Breaking it Down

  • $10 Million company (asset) sale / valuation
  • conservative 5x valuation
  • $2 million/year Annual Recurring Revenue
  • $167k/month

Breaking all of this down, now is figuring out the product to build to produce those numbers, or the service you could start to scale that to those monthly figures. Or the 1-time asset sale that could be sold for that 8figure amount.

Goal: To secure an 8 figure asset sale within 36 months

Ideas

Given I want this amount, I need a vehicle to get there. Here are some ideas.

1. Build a Course

With knowledge of software, building projects, climbing the developer hierarchy to senior and then lead, I have a lot of know how in this area. I have also done heavy versions of this in a past position I’ve had, and know how to ship something like this. Some initial thoughts here

Pros

  • I have very specific, and well paid knowledge that can be taught in the medium of a course well
  • I have social proof of this
  • Write once, sell a thousand times: once a make a good version of this, you can continue selling it as you don’t need to make additional changes to it (initially).

Cons

  • Takes a long time to build a course
  • Being a niche product, market size is limited
  • Being in tech, the material itself has the potential to be outdated quickly depending on how the market responds to various things

With all of that being said, this is still a solid opportunity and will need to consider it more.

2. Build a SaaS

Being a developer full time, making the jump into “indie hacker” is straight-forward (sounding). I finally both have some good ideas to build, and I’m skilled enough to build them from idea to shipped product.

Pros

  • I have a very niche skill set that can be used to build high leverage products
  • I have the potential to compete worldwide against other teams and products
  • Done correctly, infinite scale and sky’s the limit
  • Even if product fails, you still got better at your (current) main thing

Cons

  • Very time intensive
  • while building 1 thing, have to completely turn off outside world until v1 is shipped
  • Opportunity cost of the time to take to build, versus the potential payout
  • Me as a single person competing world-wide against other devs/teams/companies

3. Build an Agency

Not the web 2.0 kinda agencies, but now with AI in the mix, all of the things agencies used to do pre ChatGPT that can now be done differently, you can build agencies around these technologies for businesses.

Pros

  • Can ride the hype wave of AI (i.e. charging huge fees)
  • First mover advantage
  • Can make money learning on other people’s dime for 1-off projects

Cons

  • Least amount of skill transfer than other ideas. meaning, I (may) have to learn new skills and those skills may not help me in the main thing
  • Even having a successful agency, going to sell it the multiples are not as good as SaaS or some course info products

And Now?

With all of that being said, I think the direction now is to continue building and I realize for the next 6 months it’s just throwing spaghetti at the wall and seeing what sticks.

Putting in those reps of just shipping products, full finished products. Even if they’re small, just shipping (usable, nice looking) MVP’s is the direction that will yield the most results.

As of right now, I want to be shipping SaaS products because I think that gives me the highest leverage. In just attempting to build SaaS products, I think that also puts me in a good spot to make a course or agency about my learnings.

Going forward I am entering a new season…a season of building and heads down grinding mode like when I was learning to program almost a decade ago.

Stay tuned.