7 ms·

Sortfolio lives

101 points by gr366 14y ago

ForrestN 14y ago
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. Here's hoping we get some follow-up posts about how it goes for the new owners on SVN.
- dhh 14y ago
  Yes, despite the HN peanut gallery's perception of the world, there is actually a market for profitable businesses. It's surely less exciting than selling your no-revenue photo service for a billion dollars, but that's ok. We'll be sure to follow the life of Sortfolio after the sale.
  - ForrestN 14y ago
    Excellent, thanks. We hear so much the genesis of businesses but this phase of a business' life is fascinating too. Congratulations.
  - blake8086 14y ago
    That is very interesting! What research went into discovering that there is a market for profitable businesses? This really shatters the idea that the point of business is not to make money.
  - larrys 14y ago
    I'd love a post on how the price was set at 480k and why specifically you weren't willing to sell for anything less than that figure. Why you drew that line in the sand. Must have been more going on here than meets the eye. If I had to guess I'd would say that the people who bought the site had offered 480k but you didn't want to say that you had a solid offer for a certain amount. Speculating that you told them you would sell to them at that price if a better offer didn't come in. This seems to dovetail with the somewhat cavalier attitude of previous posts and 37signals principals HN comments. "despite the HN peanut gallery's perception of the world, there is actually a market for profitable businesses." I've bought and sold several businesses both as the business owner and as a go between (collecting a commission for the sale of a business).
    - dhh 14y ago
      Yeah, you got us figured out. We had an offer, sat on it, invented this story to see if we could get more, and played the world for a fool. BUT YOU BUSTED US. OH NOOOOES! Or, of course, the simpler explanation: We thought the site was worth at least 2x the previous year's take. And if we didn't get that, it wasn't worth our time to deal with the transaction.
      - larrys 14y ago
        I have no idea what I said to get a response like that. There is nothing wrong with what I proposed as a reason and it certainly doesn't rise to the level of "played the world for a fool." in any way. "We thought the site was worth at least 2x the previous year's take. And if we didn't get that, it wasn't worth our time to deal with the transaction." "it wasn't worth our time to deal with the transaction." Your attitude is a total outlier. Enjoy your arrogance. You've got plenty of years to go to see how that works going forward.
        mnicole 14y ago
        Don't take it too harshly, the site is the equivalent of the web design listings on CraigsList without the extra clicks.
        taylort 14y ago
        And DHH is not exactly known for his tact.
        mikescar 14y ago
        If I was being called out as a liar after being very public about a business deal, I would lose my sense of tact also. Seriously, how much of the hate is from folks that will never have this opportunity, wouldn't do it the same way even if they did, and just want to complain?
        14y ago
  - citricsquid 14y ago
    uh, you are aware the majority of negativity and questioning about the asking price was because you did not at any point answer whether or not billing information (and subscriptions) would be kept, even when people on the Flippa auction requested this information? If you'd said from the start this was the case you'd have got many more bids, on HN alone I saw many comments from people stating they would bid if this was the case. Maybe I missed something big or I'm not aware of something, but this was what the negativity was about, not the fact that the site is worthless and can't sell.
    - jasonfried 14y ago
      Anyone who was a qualified buyer, and asked privately, got the answer. Lots of people asked privately. We even put serious buyers in touch with our credit card processing company so they could get additional questions answered directly.
      - citricsquid 14y ago
        The comment implied that the average HN user doesn't have the capacity to understand how business works, but the information the buyers had is not what the public had, that's a bit... disingenuous.
        tptacek 14y ago
        The average HN user certainly doesn't have that capacity. Come on.
        ThomPete 14y ago
        Now that's disingenuous. :) I am pretty sure you know what was meant.
      - larrys 14y ago
        "Anyone who was a qualified buyer" What criteria did you use to determine a "qualified" buyer? As someone who frequently deals in transactions over the web for large dollar amounts it is not always clear who is qualified and who isn't. Especially if you aren't doing a high volume of transactions so you don't have a pattern established. One recent transaction we handled for someone started off with an insulting offer of $1000 (from a gmail type account in China (qq.com) and ended up at $38,000 USD)
- j_s 14y ago
  Perhaps not quite the same scale, but do check out the story of Rob Walling's acquisition of HitTail, still being discussed regularly on their podcast: The Inside Story of a Small Startup Acquisition - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3511437 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3511437 http://www.startupsfortherestofus.com/episodes/episode-83-hittail-auditshark-integration-marketing-logo-design-survey-analysis-and-leaky-funnels http://www.startupsfortherestofus.com/episodes/episode-83-hi...
Smudge 14y ago
That’s correct. Customers will not have to re-enter credit cards or do anything. This is pain free for customers. 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.
- Travis 14y ago
  I agree that it would affect the final number, and probably adjust short term revenue (and thus value). However, I also think it's a misplaced (but common) mindset that short term revenue determines valuation. If Sortfolio provides significant value to its paying users (customers), they won't lose a great proportion of their revenue on CC re-entry. Those who don't re-enter billing info are the people no longer getting regular value from the product. Folks, this is a huge success! It's a company that bootstrapped themselves (and get some credit for many other bootstrappers, myself included) and found an exit strategy that's a win for all parties: they make money. The buyer has a business that provides real world value to its customers. And the customers will continue to receive their value for dollars spent. (How many articles bemoan buyouts that are "bad for original customers/early adopters/etc."?) Let's just take a moment and appreciate a successful exit. Everyone wins -- the founders, the buyers, AND the customers.
consultutah 14y ago
Man. Is it jealousy or just blind hate? When I first read their blog post I was quite interested. I mean, here was a profitable business built by a well known company. 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. 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. Congratulations on the sale and congratulations to the new buyers!
aeurielesn 14y ago
I would like to see how this developed from [1] to this sale. It seemed improbable back then. [1]: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4087116 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4087116
- thaumaturgy 14y ago
  I'd like to see that too, just for curiosity. I expect that'll be up to the new owner though. > It seemed improbable back then. Naw. You have to keep in mind that the HN community has gathered around a very specific way of doing business. Where people start to make a mistake is in thinking that this is how the rest of the world works too, and that there isn't any other way to do business. There is still a huge amount of activity in the business world that revolves around long-term, sustainable, profitable businesses, especially those coming from people with the kind of reputation that 37Signals has. It's just that all those people don't have their own little online community where they share notes. (If 37Signals offered such a community, I'd sign up in a heartbeat and my HN activity would finally finish it's long descent to 0.) I didn't think it was improbable. 37Signals knows what they're doing.
shazow 14y ago
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. Perhaps they already had a buyer in mind and just needed some negotiation leverage or wanted some free publicity. I imagine people who were genuinely interested in bidding for Sortfolio feel a bit cheated with this announcement coming out of the blue.
- jasonfried 14y ago
  FYI, I responded to select private Flippa messages from buyers I considered to be qualified. If someone was serious about spending $480,000, they should have gotten in touch privately and demonstrated that they were serious, qualified buyers. Everyone had an equal chance to buy Sortfolio - one party stepped up and got it done.
  - shazow 14y ago
    I'm glad to hear about your attentive private responses. HN has this culture of entrepreneurial voyeurism. When a unique scenario like Sortfolio gets posted, we like to watch how it unfolds and learn from the process. When dozens of interesting questions piled on without any response from you guys, I was disappointed. Clearly you're well within your rights to do what you did, but I hope this sheds some light on some of the negativity and speculation. I am grateful for these last few updates you guys have given and I hope you'll consider writing a more detailed report once the dust settles.
    - jasonfried 14y ago
      We were quite open about the whole thing. We posted revenues, the deadline, the selling price, etc. Here was the post where we announced the sale on our blog: http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3172-sortfolio-going-once-going-twice http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3172-sortfolio-going-once-goi... A number of serious buyers got in touch, asked a variety of different questions, and we got them direct answers.
    - jbigelow76 14y ago
chawkins 14y ago
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. 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.
floydprice 14y ago
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. 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! 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.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
stevebenjamins 14y ago
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.
gr366 14y ago
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.
kondro 14y ago
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.
dylanhassinger 14y ago
I think 37s is well within their rights to do this however they wanted. But still feels lame, how it all went down. 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. 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. Instead Sortfolio lives, 37s got their money, but the whole thing feels icky. my 2 cents, no conspiracy theory
Sortfolio 14y ago
I'm part of the team that bought Sortfolio. 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. 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. Second, the guys at 37signals were a pleasure to work with. They were open, transparent, and are committed to the success of Sortfolio. 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. We can't wait to share more!
dennisgorelik 14y ago
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? According to Compete.com, in the last 12 months Sortfolio traffic decreased more than 75% (4 times): http://siteanalytics.compete.com/sortfolio.com/ http://siteanalytics.compete.com/sortfolio.com/
- rkudeshi 14y ago
  Same reason so many people are at the post office at midnight on April 15th filing their tax returns. Deadlines work.
mhartl 14y ago
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. 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.
raheemm 14y ago
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. 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.
jpalomaki 14y ago
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.
junto 14y ago
37S: You need to pay us $480K. We advertised this price publicly and kind of went on and on about sticking to it. Buyer: Umm ok, how about we pay your $480K publicly and you quietly give us $430K in 37 Signal's stock? 37S: Deal. 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. [1] http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2987-an-alternative-to-employee-optionsequity-grants/ http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2987-an-alternative-to-employ...
jpastika 14y ago
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!
ommunist 14y ago
I never liked it before, and I do not believe it has a future. UK represented very poorly there anyway.

101 points by gr366 14y ago

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. Here's hoping we get some follow-up posts about how it goes for the new owners on SVN.

dhh 14y ago
Yes, despite the HN peanut gallery's perception of the world, there is actually a market for profitable businesses. It's surely less exciting than selling your no-revenue photo service for a billion dollars, but that's ok. We'll be sure to follow the life of Sortfolio after the sale.
- ForrestN 14y ago
  Excellent, thanks. We hear so much the genesis of businesses but this phase of a business' life is fascinating too. Congratulations.
- blake8086 14y ago
  That is very interesting! What research went into discovering that there is a market for profitable businesses? This really shatters the idea that the point of business is not to make money.
- larrys 14y ago
  I'd love a post on how the price was set at 480k and why specifically you weren't willing to sell for anything less than that figure. Why you drew that line in the sand. Must have been more going on here than meets the eye. If I had to guess I'd would say that the people who bought the site had offered 480k but you didn't want to say that you had a solid offer for a certain amount. Speculating that you told them you would sell to them at that price if a better offer didn't come in. This seems to dovetail with the somewhat cavalier attitude of previous posts and 37signals principals HN comments. "despite the HN peanut gallery's perception of the world, there is actually a market for profitable businesses." I've bought and sold several businesses both as the business owner and as a go between (collecting a commission for the sale of a business).
  - dhh 14y ago
    Yeah, you got us figured out. We had an offer, sat on it, invented this story to see if we could get more, and played the world for a fool. BUT YOU BUSTED US. OH NOOOOES! Or, of course, the simpler explanation: We thought the site was worth at least 2x the previous year's take. And if we didn't get that, it wasn't worth our time to deal with the transaction.
    - larrys 14y ago
      I have no idea what I said to get a response like that. There is nothing wrong with what I proposed as a reason and it certainly doesn't rise to the level of "played the world for a fool." in any way. "We thought the site was worth at least 2x the previous year's take. And if we didn't get that, it wasn't worth our time to deal with the transaction." "it wasn't worth our time to deal with the transaction." Your attitude is a total outlier. Enjoy your arrogance. You've got plenty of years to go to see how that works going forward.
      - mnicole 14y ago
        Don't take it too harshly, the site is the equivalent of the web design listings on CraigsList without the extra clicks.
        taylort 14y ago
        And DHH is not exactly known for his tact.
        mikescar 14y ago
        If I was being called out as a liar after being very public about a business deal, I would lose my sense of tact also. Seriously, how much of the hate is from folks that will never have this opportunity, wouldn't do it the same way even if they did, and just want to complain?
        14y ago
- citricsquid 14y ago
  uh, you are aware the majority of negativity and questioning about the asking price was because you did not at any point answer whether or not billing information (and subscriptions) would be kept, even when people on the Flippa auction requested this information? If you'd said from the start this was the case you'd have got many more bids, on HN alone I saw many comments from people stating they would bid if this was the case. Maybe I missed something big or I'm not aware of something, but this was what the negativity was about, not the fact that the site is worthless and can't sell.
  - jasonfried 14y ago
    Anyone who was a qualified buyer, and asked privately, got the answer. Lots of people asked privately. We even put serious buyers in touch with our credit card processing company so they could get additional questions answered directly.
    - citricsquid 14y ago
      The comment implied that the average HN user doesn't have the capacity to understand how business works, but the information the buyers had is not what the public had, that's a bit... disingenuous.
      - tptacek 14y ago
        The average HN user certainly doesn't have that capacity. Come on.
        ThomPete 14y ago
        Now that's disingenuous. :) I am pretty sure you know what was meant.
    - larrys 14y ago
      "Anyone who was a qualified buyer" What criteria did you use to determine a "qualified" buyer? As someone who frequently deals in transactions over the web for large dollar amounts it is not always clear who is qualified and who isn't. Especially if you aren't doing a high volume of transactions so you don't have a pattern established. One recent transaction we handled for someone started off with an insulting offer of $1000 (from a gmail type account in China (qq.com) and ended up at $38,000 USD)
j_s 14y ago
Perhaps not quite the same scale, but do check out the story of Rob Walling's acquisition of HitTail, still being discussed regularly on their podcast: The Inside Story of a Small Startup Acquisition - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3511437 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3511437 http://www.startupsfortherestofus.com/episodes/episode-83-hittail-auditshark-integration-marketing-logo-design-survey-analysis-and-leaky-funnels http://www.startupsfortherestofus.com/episodes/episode-83-hi...

Smudge 14y ago

That’s correct. Customers will not have to re-enter credit cards or do anything. This is pain free for customers. 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.

Travis 14y ago
I agree that it would affect the final number, and probably adjust short term revenue (and thus value). However, I also think it's a misplaced (but common) mindset that short term revenue determines valuation. If Sortfolio provides significant value to its paying users (customers), they won't lose a great proportion of their revenue on CC re-entry. Those who don't re-enter billing info are the people no longer getting regular value from the product. Folks, this is a huge success! It's a company that bootstrapped themselves (and get some credit for many other bootstrappers, myself included) and found an exit strategy that's a win for all parties: they make money. The buyer has a business that provides real world value to its customers. And the customers will continue to receive their value for dollars spent. (How many articles bemoan buyouts that are "bad for original customers/early adopters/etc."?) Let's just take a moment and appreciate a successful exit. Everyone wins -- the founders, the buyers, AND the customers.

consultutah 14y ago

Man. Is it jealousy or just blind hate? When I first read their blog post I was quite interested. I mean, here was a profitable business built by a well known company. 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. 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. Congratulations on the sale and congratulations to the new buyers!

aeurielesn 14y ago

I would like to see how this developed from [1] to this sale. It seemed improbable back then. [1]: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4087116 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4087116

thaumaturgy 14y ago
I'd like to see that too, just for curiosity. I expect that'll be up to the new owner though. > It seemed improbable back then. Naw. You have to keep in mind that the HN community has gathered around a very specific way of doing business. Where people start to make a mistake is in thinking that this is how the rest of the world works too, and that there isn't any other way to do business. There is still a huge amount of activity in the business world that revolves around long-term, sustainable, profitable businesses, especially those coming from people with the kind of reputation that 37Signals has. It's just that all those people don't have their own little online community where they share notes. (If 37Signals offered such a community, I'd sign up in a heartbeat and my HN activity would finally finish it's long descent to 0.) I didn't think it was improbable. 37Signals knows what they're doing.

shazow 14y ago

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. Perhaps they already had a buyer in mind and just needed some negotiation leverage or wanted some free publicity. I imagine people who were genuinely interested in bidding for Sortfolio feel a bit cheated with this announcement coming out of the blue.

jasonfried 14y ago
FYI, I responded to select private Flippa messages from buyers I considered to be qualified. If someone was serious about spending $480,000, they should have gotten in touch privately and demonstrated that they were serious, qualified buyers. Everyone had an equal chance to buy Sortfolio - one party stepped up and got it done.
- shazow 14y ago
  I'm glad to hear about your attentive private responses. HN has this culture of entrepreneurial voyeurism. When a unique scenario like Sortfolio gets posted, we like to watch how it unfolds and learn from the process. When dozens of interesting questions piled on without any response from you guys, I was disappointed. Clearly you're well within your rights to do what you did, but I hope this sheds some light on some of the negativity and speculation. I am grateful for these last few updates you guys have given and I hope you'll consider writing a more detailed report once the dust settles.
  - jasonfried 14y ago
    We were quite open about the whole thing. We posted revenues, the deadline, the selling price, etc. Here was the post where we announced the sale on our blog: http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3172-sortfolio-going-once-going-twice http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3172-sortfolio-going-once-goi... A number of serious buyers got in touch, asked a variety of different questions, and we got them direct answers.
  - jbigelow76 14y ago

chawkins 14y ago

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. 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.

floydprice 14y ago

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. 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! 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.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

stevebenjamins 14y ago

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.

gr366 14y ago

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.

kondro 14y ago

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.

dylanhassinger 14y ago

I think 37s is well within their rights to do this however they wanted. But still feels lame, how it all went down. 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. 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. Instead Sortfolio lives, 37s got their money, but the whole thing feels icky. my 2 cents, no conspiracy theory

Sortfolio 14y ago

I'm part of the team that bought Sortfolio. 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. 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. Second, the guys at 37signals were a pleasure to work with. They were open, transparent, and are committed to the success of Sortfolio. 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. We can't wait to share more!

dennisgorelik 14y ago

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? According to Compete.com, in the last 12 months Sortfolio traffic decreased more than 75% (4 times): http://siteanalytics.compete.com/sortfolio.com/ http://siteanalytics.compete.com/sortfolio.com/

rkudeshi 14y ago
Same reason so many people are at the post office at midnight on April 15th filing their tax returns. Deadlines work.

mhartl 14y ago

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. 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.

raheemm 14y ago

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. 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.

jpalomaki 14y ago

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.

junto 14y ago

37S: You need to pay us $480K. We advertised this price publicly and kind of went on and on about sticking to it. Buyer: Umm ok, how about we pay your $480K publicly and you quietly give us $430K in 37 Signal's stock? 37S: Deal. 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. [1] http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2987-an-alternative-to-employee-optionsequity-grants/ http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2987-an-alternative-to-employ...

jpastika 14y ago

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!

ommunist 14y ago

I never liked it before, and I do not believe it has a future. UK represented very poorly there anyway.