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- This app makes $750,000/year by making users look famous.
This app makes $750,000/year by making users look famous.
Also: A Shopify theme selling for $155,000.
Hey it’s Vlad,
welcome back to Startup Sphere, a 5-minute weekly digest about online businesses selling for life-changing amounts of money.
I’m in Napa, CA this week so I’m sending the newsletter at a different time than usual. Next week we’ll be back to our regularly scheduled Wednesday newsletters 👍
Before we begin, a quick poll to help me improve the newsletter:
Do you prefer a longer or shorter newsletter? |
Thanks for voting and helping me improve the newsletter. Let’s get into this week’s listings ⤵️
Weekly Rundown
Premium Shopify theme
Asking Price: $154,000
TTM Revenue: $44,000
TTM Profit: $40,000
This business is so good just because of how simple it is. The business sells Shopify themes, that’s it.
While the business seems straightforward, this is a good example of “simple but not easy“. It took the founder one year to get his theme on the official Shopify Marketplace. I assume the approval process is very rigorous because Shopify wants themes that run on its website to provide a great customer experience since it reflects on their platform as a whole.
Currently, there are only 200 themes on the marketplace, meaning that competition is very low and the barrier to entry is high.
This reminds me of the early days of the Apple App Store when it was difficult to publish an app and there was less competition in the marketplace. Early adopters benefited from app store optimization and organic traffic. I think this will be a similar situation.
The listing price is a bit high, but I think the owner would be willing to come down.
In partnership with HoneyBook
3 tips to get to 6 figures
Here are the not-so-secret tips from the highest-earning independent marketing and creative businesses.
Lead management software
Asking Price: $470,000
TTM Revenue: $165,000
TTM Profit: $177,000
Lead generation and lead management is a lucrative industry that many companies are still trying to solve.
The company for sale is OhMyLead - a lead management software that helps you convert leads into clients. The business was founded 6 years ago and it is used by companies like Jaguar (according to their website).
The website provides connections and integrations with multiple platforms like Facebook Ads, Click Funnels, Google Forms, etc. This makes it more attractive for customers to join the platform, and more difficult to leave since a lot of their data is tied to those integrations.
The platform also provides a ton of features like a CRM, push notifications, CSV exporting, etc. It does seem difficult to stay competitive in this space since the big players like ZoomInfo are always building and innovating.
OhMyLead seems to do well, making almost $14,000/month in profit. This is definitely nowhere close to big players like Apollo or ZoomInfo, but a respectable amount for a bootstrapped business, with plenty of room to grow.
Live streaming app with fake viewers
Asking Price: $1,700,000
TTM Revenue: $750,000
TTM Profit: $469,000
This is such a fun and novel concept, and honestly a great social experiment.
The business for sale is an app that mimics Instagram Live and shows a large number of viewers, making others believe you are popular/ Instagram famous. If you’re not familiar with the concept, here’s a TikTok video of how it works.
I love this concept because it’s so unique. I feel like in today’s world everyone wants the attention of being famous, so people are likely to use the app in social settings.
When building a B2C app it is important for the product to be viral, and this one definitely checks that box. I’ve seen people advertising similar apps on TikTok and the videos get millions of views.
The app is monetized through in-app purchases and offers an ad-supported tier for free users.
Famefy is an example of a competitor.
Cast Your Vote
Which featured business would you acquire?Vote below and share why: |
Last Week’s Poll
The results are in: Every business featured got votes last week. Hard to pick a winner, but I would probably lean towards the iOS app to track TV shows.
Subscriber feedback: “A 15-yr lifespan is amazing and rare. A good bet that it’ll be around even longer. The Lindy Effect.“ -voted for iOS app to track TV shows
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