2023 Year In Review

Ilya Novohatskyi

Dec 29, 2023

Hey guys.

Today will be the last issue this year.

I reflected on things I did this year and don’t regret anything.

I prepared lots of interesting data about Microns, from marketplace stats to newly launched transfer service.

Let’s rewind.

👋 Welcome

Welcome to the 43 new people joining this week.

Let me know what you think of your first issue. Replying helps Google realize it’s not a spam.

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Now let’s crack on with the newsletter ☕️

📸 2023 Review

In 2023, we sold 40 startups worth $185,800 with an average transaction of $4,600. It’s a 100% growth from the previous period. Entirely bootstrapped. I can’t believe it.

This year, we crossed the mark of 6,000 newsletter subscribers with a pretty high open rate. Besides this, we landed one great sponsor and earned $2k from sponsorship that I spent on the new design (coming soon).

Our primary revenue channel is Premium subscriptions, and they gave us around $3,200 in MRR this year.

Premium subscriptions help with engagement and liquidity. Buyers receive a deal flow of profitable bootstrapped startups and get connected directly with founders.

Microns Premium service metrics in 2023.

Last but not least, the service that I launched this year to help our users facilitate transactions for a small fee. It’s pretty new, but it has already given us $1.6k in revenue.

You can complete the deal independently without commission, but it’s dangerous. So, I always recommend using our transfer service to buy/sell startups safely.

Microns Transfer service metrics in 2023.

That’s it for now; in 2024, I plan to launch our refreshed platform with the new design, increase the revenue for our current services, and add one service only for sellers.

🎉 Recently sold startup

We sold a web app called YVisuals. It helped creators generate content for their presentations with the power of AI.

The project is a collaboration between Sathya, who is a visual framework designer, and Lee, an indie maker. Sathya had been creating visuals for clients and wanted a way to make the process of creating visuals easy for anyone, regardless of design skills. That’s how the idea of the startup was born.

YVisuals had 650 customers and $950 in annual revenue. It was built using Bubble and OpenAI API. The project was sold for $5,000 (5.26 revenue multiplier). The buyer and seller used our transfer service to complete the deal safely.