Hi folks, hope you’re having a nice weekend so far 👋🏼

A couple of weeks ago I acquired a site that wasn’t turning over any revenue.

The site is Laradir.com, a directory of software engineers who predominantly use the Laravel PHP framework.

The acquisition was a completely private one - no third parties or platforms involved - and went through very smoothly. I’m very happy with the acquisition and how the process went.

I did the valuation myself on a costs-plus basis after having looked through the code and gotten a base understanding of all the assets. It was very much a “micro” acquisition

I relaunched the site after teasing/hyping on Twitter (~2.5k followers) for just over a week, and managed to get some decent exposure across the Laravel community.

Signups increased by 50% in just 3 days and I started to offer small ad spots for “sponsors” as well as reducing the fee for businesses to use the platform.

The site is now up to ~$200 MRR, which is all from the sponsorships, but no profit yet as I’m ploughing that and more into driving traffic to the site

I haven’t yet made any sales to businesses for the core service despite having made a handful of direct calls to potential customers (folks already in my contacts/network)

For most of these calls, the reason not to proceed falls into one of either: a) we’re not hiring right now, or b) we don’t use these platforms for hiring

I’m really happy with the acquisition and the initial progress, but obviously I’m keen to start proving traction from the business side as soon as possible.

What are my blind spots? What am I missing? What can I do to help convince businesses in/around the Laravel space that there is massive potential value here for them?

As the service is tapping into the “recruitment” sphere, one theory I have is that the winter slowdown and the somewhat uncertain jobs market are preventing teams from committing. Is this valid?

  • _DontPanic_@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    Very cool site! Congrats on the acquisition and relaunch! I have a few thoughts for you:

    You should play up the pre-qualification of your devs more. Engineering managers looking to hire want to save time by only talking to quality devs. How are they qualified? How does that save time in interviews? Do they have projects to share via their GitHub account? Can you make that obvious with flair on their profile card? Is there a qualification that distinguishes between a junior dev vs a staff engineer?

    Industry knowledge could go a long way here. Maybe highlight what industries they’ve worked in? E.G e-commerce folks may have done common integrations like with a 3PL or ERP

    Lastly, in my experience, the New Year brings new budgets so maybe start thinking of where to advertise that New Year special now. Advertising may get a little cheaper in Dec after Black Friday ads are done.

    Best of luck!