Famous-deal teardown · 2023
$80 MRR sold for $4,300: what tiny software products are really worth
Short answer: At this size the multiple swings widely (here about 1.9× to 4.5× revenue) because a buyer is paying for code, a domain and time saved as much as for revenue. Price it as a build-versus-buy decision.
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 Figures may be rounded or out of date.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 publicly reported numbers
| GameWidget | $80 MRR, sold for $4,300 (March 2023)1 |
|---|---|
| Habits Garden | $450 MRR, sold for $10,000 (October 2023)1 |
| Where buyers came from | One from Twitter (building in public), one from Acquire.com1 |
What follows from them
| GameWidget price ÷ ARR | About 4.5× ($4,300 ÷ $960) |
|---|---|
| Habits Garden price ÷ ARR | About 1.9× ($10,000 ÷ $5,400) |
Our arithmetic on the public figures. Revenue multiples, not profit multiples, unless stated.
Flags the public numbers raise
- MEDIUM Few paying customers: At $80 and $450 MRR, the paying customer base is necessarily small, so a few cancellations move revenue a lot.
- MEDIUM No profit figure: Profit and costs were not published.
- MEDIUM No churn figure: No churn figures were published.
What looks clean
- Both sales are tiny, fully disclosed and show that sub-$500 MRR products do sell.
The buyer's lesson
At this size the multiple swings widely (here about 1.9× to 4.5× revenue) because a buyer is paying for code, a domain and time saved as much as for revenue. Price it as a build-versus-buy decision. Run the same rules on a listing you are looking at with the free checker.
FAQ
Do these flags mean the GameWidget and Habits Garden deal was bad?
No. They show which questions the public numbers leave open. The buyer had access we did not, and may well have answered each one.
Where do the figures come from?
Only from the public sources listed below, mostly the seller's own announcement. We did not contact either party.
Sources
- Marc Lou, “I sold 2 micro startups in 2023—here's what I learned”, Indie Hackers, 30 Oct 2023, https://www.indiehackers.com/post/i-sold-2-micro-startups-in-2023-heres-what-i-learned-BweKpXLr8McUA2GDNp6W, read 16 October 2026.
All famous-deal teardowns · Live listing teardowns · General information, not advice.