Why did I sell PlaylistGeniusAI.com?
A story of following my curiosity, learning through action, and staying in the game.
On July 19, 2023, PlaylistGeniusAI.com got acquired. In this post, I share the "whys, ifs, and buts" of why I sold PlaylistGeniusAI.com.
On July 1, 2023, I saw the following tweet.
Acquire.com is a marketplace for buying and selling startups. The last bar on the graph caught my eye - 2.5x more buyers than the previous month. "Aren't we preparing for a recession", I asked myself. "Haven't we seen the biggest layoffs in tech companies in years?" Was there a demand for PlaylistGenius? I decided to follow my curiosity. I listed PlaylistGeniusAI.com on acquire.com and signed off to enjoy the 4th of July weekend with my family.
Returning from the long weekend, I had eight potential buyers who had signed NDAs and started conversations to know more about the app - the tech stack, future potential, etc. The following day, there were even more.
The interest was real, I realized. And before I knew it, an offer was before me. My wife asked, "Are you sure you want to sell PlaylistGenius?" That's when it hit me, and I asked myself, "Am I ready?" PlaylistGenius is special to me. From an idea to a product, I brought it to life single-handedly. The popularity of PlaylistGenius surprised me. I never expected it to have 10,000 active monthly users from more than 100 countries. Just last month, I wrote about how PlaylistGenius helped me overcome a significant psychological barrier - earning my first dollar on the internet. (In case you missed it, I've linked it below)
The app was starting to attract paid customers. I had a list of features I wanted to implement and almost zero operation costs. So why would I sell it? Was the offer price too attractive, or was it the right time to sell?
Neither was the case. Here are the three reasons:
Follow curiosity and learn quickly - When I started on this journey after quitting my full-time job at Amazon, I decided to follow my curiosity, experiment, and learn. (You can read about it below)
Getting PlaylistGenius acquired gave me an opportunity to follow my curiosity - "How do acquisitions work?" "What exactly am I selling?" I learn by doing. The faster I learn, the quicker I can understand if this independent journey suits me. I'm nearly 6 months into the 12-month journey I promised myself to discover what truly drives me.
Small Bet and Procrastination - I adopted the small bets strategy from
’s course. PlaylistGenius was a small bet in my portfolio. This meant that I was never going to focus 100% of resources towards PlaylistGenius. I had SOAPNoteAI.com vying for attention, and more ideas were on the way. I also procrastinated adding new features and integrations for over two months. While it's not common advice to accept procrastination, I let it win in this case. The reason for my lack of motivation to add more features is something I haven't quite figured out yet.Money - No, I did not make hundreds of thousands of dollars from this deal. But I made enough to give me the confidence to continue playing this game - being self-employed. After seeing my savings account deplete month over month, an influx of money was a massive confidence booster.
"Would you regret selling it if it became a million/billion-dollar company one day?" my wife asked.
I responded, "No. In my mind, two possibilities could play out - It either becomes much bigger than we thought, or it shuts down before reaching its full potential. There's no way for us to predict the future. All we can do is connect the dots looking back. But what's certain is that, no matter the outcome, we'll have a story to tell."
Curious to know how you feel about selling it currently! Now that a few months have passed.
I’ve been thinking about selling a small project too. I like your point about going through the process. I might do that too. Currently I have no idea how it works but I’d like to see how the process goes. Eventually I’d like to buy and sell a few businesses. That would be a low-risk way to do it.
Amazing work Kunal! I am so impressed with your progress and loved that you leaned into curiosity :).