Famous-deal teardown · 2023
Potion sold for 4× ARR on 2 hours a week. Here is what a buyer should still ask
Short answer: Clean operations and steady growth can earn a strong multiple. The flags are about what was not published (profit, churn) and one platform dependency, not about anything wrong.
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 Figures may be rounded or out of date.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
| Price | $300,0001 |
|---|---|
| Revenue at sale | $6,300 MRR1 |
| Customers | More than 500 paying1 |
| Traffic | About 20,000 website visits a month1 |
| Owner time | About 2 hours a week after automation1 |
| Age | About 2 years; sold via Acquire.com, two months from listing to close1 |
What follows from them
| Price ÷ ARR | About 4.0× ($300K ÷ $75.6K) |
|---|---|
| Average revenue per customer | Under about $13 a month ($6,300 ÷ 500+) |
Our arithmetic on the public figures. Revenue multiples, not profit multiples, unless stated.
Flags the public numbers raise
- MEDIUM Platform dependence: Potion is built on top of Notion and pulls content from it, so Notion's API and product decisions are a dependency.
- MEDIUM No churn figure: No churn figure in the public reports, for a low-priced subscription where churn matters most.
- MEDIUM No profit figure: Profit was not published; with zero employees margin was likely high, but that is an assumption to verify, not a fact.
- MEDIUM Multiple above the typical range: About 4× ARR is high for a $75K-ARR micro-SaaS compared with the 2–3× annual-profit asks in our own benchmarks (a different basis: revenue vs profit). Ask what justified it.
What looks clean
- Low owner time (about 2 hours a week) and zero staff, stated publicly.
- Diversified customer base (500+).
- The seller named the hardest step: transferring the Stripe account.
The buyer's lesson
Clean operations and steady growth can earn a strong multiple. The flags are about what was not published (profit, churn) and one platform dependency, not about anything wrong. Run the same rules on a listing you are looking at with the free checker.
FAQ
Do these flags mean the Potion 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
- They Got Acquired, “He built a SaaS for Notion in public and sold for $300K”, 14 Dec 2023, https://theygotacquired.com/saas/potion-acquired-by-bruno-morency/, read 16 October 2026.
All famous-deal teardowns · Live listing teardowns · General information, not advice.