🗞 What's New: What people don't tell you about exits

Many bootstrapped founders are looking for more resources and support when it comes to exits:

• You don't need to work full-time on a project to create a business that you can sell. Learn why below!
• Using high-quality images matters a ton in design, and you don't have to spend a fortune to get them, either. Check out this quick guide to designing amazing websites, with a special focus on choosing colors.
• Founder Yi Lin graduated from Berkeley, landed a job at Amazon, and later, launched GreenBooks. But his battle with bipolar disorder intensified, costing him his home, marriage, and health. Here's why he believes in indie hacking more than ever, and why he won't give up.

Want to share something with over 90,000 indie hackers? Submit a section for us to include in a future newsletter. —Channing

👋 What People Don't Tell You about Exits

by Alexis Grant

Last year, I sold a content business. It was a website and community for writers that I’d built over the previous seven years. This was my second time selling a business, yet I still felt like I was figuring out many of the pieces on the fly. I didn’t work with a broker or M&A advisor because I had multiple offers from competitors in the space. I did have a great lawyer, and also hired a valuations consultant to get feedback on running a bidding process.

I left that experience feeling good about the sale, but also knowing that those of us who sell businesses typically need more resources and support. That’s why I chose to focus on this niche for my next media company, They Got Acquired.

Here are the lessons that I learned throughout the process of selling my own company. I hope they are helpful for other founders who want to sell a business one day!

You don’t have to work full-time on a project to create a business you can sell

I built The Write Life as a side project over the years. I never worked on it full-time, and I never relied on it for more than bonus income.

When I launched it in 2013, I was running a small content marketing agency. Our team grew The Write Life just like we grew blogs for other companies, investing some of our client revenue into building the site.

Later, I transitioned into a leadership role at a startup, and had two kids in three years. I had no time or energy for a side project, so I hired an editor to keep The Write Life running.

Even after leaving my startup role in 2019, and fiddling more with SEO for The Write Life, I still only put a few hours each month into the company.

While the site never had my attention full-time, it had a few other things going for it:

• High-quality content.
• Aged domain (2013) and high domain rating (DR) backlinks.
• Solid reputation in the writing space.

These elements made the site a valuable asset that competitors in the space were eager to get their hands on, even though it was “just” a side project.

Exits can be meaningful even if they’re “only” six figures

Contrary to what Silicon Valley suggests, you don’t have to sell a company for hundreds of millions of dollars to be successful. Selling for six or seven figures can be incredibly meaningful for a founder, especially those who bootstrap and retain all ownership.

Of course, running a profitable business without ever selling is a huge success too, one that we don’t celebrate enough!

I sold The Write Life for mid six figures. It’s not never-work-again money, but it was still life changing. It allowed me to take time off to explore what to build next without worrying about my family’s finances, and now I’m using some of those proceeds to fund my next startup.

That next startup, They Got Acquired, celebrates six, seven, and eight figure sales. Not only are they more attainable than the massive sales typically covered in mainstream tech publications, but for many of us, they’re also more desirable.

Building with this goal in mind will allow you to bootstrap, stay lean, and maintain a work-life balance that feels good. The hustle mentality isn’t required.

There are lots of different ways to build a startup, and there are also lots of ways to exit. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that your journey has to look like someone else’s.

Multiples aren’t set in stone

M&A firms and marketplaces often share common “multiples” for different types of businesses. That refers to the multiple of revenue for which the business sells.

Content businesses, for example, tend to sell for 2.5x-4x multiples. For example, if you had a $100K ARR business, and you sold the business for $300K, you landed a 3x multiple. Here’s a summary of recent multiples from the founder of FE International, a brokerage firm.

Here's the caveat: Multiples are only a guide. If you sell to a strategic buyer, one that can combine your business with theirs to increase the value of both businesses, far greater multiples are within reach.

If I had set my expectations for a sale at the level of common multiples, I would’ve drastically underestimated the true value of my business. In practice, your business is worth whatever a buyer is willing to pay for it. And that might be more than what a formula suggests.

Each of these insights can be useful for anyone selling a business, but they’re particularly helpful for those of us who bootstrap, work on more than one project at once, and generally approach things with an indie hacker mindset.

What are your top tips for a successful exit? Share your experience below!

Discuss this story.

📰 In the News

from the Volv newsletter by Priyanka Vazirani

👗 Fashion is using blockchain to usher in a new era of style expression.

💻 The former file sharing site LimeWire is planning a crypto rebirth.

💰 Aramco may soon take over Apple as the world's most valuable company.

📈 Blockchain tech could add almost $2T to the global economy.

🧐 Tinder users can now run background checks on their matches.

Check out Volv for more 9-second news digests.

🛠 Five Design Tips for Creating Amazing Websites

by Craig Barber

I’ve generated over $2M in my career as a website designer, designing websites for some of the biggest brands in the world. My clients include PayPal, Sony, Nestle, Marks & Spencer, and Samsung.

Below, I’m going to share five tips to help you create amazing website designs!

1. Use only three colors

When picking your color palette, I recommend using just three colors. One color for your background. One color for your typography. One color for your accents. (By accents, I mean things like buttons.) Check out any popular, well-designed website. Most of them follow this general rule.

You can also use variations of your three colors. For example, when I use black, I do use some grays. But rarely do I introduce more than three completely different colors into the design.

There will be times when you can’t pick your own colors, like when you have specific brand colors to work with. Great! Just use black, white, and a single brand color for your highlights.

2. Use just one font

When choosing fonts for your website design, I recommend using just one classic typeface.

Your font family must include a number of different weights. For example: Heavy, Bold, Medium, and Light. To achieve variation and hierarchy in your designs, you can change up the size and weight of your font.

It is super important to select a high-quality font. It must read well in long copy, like in blog posts. I recommend using classic fonts like Helvetica and Poppins.

If you must use a brand font, use it just for the main headers. Then, use your single chosen font for the rest of your website designs!

3. Make everything modular

The average website design is going to be viewed on dozens of different devices. Your design must be able to flex and stack, and still look good. This means using a modular design.

In a modular design, every element that you create should be self-contained. Whenever you’re laying out your page elements, always be working with independent, separate modules. How is your design going to flex vertically and horizontally? How will the elements look when stacked on top of each other?

Don’t use intricate design elements that span across the whole page. They may look fantastic on desktop, but often fail completely on mobile.

Design using modules for today’s internet.

4. Use high-quality images

I like to compare website design to cooking. To create amazing food, you must use amazing ingredients. The same applies to website design.

Don’t cheap out on imagery! Make sure that you're using high-quality photography, illustration, or video in your designs. I’ve seen amazing websites bogged down by crappy stock imagery.

You don’t have to spend a fortune, either. There are some fantastic free stock photography sites out there.

It’s about spending the necessary amount of time and money to find those perfect images. Do it. It’s worth it.

5. Use your main color in your imagery

This is a subtle one, but it works wonders. When choosing photography or illustrations for your designs, incorporate one of your main colors into your imagery.

For example, if one of your colors is pink, introduce that exact same color pink into your imagery.

You may have to edit your images to incorporate your main color into them. Ideally, it should be the exact same color, or as close as possible.

When you do this, you’ll find that your design has a consistent feel to it.

Wrapping up

I know that some of these frameworks are restrictive. That’s the beauty of them! Restrictions encourage creativity.

To this day, I still employ all of these frameworks when I’m designing a website. Give them a shot, especially if you’re just starting out. Stick to them, and you’ll be well on your way to creating amazing designs.

PS: I’m creating a brand new course for digital product designers. Click here to join my launch list today.

Do you follow a set of design rules? Share your thoughts below!

Discuss this story.

👥 Audience Defined

from The Steal Club newsletter by Alex Llull

aUdience = Unfair advantage

An audience is an unfair advantage in business and in life. It helps your ideas to reach more people.

Subscribe to The Steal Club for more.

💪 Yi Lin Won't Give Up on His Dreams

by Yi Lin

Hi indie hackers! I'm Yi Lin, founder of GreenBooks, a personal finance app. I was on track early in life. I studied computer science at Berkeley, and got a job at Amazon as a software engineer after graduation. I was paid more than my peers. It all seemed bright and rosy.

Here's how things veered off track, and why I will never give up!

The background

I was never satisfied with being a software engineer. I loved design, and I wanted to create products. So, I quit my job and became a freelancer. GreenBooks was a web app initially, but after observing Mint’s success, I pivoted to a more modest goal: A simple personal finance app for Mac. It was called Savings at the time.

As luck would have it, I launched my app the day that the Apple App Store opened, and I made $4K that very first month. I was excited. It seemed like this indie hacking thing wasn’t that hard after all!

My excitement didn’t last long, though. Sales dwindled, and I struggled because I was busy building. I wasn't marketing or adjusting to the market’s trends.

A new challenge

Soon, life hit me with a brick. I was 32, and I was struggling with bipolar disorder. It's a mental disorder marked by extremely high and low moods. My wife was fed up with me and told me to leave. In a matter of weeks, I lost my home, my marriage, and my health.

The years that followed were a long road to recovery. I was always working on GreenBooks, but that wasn’t my biggest issue. My biggest issue was trying to get my life under control. Sometimes my biggest achievement was being able to get out of bed and take a shower.

A lot of people in our industry are secretly battling with mental illness. It’s important to know yourself well. For me, I know that I need to have the freedom to work on what I want, when I want. That’s why I left the corporate world behind.

Turning tables

Last year, at the spur of the moment, I emailed Setapp to talk about my app:

They liked it, and the initial launch generated more profit than I’ve had in years. All told, I made $3.5K last month, and my intention is to build on that momentum. Sometimes, you just have to take action. Without action, nothing ever happens. Most of the attempts will fail, but the ones that stick can make a big difference.

There are times when I am dissatisfied with where I am. But the truth is, we all have our own journeys in life. All of my life’s experience added up to a story that is unique to me. I may not have as much success as I wanted in my field of work, but thanks to my experiences, I now have experience in other areas, such as mental health recovery. Now, I spend a significant part of my time volunteering for a local mental health organization.

My story is not finished yet. Call me an optimist, but I still believe in my dreams. When I feel lost, I often reread this passage from “The Alchemist” about a person’s Personal Legend:

I will never let that mysterious force take hold of my life. You shouldn't either!

Discuss this story.

🐦 The Tweetmaster's Pick

by Tweetmaster Flex

I post the tweets indie hackers share the most. Here's today's pick:

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Special thanks to Jay Avery for editing this issue, to Gabriella Federico for the illustrations, and to Alexis Grant, Priyanka Vazirani, Craig Barber, Alex Llull, and Yi Lin for contributing posts. —Channing