10 Lessons from Selling a Company for $10m

I have an exciting update to share with all of you!

My earnout period of Tweet Hunter and Taplio is officially over.

When we sold both of these products in 2022, we did quite a unique deal with our earnouts unlocking as the product evolves.

In less than 2 years since the acquisition — we hit 4 out of 5 targets. (and hit 80% of the 5th)

It was a wild ride!

From immense love from users to fierce competition. From innovative marketing to facing the Twitter API issues.

I’m glad it all worked out in the end.

I’ve learned a lot. All of those lessons will stay with me forever and will be applied when I build more stuff (Currently working on Typeframes and Revid as my next projects)

Here are my top learnings from this journey:

1/ There are things you’re bad at and that’s ok 📈

For a long time, we wanted to launch a productized ghostwriting agency.

I know now that I suck at running an agency. Yes, I am missing out but I will focus on things I am good at.

2/ Solve the hard thing first thing in the morning 🕧

It’s easy to bury one’s head in the sand, they might be quiet for a while but they will come back a few weeks later and punch you in the face.

Do it now.

3/ Virality is not growth 🎉

We went viral a lot of times during the journey.

But that never even came close to the impact other channels had on our revenue.

4/ Launching is overrated (but not really!) 🚀

Launching is overrated. That’s launching once.

But launching every month is underrated. Find ways to launch something every month and stay relevant.

5/ Hire less, but hire the best 👨‍💻

A+ players are hard to find. They’re A+ for a reason.

If you vet the talent and hire the right people, you don’t need a massive team to build something of value.

A few key people > A big, fragmented team.

6/ Network effect is real 👀

Who uses your product is sometimes more important than how many people use it or how much they pay.

Money is not the only way you get paid.  

Try to get power users on your app as soon as you can, the benefits from this are often invisible but huge.

7/ Shipping = Growing 🚢

I've had the opportunity to see the backends of many successful products. If there’s 1 common thing:

They ship a lot of stuff. And very often.

How many updates and improvements you get out there indicates how much you grow.

There won’t be a point when your product is ‘complete‘.

8/ My top customer acquisition channels 💰

Nothing to explain here:

1/ Social media
2/ SEO 

They are by far my winner channels.

Social media for the people who know you.
SEO for the people that don’t.

9/ Stay hands-on ⚡

I was actively involved in the coding of the product till the very last day.

The day you stop working on it is the day you stop growing.

It’s your product, and it’s your responsibility to make it better.

10/ We were highly unfocused. But succeeded anyways 🏆

So know that a lot of this advice may not apply to you.

You have your own journey to travel. Your own lessons to learn!

I hope you found these lessons valuable!

What happens now that the Tweet Hunter and Taplio journey ends?

I keep building! As always, working on new projects, and exploring new tech.

You can DM me on X (Twitter) @tibo_maker or reply to this email to share anything with me!

Always eager to meet people doing and building cool stuff 🚀

Tweet of the week

Imagine your life being a movie. And start acting like the main character.

That’s it for this week!

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See you next Thursday!

Keep building

Tibo 💻