I'm part of the team that bought Sortfolio.<p>We'll be doing a more formal announcement and proper introductions soon, but there are a couple of things we wanted to add to this discussion.<p>First, we are thrilled to be at the helm of Sortfolio. We have a lot of experience in the area and are excited about the plans we have for it.<p>Second, the guys at 37signals were a pleasure to work with. They were open, transparent, and are committed to the success of Sortfolio.<p>We'll be doing the full transition in the weeks to come. Once we are all done, we'll post a proper retrospective and fill everyone in on the details.<p>We can't wait to share more!
There were so many unanswered questions in the Flippa posting and the HN "peanut gallery" that it makes me feel like 37signals was never looking for new buyers.<p>Perhaps they already had a buyer in mind and just needed some negotiation leverage or wanted some free publicity.<p>I imagine people who were genuinely interested in bidding for Sortfolio feel a bit cheated with this announcement coming out of the blue.
I really don't understand the negativity around here for this, is it really that hard to believe that somebody paid good money for a profitable business? Now clearly 27 Signals have moved slightly from the original flippa terms, they are not imposing that customers re-ender details which I imagine was a show stopper for any potential buyer.<p>The subtext to some of the comments here suggesting that its all made up, is really odd! Why would 37 Signals even need to waste ours or their time making this up? They run Basecamp!! they really don't need to impress us with selling a relatively small business! its completely beneath them!<p>Instead of poking holes in this story, we really should be celebrating it. Building a business of this size is not that hard, a few hundred customers and a solid model and by solid model i mean, Charging for your product is all it takes. If this doesn't serve as inspiration to us all then i don't know what will.
I don't know if they ended up being the acquiring party, but one of the people seriously considering the purchase reached out privately to my company (a Sortfolio customer), with a few short questions. It was a polite email that made it clear they were looking for opportunities to improve the service (as well as address the original concerns about credit card info not carrying over), so I was happy to provide my feedback. I'm happy Sortfolio has been acquired and plan to stick with the service.
Wow! From DHH in the comments, it appears it did sell for the full asking price. Very curious to know more about the new owners. Buying a business outright and then running it isn't a scenario that gets covered very often on the startup behind-the-scenes circuit.<p>Here's hoping we get some follow-up posts about how it goes for the new owners on SVN.
<i>That’s correct. Customers will not have to re-enter credit cards or do anything. This is pain free for customers.</i><p>This is good. Sortfolio may not have been worth the $480,000 otherwise. I imagine that requiring customers to re-enter their info would cause an immediate drop in the number of paying customers.
I think 37s is well within their rights to do this however they wanted. But still feels lame, how it all went down.<p>Current sortfolio customers got told clearly, 37s doesn't care about their business. Users of other ones of 37s' 'second-tier' products got a warning shot: your tool could be shut down or sold off any day. 37s hasn't revealed the new buyer, and appear to be hands off from here on out.<p>Just seems like a lot of value has been lost here. I think a better way to go would have been trying to find a strategic partner, and taking a longterm equity stake. Or bundling up Sortfolio, the 37s Job Board and The Deck into a new advertising company, with a CEO who will grow it. Something where the handoff can grow the legacy, instead of 37s washing their hands.<p>Instead Sortfolio lives, 37s got their money, but the whole thing feels icky. my 2 cents, no conspiracy theory
Man. Is it jealousy or just blind hate?<p>When I first read their blog post I was quite interested. I mean, here was a profitable business built by a well known company.<p>The only really unanswered question was whether or not existing customers would need to re-enter their payment information. I asked the question and recieved a prompt response.<p>I'm sure I would have had more questions if I could have convinced my partners to pony up their share of cash. But in the end, the deal wasn't for us.<p>Congratulations on the sale and congratulations to the new buyers!
I don't know why everyone thinks the company was overvalued. $480k seemed like a steal to me and if we weren't in the process of purchasing another business when I saw this deal come across the Internet, we would've submitted an offer too.
Does anyone have an explanation why it wasn't possible to sell Sortfolio when it was more popular, but suddenly at the deadline the deal materialized at the price that it was announced long time ago?<p>According to Compete.com, in the last 12 months Sortfolio traffic decreased more than 75% (4 times):<p><a href="http://siteanalytics.compete.com/sortfolio.com/" rel="nofollow">http://siteanalytics.compete.com/sortfolio.com/</a>
I would like to see how this developed from [1] to this sale.
It seemed improbable back then.<p>[1]: <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4087116" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4087116</a>
I was really, really skeptical that they'd be able to get full price. But sure enough, DHH responded to my comment and confirmed that they did. That's pretty amazing.<p>Now we'll see how the site does once it is no longer associated with 37s. Maybe we'll be surprised again. it would be great to see Sortfolio thrive in the long-term.
Am I the only one here on HN that finds the whole 37Signals vs HN battle entertaining? DHH makes a direct (sometimes arrogant) comment, HN jumps all over him, Jason "clarifies", and HN hugs Jason. DHH and Jason seem to have contrasting personalities which is probably an important contributing factor to their success. DHH says what he thinks, whether we agree with him or not isn't the point. Jason calms the storm. I'm happy for the Sortfolio customers who see value in the service continuing. I'm also glad that 37Signals shared at least some of the details behind the sale and the process. But most of all, I'm entertained!
I'd still be interested to know the motivation for their process. If someone made a firm offer of $450K, it doesn't make any sense to shut down the service just because they didn't meet the $480K requirement. That would flush $450K down the toilet. The obvious solution is an auction, not an ultimatum.<p>I'm generally a defender of 37signals' methods, but it seems they didn't think this one through. They're lucky they found a buyer—it saved them a lot of embarrassment.
Reading all these comments I feel sorry for 37S. I guess this is the downside of having a successful blog - people get to have an opinion about you.<p>37S gets to sell Sortfolio in whatever fashion and to whomever they want. Oh man... you guys should try to rent an apt in NYC.
One should probably view this in context of 37's other businesses. Spending lots of time and effort to squeeze few extra dollars from website sale may not be worth it if your core business is something else and generating much higher profits.
<i>37S: You need to pay us $480K. We advertised this price publicly and kind of went on and on about sticking to it.<p>Buyer: Umm ok, how about we pay your $480K publicly and you quietly give us $430K in 37 Signal's stock?<p>37S: Deal.</i><p>In all seriousness I'm a big admirer of 37 Signal's and I like their equity grants concept[1] for employees. This above is meant as a joke.<p>[1] <a href="http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2987-an-alternative-to-employee-optionsequity-grants/" rel="nofollow">http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2987-an-alternative-to-employ...</a>
Oh man. What's with all the conspiracy nonsense? 37 Signals have been nothing but transparent through this entire process. Hopefully these HN comments are not an accurate sample of what most people are thinking.