Slashdot Mirror
Finding Someone To Manage Selling a Software Company?
rrrrw22 writes "My company has spent the last year developing a framework for creating games on Facebook, Myspace, and Twitter. While we had originally planned to release the product to the public and take a percentage of the revenue, we have realized that we can make more money by selling the application to a funded company entering the social gaming space. Our problem is we don't have many other contacts in the social gaming space and would like to find someone to manage selling the company for us (in exchange for a percentage of the sale.) Where can we go about finding someone with the skills and contacts to sell a product like this? What experiences have others had trying to sell a company that we can learn from?"
Translated to truth from euphemism.
We started a company to try to get rich off the back of other websites. After investing all of our personal money we have realized that we will never get it back and we're tired of working 80+ hours a week for nothing and we know we will never make a dime.
We're looking for a sucker to do all the work to try to sell our craptastic software "company" that has never sold a single line of code and attempt to get some of our money back.
If you're a small self-funded company, this isn't really at the level of specialized firms or agents specializing in acquisitions. It sounds like you fit in to standard venture-capitalist funding, which is usually aimed at eventually being acquired anyway. Often the VC firm will handle trying to sell the firm to someone bigger, when they think they can do so. However, your guess that you can be bought for a nice sum right now may or may not be something the VCs you can find will agree with. You might have better odds if you have multiple scenarios, like what you could do with another 6-12 months of funding.
This is partly because VCs are already in the business of evaluating "is this company worth anything (now or potentially), and who is it worth something to?" Most larger companies are wary of just buying unknown small firms, because they have no real way of evaluating that--- it's more often a multi-tier thing where the un-funded firm gets funded by a VC initially, then a larger firm buys from the VC.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
If you have to turn to "Ask Slashdot" for what's likely THE most important decision your business could make (sale), then you really have no business farming this out to someone you've just met.
Believe it or not, Slashdot is a rather poor place for high-level business strategy (I know! I thought slashdot knew everything!). I don't know much about selling a company, but I do know a little about risk. If you really don't have the skills internally to do this yourself, there's an ENORMOUS risk of looking outside the company to find someone with these skills. If you don't have the skills to do this yourself, how are you going to know who's qualified to make such a big decision? How are you going to know if they're doing a good job? Put into simple terms, what's your expected gain in value from selling the company vs. selling your product? Now think about that in terms of hiring the wrong sales guy.
The thing is, you can always sell the company later. If you've demonstrated a viable sales strategy, your company is going to be that much more easy to sell, and worth more money.
AccountKiller
Its out in public now at http://www.appainter.com/
We've had severial successful games on the framework, so it is proven:
http://apps.facebook.com/thesummoning/
http://apps.facebook.com/hammerfall/
http://apps.facebook.com/bandbattle/
Total our games have about 6 million users.
How much revenue do they generate?
AH!
1) you can block the updates from showing.
2) they're YOUR friends, motherfucker. stop associating with idiots?
It seems that others might be interested in any revenue that is generated
http://mercuralis.deviantart.com/journal/23000665/