An Acquisition Marketplace built with No-Code with $3,000 MRR

Katt here from No-Code Exits.

In this week's issue Stephen Campbell, founder of Tiny Acquisitions, breaks down:

• 🕺 Becoming an internet entrepreneur
• 🩹 Launching a market place to solve his own problem
• 💰 His business model to grow to $3K MRR
• 🏄‍♀️ The impact of getting #1 on Hacker News
• 🚪 His advice for building to sell

Enjoy:

An internet entrepreneur is born

Stephen Campbell decided one day to leave his Chemical Engineering job at a process plant in Jamaica to pursue his dream of making money online.

After one year of dabbling in domain names, Wordpress site design and a 8 month stint as a remote customer care rep he eventually discovered No-Code in August 2020. With 0 coding experience he really enjoyed these logic based tools and he signed up for Bubble’s Immerse Program.

The project that got everything started

With everything he learned Stephen started to build Virtual Ghost Writer. During his Wordpress work he had a lot of challenges with writing copy for different websites so that is what inspired him to build this GPT-3 microsaas (this was in 2020). It did bring success ($2500 in revenue, $200 MRR and a list of 5,000 subscribers) but also some realisations. Stephen recognized he was not the right person to bring the product to the next level ($10K MRR) and he did need cash that time rather than later on in the product’s life.

He was also not interested in partnerships, funding or employees because he preferred the flexibility of solopreneurship. So that is when he considered an exit as a good option.

But that exit was easier said then done

By building in public Stephen hoped he would receive organically an offer but it never came. So he asked around on Twitter and discovered MicroAcquire.

Stephen listed Virtual Ghost Writer for $25,000 and was impressed with the onboarding. It resulted in around 60 inquiries but never a meaningful offer and a lot of ghosting.

The big eye opener

He started to think that Virtual Ghost Writer may be competing in a space where the buyers were looking for something in a category that it was not qualified to be in. Maybe the buyers were looking for projects that were more valuable and successful and were just not interested in acquiring an app of this small size.

Stephen thought that there was a market below that of MicroAcquire; a market for indie makers, no-coders and creators who are not looking for these life-changing exits but for exits significant enough to feel that it is in line with the invested time.

So he built it himself

Stephen started building the first version of Tiny Acquisitions with Bubble. He used a canvas from Airdev for the webpage and started building all the workflows and automated email system for user notifications with convertkit and sendgrid.

Of course he listed Virtual Ghost Writer on Tiny Acquisitions. Only a few days after the launch… it was acquired! He solved his own problem. This gave him the validation to keep working on it.

Launch Mode: On

Stephen launched Tiny Acquisitions on HackerNews and it reached #1 on the front page. This resulted in a lot of sign-ups, 88 listed projects and he was approached by a journalist for an article in Business Insider. Later he launched Tiny Acquisitions on Product Hunt. Here it became Product of the day #3 and again lots of visibility.

He build in public, posted a lot of articles on Reddit, started a newsletter, setup Google ad campaigns but also started to focus on SEO. He started a blog and did a lot of link building through interviews & mentions.

But word of mouth kept playing a vital role. Stephen says “The thing about acquisition marketplaces is that successful acquisitions pulls both sides: sellers & buyers. We always need to prove that projects are being sold and buyers & sellers are happy. So we capture a lot of leads and then through our newsletter we target both sides through carefully crafted messaging.”

But what about the money

The platform is free to sign up, but there's a premium service for buyers to see project metrics, contact makers, make offers and buy projects instantly. There are three tiers:

• Premium lifetime: $997
• Premium annually: $199
• Premium bi-annualy: $149

In March 2023 Stephen reached $3,000 MRR and 10,000 subscribers on his email list.

How to Build to Sell

There is no better Build to Sell expert out there, so let’s finish up with 3 tips Stephen shared:

Use a custom domain email address to setup accounts

In stead of using a personal email or an email related to other projects. Like that it is easier to transfer everything to the buyer.

Have a pre-recorded video walk-through of how everything works

If you get more detailed questions it will save you a lot of time if you can just share the link to this video

Build in Public from the very beginning

Being transparent helps with building trust but also who knows if the potential buyer is somewhere in your audience.

Browse and filter through more stories from non-tech founders making money with No-Code