00:00:00 ◼ ► Welcome to Under the Radar, a show about independent iOS app development. I'm Marco Arment.
00:00:05 ◼ ► And I'm David Smith. Under the Radar is usually not longer than 30 minutes. So let's get started.
00:00:09 ◼ ► So I think for today's episode, I thought it would be interesting to talk about the topic of acquisitions or selling your app, or I guess the ways in which you might wind down being an indie app developer.
00:00:22 ◼ ► And we talked about it. It's funny, we've been doing the show long enough that I was like, I feel like we've talked about this before. And I looked it up. And I think we talked about this on Episode 72, which was back in March of 2017.
00:00:32 ◼ ► So probably worth revisiting at this point, regardless of whether we've touched on it again. Because I think it's a thing that is important to have a handle on in terms of your approach to your business.
00:00:45 ◼ ► Because inevitably, eventually, you're going to want to not be in business, I would expect, in the sense of it's, you know, while this is a lovely career that we've, but we've both made. And I think if you can make it work, can be a really satisfying, fulfilling, potentially with reasonable renumeration, you know, job and career.
00:01:04 ◼ ► At some point, you might want to move on to do other things that could be at the very end of your career, you're sort of retiring. It could be because you are sort of lost interest in what you're doing, or is a lost interest in one of your apps.
00:01:18 ◼ ► This is something that, you know, I think is a complicated question for what you do when something is sort of towards the end of its life, but maybe it still has a little bit of value, you know, is it worth trying to find a market to sell something?
00:01:29 ◼ ► Or maybe you feel like you just sort of like looked into a particular opportunity, or you know, someone of your apps is having a moment and you feel like there's this narrow window where you maybe you could get a higher return if you sold it or moved on to someone else.
00:01:42 ◼ ► Or I mean, I think the impression I get is just sometimes like the money is really good. And I mean, I recently this is so somewhat top of mind.
00:01:49 ◼ ► Apple announced that they were buying the pixelmator team apps, etc. And you know, it's one of those things where I imagine, you know, Apple is one of those companies that could just sort of back the money truck up to your house and be like, here you go.
00:02:03 ◼ ► And regardless of whether it's necessarily something you were looking for, or wanting or planning on, at some point, the money might just be too good. And you just it's a good opportunity. But I think it is still nevertheless, a useful thing to think about before you're in that scenario of either something is winding down, or you feel like you're at a hot moment or the money truck has showed up to understand kind of both what that process would look like mechanically, and also just sort of reasons why you may want or may not want to pursue it.
00:02:31 ◼ ► We hear a lot about the high profile acquisitions, things like what happened with pixelmator, you know, Apple's buying this, this, you know, this big app company, you know, this very successful, you know, well known app company, Apple's buying it for probably a pretty large sum of money.
00:02:45 ◼ ► And they're gonna go join Apple and we hear about those. And, you know, those, those go how they're gonna go. But there's also so many other app sales that we just never hear about in the press that they just, you know, they don't they don't rise to the level of being noteworthy enough or people keep them too confidential and no one even knows they happened.
00:03:05 ◼ ► Most, you know, most of the time what we will be approached by or what opportunities will be available to us as the seller of such a business is going to be those more boring kinds. It's going to be like, you know, some company that wants to, you know, buy your established app and then strip mine it with ads and subscriptions and things like that.
00:03:21 ◼ ► Or it's going to be somebody building a portfolio for a private equity firm or, you know, something like it's those are more likely the kinds of, you know, opportunities that people like us generally tend to get.
00:03:33 ◼ ► Yeah, and I think those are interesting opportunities because in many ways, like there's, it's, I think I become very emotionally attached to my apps, but in many ways, they are like an annuity in finance terms, which is a financial product where you acquire something, and then it pays you a regular amount of money into the future.
00:03:55 ◼ ► And in a weird way, app development has always kind of fit that model in my head where it is this thing that we make, we tend to put a lot of, you know, sort of time, energy and effort in upfront. And then we can have some reasonable expectation of return over time.
00:04:08 ◼ ► And that's potentially very attractive to people like I've been approached by I mean, for all variety of reasons of the last 17 years that I've been doing this, I've had people approach me and I've, you know, for seeing that they want to buy my apps, and sometimes I get the impression it's like a, you know, they're a fund manager, and someone decided that this is a potential
00:04:24 ◼ ► useful diversification scheme that they could buy into. Sometimes it's, you know, there's companies that seem to just be structured around this, but I think it's most often Yeah, I think you're ending up in a situation where someone is going to come and they want to buy your app, because they think they could make more money from it, then it's going to cost them. And it's entirely a financial transaction in that way.
00:04:48 ◼ ► And I think that's interesting. Sometimes when I think of how like these people who are approaching me, and it's probably what I say, like, I think sometimes there's just also a, there's a number of people who seem to also just spam developers with any amount of success on a weekly basis with sort of pitches that they're going to buy your app, or that they're actually just brokers who are trying to take 10% of the sale price, and they're just kind of constantly fishing for these. And I get these all the time, I've never really responded to them, because I'm not interested in selling my apps, but I'm not interested in selling my apps.
00:05:17 ◼ ► But there's a lot there's this weird thing that sometimes in the back of my mind, I'm like, is my am I undervaluing or under is my app underperforming versus what it could. And I think some of that is probably necessarily true, because the nature of a lot of these acquisitions would be that they're buying it with the expectation that they can extract more money in the short term from it, then the you know, the upfront price that they're paying you. Whereas I'm structuring my business to be long term.
00:05:46 ◼ ► A good annuity into the long term that doesn't fall off very quickly. And that's just a different mentality and mindset. And, you know, it's possible that over say, a three year period, I could make substantially more money if I was structuring my business, such that it was, you know, just extracting every little penny out. But at the end of that three year period, I may not have much left. And maybe that's just a naive view that I have. But I think it's tricky to think of if someone's coming, trying to buy something that's not going to be a good thing, and I think that's a good thing.
00:06:15 ◼ ► They're thinking that they can make money from that transaction. I don't think I mean, it's possible that they would be buying it as part of like a broader branding strategy. And I've had a, you can kind of imagine that sometimes that's what's happening that it's, they're they're trying to find their way in or get a toehold into an industry or things like that. But I think by and large, if someone's trying to buy something from you, they're expecting that, you know, after a reasonably short amount of time, they would have recouped their purchase price, because otherwise, they're going to be buying it.
00:06:39 ◼ ► And, you know, there's all sorts of asterisks and tricks that go along with that. Like, for instance, like, you know, when you get those those emails from the from the app brokers who are like, we were interested in buying apps like yours, and we've saw we've seen it on the rank list, and we think you're you're making x or we think, you know, you we we'd be willing to offer you know, why for it. In the end, you know, you're going to be buying apps that are going to be a good thing.
00:07:03 ◼ ► And you're going to be making x or we think, you know, you we we'd be willing to offer you know why for it. In my experience, the ability for external entities to try to estimate how much money you make with your app is comically imprecise and inaccurate, to the point where like, I've never gotten one of those inbound ones to any of my apps that was anywhere close to what it actually made.
00:07:28 ◼ ► Usually they dramatically underestimate what I make, which is a good problem to have, honestly. But but that can you know, that can radically change, you know, what what their interest might be in it also, like, so far, like in my career so far, but we'll get to our specifics later. But But yeah, I have found that usually the app is worth more to me than it is to somebody else.
00:07:50 ◼ ► But you know, there's also there are other reasons why somebody might want to buy your app, like for instance, if you are retiring from the app for whatever reason, whether it's your entire career or just the app, or maybe you're going to work for Apple, and you have to divest yourself of your personally owned apps or whatever.
00:08:06 ◼ ► A lot of times, somebody in your customer base, who is a developer looking for another business might buy it to just take it over because they just like the product, and they want they want the product to continue. And they're like, you know what, I'll buy it, that that'll be one of my portfolio things now.
00:08:21 ◼ ► Like that does happen. It's not that common, but it does happen. So the other other reasons why people might want to buy it as well. But ultimately, it comes down to they're not going to buy it if they don't think they can make money from it within a fairly short time.
00:08:34 ◼ ► Yeah, and I think it's also probably worth pointing out that there's an interesting aspect of selling an app that I think it's sometimes easy for me to think that if I'm selling my app, what they're buying is like the code. And like, as though that is the valuable part, maybe that because that's the part that I value personally, that I'm like proud of that, or the design or the assets or those kinds of things.
00:08:55 ◼ ► And I think the reality is, is more over, they're buying its market position beyond the actual sort of code itself, which I think is sometimes tricky to value. And sometimes tricky to understand that what they're buying is your existing customers more than your actual app.
00:09:14 ◼ ► Like, and sometimes I think about this, just sort of like I have them the mental exercise of how long would it take me to recreate one of my apps from scratch, knowing what the app is now. So in terms of being able to bypass all of the design dead ends that it took to actually build it in the first place, and all the things in the inefficiencies of that.
00:09:36 ◼ ► If I sat down and wanted to make pedometer++ from scratch, how quickly could I do that? And my suspicion is that a, you know, a senior iOS developer like myself, could probably rebuild it in four to six months, or something along those lines, which is one of those things when you think about it, if it becomes like, okay, so that's going to be a cost of a couple $100,000, maybe, like in terms of if you were to hire someone to do that, and that in terms of the actual, if someone was buying that code, it's like,
00:10:05 ◼ ► that part of the purchase price is not actually very substantial, but they really are buying is the fact that it has name recognition, it has users, it has subscribers, is I think something you know, it's like it's has this, this proven track record. Because that's why they aren't just saying, let me you know, let me hire and I hire a developer, let me pay them to $300,000, build this app and put it in the App Store, because it's like that that transaction is unlikely to be profitable, versus kind of like, you know, like,
00:10:34 ◼ ► versus coming in and buying the actual sort of name and recognition and position in the app. And that's what they're actually buying. And that's tricky, because that is very challenging to value. Because this is a femoral thing you can't it isn't just the, you know, whatever $150 an hour times so many hours to create the thing that you could kind of do if you were doing just valuing the actual, you know, the Swift code itself, the value is much more femoral and much more emotional and much more complicated.
00:11:05 ◼ ► Yeah, and another reason people might want to buy your app is just to acquire you as a person who is good at making such things. A person with certain talents and certain skills and a certain reputation, maybe. These are called acquihires, where they're acquiring your business, mostly to get you to come work for them. And this is a dramatically different kind of acquisition as well. And usually, I think the ones we hear about, where a larger tech company is involved, I think this is almost always, you know, either this or that.
00:11:34 ◼ ► Either the goal or at least the biggest part of it for them is, you know, they often want the talent more than they want the app or the business itself. And this usually creates bad outcomes for customers. Usually this ends up, whether immediately or a little bit down the road, that's usually what ends up with the app getting cast into the sunset.
00:11:56 ◼ ► Because usually that's, you know, the company wants the people. And usually there is some kind of contract where you might have to work for them for like four years or if you don't work for them for a certain amount of time, you don't get all your money or whatever, you know, some kind of structure like that to try to keep you there.
00:12:11 ◼ ► And you know, that has mixed results in the industry too. You know, oftentimes people who are acquihired into a company end up leaving one day after all their stuff vests and after all those deadlines pass. But you know, that's part of the game.
00:12:25 ◼ ► But if you are selling an app, you know, if you're on the selling side of something where somebody wants you to come along with it, odds are, you know, they are probably more interested than you.
00:12:36 ◼ ► And I think you have to wonder at that point, like, what do I want for the future of my app? You know, if you are going along for the sale and the company seems to want you more than the app, then that probably means your app is going to go away.
00:12:52 ◼ ► And is that the outcome that you want? And you know, you have to weigh that. And sometimes that's your best option by far. Like sometimes the money is good enough from the offer.
00:13:01 ◼ ► And especially if the app or business is not doing that well for you, like if it's kind of on its way down or it's past its prime or you know, the market has been too hard for you, a lot of times the offer you get as the acquihire will be the best outcome that you have.
00:13:17 ◼ ► And so it would be, you know, stupid not to take it. And your customers will just have to understand at that point that's just, that's life.
00:13:24 ◼ ► But you know, if the numbers are close, if they want to hire you for a certain amount and you're like, well, if I just kept running the app, I could basically make similar or better money, then you have to consider like, well, if I go work for them, my app is going to die, my customers are going to be screwed in some way, maybe that might hurt my reputation in some way.
00:13:45 ◼ ► So there's other factors to consider there. But you know, usually the acquihire, it's bad for the app, usually it's good for the people, and sometimes, oftentimes that is the best option.
00:13:57 ◼ ► Yeah, and I think it's fair to say with those is, I think, I know many people who have gone the slightly, I mean, sort of the acquihire and or the, they built an app as a way to build skills and establish credentials, which their ultimate goal was to get hired by a big company, you know, by good to go work at meta or Apple or Google or one of those companies that there that was a and that's a perfectly reasonable approach.
00:14:23 ◼ ► And I think especially for someone who's breaking into the career and starting out that there is nothing, you know, from I've never I don't do a lot of hiring, but from talking to a number of people who have our hiring managers or who do that kind of work, it is usually very, it is a very good sign.
00:14:40 ◼ ► If a candidate has an app that they've made, that's put on the App Store that they've gone all the way from file new project to, you know, release for sale, that that experience is very, very helpful. And so it's entirely possible that you would, you know, sort of you're in a position where the acquihire version of this is mostly them just giving you some nominal amount of money to wind down your app business, because it's not appropriate for you to do that if you're also working for them.
00:15:07 ◼ ► And if that was what your goal was, sort of from the beginning, then great. But it's the tricky thing. I think the point you're getting to more is, it's tricky to think that you're another company is unlikely to care about the product that you made as much as the product as you do, because necessarily it is coming into a broader picture with different goals and different alignment, maybe different values in terms of what they're trying to build or the direction they wanted to go.
00:15:34 ◼ ► And so, and it's the kind of thing where I think it's easy for them to potentially make promises or describe things in a certain way, which ultimately turns out to not be 100%. You know exactly how things are going to go. So it's something to go into with sort of open mind with in that perspective.
00:15:52 ◼ ► And I think it's also important to understand that the being very circumspect about the amount that you are tying yourself down with is also something that I like I've had these kind of things presented to me. And it's tricky for me to imagine a scenario where it's like you end up with like the golden handcuff situation, where you're you are tied into a particular company, sort of one way or the other for the next three years.
00:16:16 ◼ ► That's a really tricky place to be because life is complicated. Your family needs might be complicated, like you're tying yourself into this future promise that could go one way or could not go one way and you know like whether that makes sense for you, it's obviously going to be very dynamic but that aspect of it always feels a little tricky with those kinds of scenarios because they hire you with these promises.
00:16:36 ◼ ► It turns out that market conditions change, the business changes, something changes, but you're still stuck there for years doing whatever it is that you need to do to make that happen. And so it's a really awkward place to find yourself.
00:16:49 ◼ ► It all comes down to what are your options? If you're going to get a really good price from this acquirer who wants you to work for them and your apps not making that much, take the opportunity, take the money. You know, honestly, unless there's some really big reason not to. It's hard for me to advise anybody not to take a good opportunity that comes their way if it's better than all of their other opportunities by a big margin.
00:17:11 ◼ ► And the good thing, you know, so in terms of how much money you'll actually make from selling your app, you know, it varies a lot in cases of acquirers. It really does, like because that it's all about like what is your value as a person to the business buying you.
00:17:24 ◼ ► And typically if you are going along with the product, that typically increases the value that somebody is willing to pay for the combined package because somebody just taking on an app with no one to work on it and no one familiar with it, like from scratch, that is usually worthless to them.
00:17:44 ◼ ► Because unless it's a very small acquirer, unless it's the case of like, you know, you're retiring and some other small developer wants to pick it up from you, that's a different story. That's a different kind of money because the acquirer then might not be able to afford to keep paying you as a salaried employee.
00:17:59 ◼ ► But usually with larger companies being the purchasers, usually they want you to come along with it because you are part of the value.
00:18:07 ◼ ► If you don't go along with it, you can typically expect some multiple of what the app makes per year, usually in the low integers.
00:18:23 ◼ ► And this varies a lot based on market conditions, market, you know, what the market is even.
00:18:29 ◼ ► Like if you're in a super growth market, you might get 10x your annual profit as your purchase price. Something that's really young and expected to keep booming ahead of you.
00:18:39 ◼ ► But if you've just been running this app for a few years and, you know, the kind of the plateau of profitability has already clearly been reached, yeah, you're looking at like, you know, one to four x maybe your annual profit as your purchase price.
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00:20:15 ◼ ► Like, you know, it's like, what do I want to do with my career? Why don't I pursue these?
00:20:20 ◼ ► And I think ultimately for me, the reality of a typical acquisition, say someone came and said,
00:20:38 ◼ ► And inevitably, what I end up in is the, well, or I can keep them, continue to work on them,
00:20:44 ◼ ► enjoy that process, and at the end of the three years have, in addition to the money that they would have paid me,
00:20:52 ◼ ► And so I think financially it works out well, as long as you're enjoying the work, to continue doing the work.
00:20:59 ◼ ► And so in that sense, it's less appealing financially because most of what you would be sort of buying
00:21:11 ◼ ► And so you would have sort of locked in a good price in that sense, which I don't know.
00:21:16 ◼ ► At this point, I've been doing this for long enough that I feel like my apps have sort of settled into a very stable place.
00:21:22 ◼ ► And these scenarios where they would be dramatically worse off in three years tend to look more like large structural changes to the world,
00:21:32 ◼ ► which you can't predict, rather than just like the natural market forces that I've, you know, it's like I,
00:21:37 ◼ ► Pedometer++ is almost, was it 10 or 11 years old, I think now, you know, Widget Smith's up to four years old,
00:21:46 ◼ ► And these, you know, at a certain point, things do tend to settle into a groove, and you can kind of have some expectation.
00:21:51 ◼ ► And so in that sense, I just enjoy having the annuity, I'd rather have the money every year, rather than trying to, you know, sort of get it all up front.
00:22:00 ◼ ► And I think also, there's an element of a lot of these things that, and this is, I've only once gone down the road of exploring an acquisition.
00:22:12 ◼ ► And I think too, it didn't, it just didn't really align well with the way that I built my business and the way that I approach business, maybe,
00:22:21 ◼ ► where it was like I had some nice conversations with the sort of the initial mergers and acquisitions person who was like, I guess, the scout for trying to, you know, sort of find apps to buy.
00:22:31 ◼ ► But then it very quickly turned towards the more, you know, like the M&A lawyers version of things, and I hired a lawyer, and we went through it.
00:22:39 ◼ ► And it just turned into business in a way that I didn't enjoy, and that I found didn't feel particularly like I didn't feel at home in that I didn't feel comfortable, I didn't feel confident that I was making good choices.
00:22:51 ◼ ► And ultimately, I just like walked away because it ended up getting kind of nasty and specific in ways that I didn't enjoy.
00:22:57 ◼ ► And it's like, it's ultimately wasn't necessary, like, I could continue just making my apps and doing my work in that way, because I didn't build my business and structure it for that kind of an exit in a way that I think
00:23:08 ◼ ► there are people who get into business with the ultimate goal that they want an exit, they want to build this thing up.
00:23:17 ◼ ► And then it's like, you know, they're planting seeds in a field, they want it to grow, and then they want to harvest that and move on to the next field.
00:23:24 ◼ ► And that's not really my view. It's like, I think I have much more of a garden, I guess, a gardener's view in that where I want to every year continue to investing and growing and developing something and making it better and better.
00:23:37 ◼ ► And that model just is different than an acquisitions model. And it's a different mindset. And so, you know, at this point, it's the kind of thing where I don't expect to ever sell something that I've made other than a scenario where I feel like I've lost interest in it, you know, or I am retiring or moving on or my life sort of priorities or goals have changed, has shifted.
00:23:57 ◼ ► But, you know, the sort of short term financial benefit of it, it just doesn't really appeal versus just continuing to own the thing that I can continue to grow and nurture.
00:24:07 ◼ ► And then, you know, whatever after the multiple period into the future, continue to own and so it would have to be the kind of silly money kind of scenario, which, I mean, you never know, like you I wouldn't say you can never say never that, you know, someone shows up and says they want to pay you 20 times the annual profit of your apps for your apps.
00:24:24 ◼ ► And like saying no to that is a very true would be a very complicated thing. But the reality is that scenario is extraordinarily unlikely, I think. And so it's not necessary. Most of the time, it's going to be the kind of thing that you could much more reasonably wrap your arms around of like a two to three year multiple where for me, like I'll just keep doing what I'm doing and enjoy it.
00:24:44 ◼ ► But I know you've gone down the other side where you have actually sort of sold things or transition things on in various ways. So you have a set maybe of a slightly different perspective or maybe after those experiences. You've landed more where I am now.
00:24:55 ◼ ► Yeah, I mean, pretty much the latter. So, you know, I sold Instapaper and the magazine. The magazine I sold to Glenn Flashman, the editor for almost nothing because, frankly, it wasn't doing very well.
00:25:07 ◼ ► And he was creating most of the value at that point. And so I was going to just shut it down. And he said, I'll give it a shot. So I sold it to him for almost nothing. And so that was a good experience. Instapaper was more complicated.
00:25:19 ◼ ► You know, that was, I thought it needed a bigger staff and more resources to really compete in its market. Also, the money had been going down. You know, I was past my peak, I was past my prime.
00:25:29 ◼ ► And also I wanted to work on a podcast app instead. And so all those factors combined to convince me, all right, I think I will sell it. And that was my first sale. I was inexperienced. I structured the deal in such a way that I got money over time.
00:25:46 ◼ ► And that ended up screwing me, honestly. So I would honestly recommend if you're going to do this kind of thing, get your money up front. And, you know, contracts are not worth a lot. That was kind of a negative experience for me.
00:26:01 ◼ ► And that created a lot of negative emotions. Like for a while, I didn't use Instapaper because I was mad about how things went. And that was just, it was a very complicated situation that, mostly due to my own inexperience in getting that deal and negotiating that deal.
00:26:15 ◼ ► So I would say keep things simple and get your money up front. But even that kind of taught me maybe I don't want to sell my stuff. Maybe this is not the way for me.
00:26:24 ◼ ► And, you know, with Overcast, I've been fortunate that after its first few years, I landed on the subscription model, subscription plus ads model that I have now. It's a good business and it works and it makes money.
00:26:36 ◼ ► So a combination of it continuing to make decent money and also I continue to be interested in it and also there's nothing else I want to be building with that time. That combination has me sticking with Overcast for the foreseeable future.
00:26:51 ◼ ► Now any of the things could change. If it stops making money or if some amazing opportunity comes up that I want to work on instead, maybe something different will happen. But for the time being, I'm more in that annuity sense of like, I like working on this app. I don't want anyone else to work on it or ruin it or shut it down.
00:27:09 ◼ ► And I still continue to see a lot of potential in Overcast. Like, yeah, of course I get those emails from people who are like, "Hey, I'm interested in buying your app." And, you know, it's never anybody from like the podcast business. It's just, you know, these private equity people.
00:27:23 ◼ ► When you get down to like, what would they actually pay me for it? It would always, we don't even get that far, honestly. But the reason why is that usually my first response is, you know, "Well, you would have to pay me X number of figures."
00:27:36 ◼ ► And it's such an absurd price that they don't even respond usually. But the reality is like, you know, I keep it because it is worth more to me. And I think that Overcast's best days are not behind it. I think they're ahead.
00:27:54 ◼ ► I think there is still growth in this app. And so I think I can make more money continuing to run it myself than selling it to one of these companies, like you were saying earlier. So that's where I am right now. But again, like that could change.
00:28:07 ◼ ► And I don't fault anybody for accepting when a truck full of money backs up to their house and is like, "Hey, we want to buy your app and shut it down if you just, you know, do a little bit of soul selling and maybe come work for us." And that's, hey, that's fine. Like, if the money is right, like, everything is for sale for the right price for the most part.
00:28:25 ◼ ► So if the money was amazing, sure, I would sell Overcast. But I don't think it's worth that much to anyone else except me. And for the foreseeable future, I'm fine with that because I enjoy working on it and it's still doing well.
00:28:38 ◼ ► And I think an element of that is the reality of our apps' value to us exceeds its financial rewards. It is, I think, in some ways what we're both saying is in the sense of it isn't, you know, there's not this, it's like our businesses are worth three times the annual profits.
00:28:58 ◼ ► They're worth more than that to us. We're emotionally invested, we have, you know, lots of things built into these, we enjoy the process that we know that we've hit on something that succeeds.
00:29:09 ◼ ► And that value is unlikely to be paid for by someone who wanted to buy it. And so unless they're doing it for another reason, it's just not going to work out and isn't going to be worth pursuing. But you know, you never know, maybe eventually the truck gets big enough and, you know, like the same way.