Optinmonster, getbrave.io, Newsletter Glue, and Poptin.

👉 View the listing here

Cast your vote

Last week’s results:

🥇 [62%]: 👨‍⚖️ portal to find government contracts to bid on
🥈 [25%]: 🚬 e-cig for smokers seeking a less harmful experience
🥉 [12%]: 🪙 app for numismatists to identify and value coins

Subscriber feedback: “I worked at a marketing agency for a bit and a lot of their work and their clients were B2G. it's big business. getting those govt contracts is a sweet deal. business seems pricey though.”

That’s all for this week! If you enjoyed this newsletter, forward this email to a friend. Till next week 👋

— Vlad Verba

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