Famous-deal teardowns
5 famous small software sales, and the number none of them published
Short answer: we took well-known small software sales whose sellers published the price and revenue, and ran our listing rules on the public numbers only. The pattern: the published figures almost never include profit or churn, and the biggest price driver in several deals was a platform or audience dependency.
Based on public figures only. This page applies our published rules to numbers the seller or press reported publicly, linked below. We had no access to the business's accounts. A flag here means a number was not published or points to a risk worth asking about; it is not a claim that anything was wrong with the business or the deal. Figures may be rounded or out of date. Spotted an error? Email [email protected] and we will correct it.
The deals
- Baremetrics (2020): a $4M sale at about 2.65× ARR.
- Black Magic (2023): a $128K sale below one year of revenue.
- Xnapper (2024): $150K for a ~$4K/month one-time-purchase app.
- Potion (2023): $300K for a $6.3K MRR Notion website builder.
- GameWidget and Habits Garden (2023): two micro-startups sold for $4,300 and $10,000.
How we chose them
Only deals with a publicly reported price and revenue figure from the seller or a reporter citing the seller. We skipped well-known sales with undisclosed prices (for example, deals announced only as "seven figures").
FAQ
What multiple did these small SaaS businesses sell for?
On the public figures, from about 0.76× annual revenue (Black Magic, after a platform shock) to about 4.5× (a tiny $80-MRR app), with Baremetrics at about 2.65× ARR and Potion at about 4×. These are revenue multiples; profit was rarely published.