This is as misleading as those real estate shows that promise "no money down" or "other people's money" style financing. They bought 80% of a business at 0% APR for a set of 20 installment payments. They are funding the payments with the business' revenue--meaning they are not able to pocket that cash themselves, i.e., they're using their (business) income to pay the cost of the loan.
The other side of the story is interesting as well: <a href="https://medium.com/swlh/saas-7th-time-lucky-b971dae7d36" rel="nofollow">https://medium.com/swlh/saas-7th-time-lucky-b971dae7d36</a><p>Essentially, the former owner had no interest into maintaining the business (serial entrepreneur) and just likes to launch new ideas
This seems like a great deal for everyone involved!<p>I think the real takeaway here is that many entrepreneurs are not interested in running successful business. They'd rather be starting new things! So if you are good at running businesses there's a decent chance you can take over their business in return for letting them keep a lot of the profit. Everyone wins - the creator gets an income stream to support their future work and you get a business that's already working.
Same energy as all someone saying he bought a home for $0 by buying it with a mortgage and renting it out such that the mortgage is paid by the tenant.<p>It's completely fine saying you bought a business with $0 downpayment. But saying you bought it for $0 is just silly, you didn't. If you did, you could close down the business the same day and walk away from it. But you can't, because in fact you signed a contract for half a million in instalments. The article is nice but there was no need for the clickbait title.
One area I have wanted to play in, and started looking at before I ended up in my current job, was to seek out businesses where the owner wanted to sell because they struggled with the costs of scaling.<p>When I was running my consulting business, I can across several where the path to fixing this was obvious for me, and I offered people to fix their scaling challenge for a percentage of savings or a percentage of the business, but I was starting to look for businesses like this to outright purchase, as there were a number of owners who when faced with this just saw it as too complicated for them to want to deal with.<p>If I find myself back doing consulting again at some point, I'll likely revisit that, as so many people don't understand how to cut their hosting costs.
> we stumbled across Notify: a simple Shopify plugin that would pop up at the bottom of a website, displaying a purchase another customer had recently made.<p>Not only are these kind of pop ups incredibly annoying and an invasion of the purchaser’s privacy, they are also considered to be dark pattern.<p><a href="https://webtransparency.cs.princeton.edu/dark-patterns/" rel="nofollow">https://webtransparency.cs.princeton.edu/dark-patterns/</a> (See: Social Proof)
I don't know if this qualifies as a "dark pattern", but this kind of "social proof" feature that the article is about buying really is hostile to consumers and is nothing to be proud about buying.
Am I the only one who finds the initial email very unprofessional? Everything from the subject line, all lower case, even the closing words. I wouldn't have taken an email like that seriously or would have assumed it was a scam.
This sounds a lot like a seller financed deal. Hopefully the seller had a secured loan against those installment payments because in the event of default, at least the seller gets his/her company back.
> "Buying up small apps in the Google Chrome or Mac app store."<p>This is a focus of mine. I've recently acquired a Mac app and I have a hunch that there are a lot of small Mac apps producing small but reliable income.
Seems odd the previous owner accepted such a low monthly payment. I guess it required a lot of work? Or perhaps the owner felt the downside risk was substantially higher than it appears?
Reviews Meta is looking for a buyer [0,1].<p>I am not affiliated at all with them, but I use the website frequently and would hate to see it discontinued or purchased by someone malicious like The Great Suspender was.<p>0. <a href="https://reviewmeta.com" rel="nofollow">https://reviewmeta.com</a><p>1. <a href="https://reviewmeta.com/blog/successor-to-reviewmeta/" rel="nofollow">https://reviewmeta.com/blog/successor-to-reviewmeta/</a>
From one of his other articles he linked:<p>>Similar arbitrages exist everywhere. My old roommate for a while was buying Toyota Prius’ and paying people minimum wage to drive them around taking Uber rides. He'd then take the difference between what Uber paid him and what he paid his drivers… often 5-10k a month.<p>Is this legal?
Most veterinarians who buy practices buy their businesses "for free". There is usually a large bank loan and a small seller loan. The deal is structured to pay a decent salary and cover the debt in 10-15 years.<p>Sure doesn't feel free, though, to have a personal guarantee on a gigantic loan.
A friend did something similar: he bought a hosting business and paid with cash the business made.<p>Totally licit.<p>It was a similar case: the founders just wanted to pivot and do something else after >5 years in the business.