Bitcoin Forum

As the founder and developer of a bitcoin startup, I'm very interested to know what your thoughts are on the approach of selling a bitcoin startup, website or business for bitcoin?

We developed bitbay.com in the summer with plans to roll out and grow a solid bitcoin marketplace where anything (legal) could be purchased for bitcoin.
The truth is we never really had the funds to keep it operational or to promote the service to enough people to grow the service organically, and so.. this has led us to consider selling the whole startup to someone who does have the resources needed to make it flourish.

As bitbay.com is a bitcoin startup, we think this is a property that would be best fitted to a bitcoin enthusiast or at least to someone who trades in bitcoin.
Also, as it is a marketplace for trading goods and services for bitcoin, it also makes sense to list the startup itself on its own marketplace to demonstrate its own concept.

What are your thoughts on this?

Are you talking about selling registered business or just the website?

To be honest I don't think you'll find any buyers. This is one of the hardest type of business to get started, as you need to attract huge number of buyers/sellers all at once. Not to mention that there's already established competition (bitify) and there's a chance ebay will implement bitcoin payments soon (they filed some cryptocurrency payment processing patent applications).

I have to give some comment about your website design. In title it is nothing which search engine can read to display result and i doubt you also haven't work on meta tag and description. And also width of site seems to be for mobile only, it only captures 30% of my laptop screen which is obviously not a good design. If you say bitbay is good domain than i also agree on it, but the one who will buy your site have to work on lots of thing to get better display among search engines.

Good Luck On your Sale

OK, I see.

The best you can do is just to list it on Marketplace board and see if there are any takers. You should offer selling it in official manner, with the legal agreement transferring any IP rights on to the buyer + provide support for a specified period after the sale.

Alternatively, if there are no takers, you can try to find a business partner, who would take the promotion on himself, while you could focus only on technical side.

ps. I cannot access your site atm, so I can't comment on design etc.

How much? Its a cool idea

Thanks for your comments.
You're right, there has been little SEO work done so that could be added and improved upon greatly.

The fixed width thing is an intentional design feature. We took a mobile first approach and developed an app/website hybrid design.
80-90% of the users shouldn't see or find the extra space too imposing.

Thank you :)

Happy to consider all reasonable offers. Please private inbox me or pop me an email to info@bitbay.com

If a sale is made with Bitcoin, it will also add to making a nice founding story - A bitcoin marketplace listed and sold on its own marketplace for bitcoin 8)

This is what we are offering. All the above :)

long time ago i wanted to do an aproach with you.

check out darkhash.co.uk

ill send you a MP now

It's actually nice to have sold your own startup into its own marketplace (kind of an inception there lol). The design is nice on mobile too, I must say. Since it's a startup venture and I see that everything is pretty much setup by now, why not advertise it on twitter/marketplace here/services to find a prospective buyer or an investor if you're lucky? :)

Thanks :)

I've just checked out darkhash.co.uk

How is it going?
Do many of the forum members use your services?

How much have you spend on marketing the site so far? Can you share some site statistics with us to see if monetization through ad's could be a viable option to fund the

marketing side of things. It will also help to determine the value of the domain. {You are selling the domain?} Sites like these needs to be advertised everywhere and mayor

funding would be needed for that. What type of price are you looking at?

Sounds like a good concept. Too bad you didn't have enough funding to pursue this.

Hope you get a good deal mate.

Get it off the ground before you sell it, it will be worth a lot more. Improve the interface and user experience, then have people to list items on it, then do a marketing push. Sell it when it is more well known, it is not worth much at its current state.

My advise: Don't sell it, even if you are in a financial situation that you desperately need money. Keep the site and the shop.

Just some observations/suggestions:

- Some of the offers are pretty old - the fluctuation of the BTC-price isn't reflected, i.e. I would make sure that the prices are changing according to the wishes of the sellers.
- I'd make sure that older offers "disappear" in a "den". Otherwise, you'll have a lot of offers on the site which are pretty old, potential buyers don't know if they really still are active or not.
- design always is a question of taste - mine is different in some respects :-)

Why don't you do a crowd-funding in here and redo the shop as well as make some promotion? I, for example, would be willing to invest.

One question is: Where are you located? Would it make sense to establish a company there? If so, you could ask here in the forum if someone would help to give capital. For example: If the company's capital should be 10'000 Euro, you could ask for funding. Everyone who pays gets a certificate for a stake in the company.

Maximum price for a website is 3 times its annual revenue. I suggest you forget the website and focus on selling the domain name. Sorry if you think I'm rough but business is tough. Ask yourself how much Donald Trump would pay for your business. Not much.

yes, but for common good known service. for something like bitcoin will be even hard to find any potential buyer.

just saw your thread and the site which you are selling, after seeing your site it is clearly seen that some immature has done the site development , for the doman i think someone may be interested but for your site, i dont think any one will be ready to pay. can you tell me the price for how much is for sale and give me full details of the business model and site details.

I like the name, the font you are using(reminds me of something, old moneybookers?) and unfortunately that's it. It's not expensive to code a site better than this one, so basically you are only selling the brand(with domain etc.). If I were you I would try to build an e-bay like platform(where you have a rating system) with bitbay working as an escrow where you could buy/sell maybe even crowdfund whatever you want. I saw a lot of people here selling things related to cryptos and even accepting crypto payments in their own shops around the world, but they don't have enough exposition(is this the right word?), so there is a potential. IMO that would be a proper startup.

If you choose to sell this startup company I don't think that you will make good money, but starting a strategic idea/project to boost the service will be better and also running a kickstarter campaign would be better, but if you can sell then why not. We should know that most of startups fail so there is a higher risk.

This completely depends on your approach on why "You started the business".If you started a company with an intention to make it successful then selling it obviously seems like a bad idea because you couldn't make it.On the other hand, if you think logically that your idea of the start up is quite played out or saturated and you don't really see any business with the same for now or you have some other idea in then ,in that case selling your start up would be a nice thing to do.No sure if you'll get the same resale value as you had invested but you've to comprise.

All good points!  

If we do continue without selling the startup, we will be looking at all of these for bitbay.com version 1.2.0  :)

Thanks

According to me you must use all the possible ways to expose in clear evidence the value of your work. This may bring several goods, the first of whom will be the highest possible price in its selling. Have no good possibilities or bad possibilities in this direction. Must be tried all. No one know from where might be the best offer. Then, as for the selling of your materialized work with bitcoin that depends on your expectations on him. I would sell without hesitation in bitcoin. But this is what I think. You may think otherwise. I believe in bitcoin and I try to have as much as I can of it. So it will be a very fortune for me to be able to sell such materialized work with bitcoin.

Yup me too. I still very much believe in using bitcoin which is why we'd be more than happy with a bitcoin sale.

Didn't really put in any investment other than a lot of development time and the original purchase of the domain name.

Will definitely continue to work on other bitcoin products.

its a good name thats for sure

It has been mentioned in other posts, it depends on how much you value the company. If you want to see the company become a product of your work, selling it isn't a good idea.

If you're worried about the ethics of selling a startup for the same currency it was started around, I don't see any issue with it.

As for the idea itself, if it is like a Bitcoin Amazon, I'd be all for it. It would be a great idea, however you have to realize that there are competitors like Tiger Direct and newegg that provide the same services and have a backing. However, based on what I read, you intend to make it like a Bitcoin Ebay, were users would list and sell goods and services. The main issue I see with the services aspect is that the various locals would not have access to all the services listed, but I assume that you already have a workaround for that.

Other than that, it sounds like a good idea if you want to pass it off to someone else to help it grow. As long as it isn't a pump n dump service, and the person/organization that purchases it intends on growing the service, I'd say go ahead.

If it becomes popular, I believe that Ebay will come after the use of "bay" in the name and website for trademark infringement as "potentially confusing similarity for customers that will damage the Ebay brand," which is probably why you're trying to drum-up interest here for the sale.

https://www.google.com/search?q=similar+name+trademark+violations

Does the potential buyer have enough financial resources for fight Ebay in civil court?

Probably not.

I recommend staying away from this.

Sure, sell it if you decided you cannot handle it.

I don't think you're going to be able to find a buyer (or at least a meaningful offer). Start-ups are only really useful if they either have a patent for the idea their using or their brandname has huge value (i.e. is well known and attracts consumers already) and potential for growth in the future. Right now there's nothing stopping someone from copying you're idea (without buying you out) and using their own branding - because buying you out would really only be for the branding and you're branding doesn't do anything at the moment.

I have had this looked into and we're absolutely fine.

*As long we don't start doing online auctions which we have no plans of doing.

Bitbay is a place for listing goods/services for a fixed bitcoin purchase. It's more like a directory of sellers than an auction site.  
The only features that ebay has that we would like to develop is a good profile / rating system and payment processing.
This functionality coupled with the word 'bay' is not enough to cause any trademark or copyright violations.

If it is a lack of funds that are the reason you want to sell, then I don't think you should. Instead of selling it outright, you could sell shares of stock of your company/website. The SEC recently changed the rules and made it so you don't have to be a millionaire to invest in companies anymore. There are a lot of reputable sites that do Bitcoin denominated Stock IPOs. I would suggest BTCTCPOP.co (https://btcpop.co/Home/7665/bitcointalk). Look into it if you aren't completely certain you want to sell.

But, to answer your original question, YES you should sell for BTC. It is a BTC business after all!

I think its a good idea to sell your bitcoin domain name and website for bitcoin instead of fiat. I also really like your domain and icon design. Nice and simple yet very marketable. Looks good for mass markets.

Thank you primecoin!  :)

The domain name alone must be worth a few thousand $$$. Very short and easy to remember. Could be used for anything bitcoin really.

I like the website app but I don't think I'd be able to aford the whole lot so how much would you sell me just the domain name for? and the logo icon artwork?

Please email an offer to: info@bitbay.com

We consider all offers :)

Sent!

It's not come through yet. 

What are your thoughts on a bitcoin marketplace where anything (legal) could be purchased for bitcoin?
Will you launch something like this with bitbay or something different completely?

Having some email issues. Keep checking. I love the market place concept. But do you think this could be run entierly on the block chain?

I'd like to offer you $2000 for the domain name. Please accept. I'm planning on building my own website and would like to know more about blockchain intergration for marketplace listings.

I do not think it's a good time to do this but I do wish everyone all the best of luck that is looking into ideas like this.

why do you want to sell your startup to some bitcoin bitcoin, not startup that can produce bitcoin, I think this is the same as selling shares or sell your company. I suggest not to sell, because it will be more profitable bitcoin startup current and future, along with the popular semkin and advancement of bitcoin.

still for sale?

I think this is a good idea. It may bring you a media attention and thus bring you some investors. But if you still sell it, since you are a Bitcoin supporter (or you would be dumb to have started a Bitcoin startup), being paid in Bitcoin would seem normal. Also, with the halving, the money you would get from your startup sell may increase and value and you'd be on the winning side ;) !