Tell HN: Things you need to know before submitting on aqcuire.com
3 comments
A bit disappointing to hear as Andrew Gazdecki has been doing a great job overall. I also have some minor complaints as a paid customer though. It is minor but they never built a billing feature where I can see my existing subscription (I have asked twice over many months now). So if I wanted to update my card or cancel my account, I have to ask them through an email. I am beginning to think that this is by design because if you need to upgrade your plan, you can do it through the website easily.
I don't know what are their roadmap here. Maybe they are facing a massive growth and can't follow on their features.
I sure hope this isn't intentional and that they are only falling behind but who knows.
I sure hope this isn't intentional and that they are only falling behind but who knows.
In the meantime, I got an email from Andrew that accepted to proceed with the submission without the Google Analytics and accounting connection.
I don't know if this is related to this thread or if the decision is made on a per-case basis.
Regardless, I think it's important to share it here that Andrew was helpful here and it's not all black and white.
I don't know if this is related to this thread or if the decision is made on a per-case basis.
Regardless, I think it's important to share it here that Andrew was helpful here and it's not all black and white.
Just going to play devil's advocate, but if you're at the point where you're going to sell your startup, does it make sense to take a stance that you're also advocating for user privacy by not installing Google Analytics? After all, whoever buys it is going to do whatever they want with that data, and add analytics if they want.
I'm not criticizing people who decide to sell their companies either, I get that it's the economic reality we live in.. it's just a shitty state of things that user's can't ever reasonably expect privacy from any service. Even the adblockers sell out to deep enough pockets.
It reminds me of the old joke (purportedly) involving Winston Churchill:
I'm not criticizing people who decide to sell their companies either, I get that it's the economic reality we live in.. it's just a shitty state of things that user's can't ever reasonably expect privacy from any service. Even the adblockers sell out to deep enough pockets.
It reminds me of the old joke (purportedly) involving Winston Churchill:
Churchill: Madam, would you sleep with me for five million pounds?
Socialite: My goodness, Mr. Churchill… Well, I suppose… we would have to discuss terms, of course…
Churchill: Would you sleep with me for five pounds?
Socialite: Mr. Churchill, what kind of woman do you think I am?!
Churchill: Madam, we’ve already established that. Now we are haggling about the price.I love to play devil's advocate. Often, you have your head deep in something and you forget to consider the other party, playing devil's advocate helps that.
And you are right, there will be no guarantee that the buyer will respect my user's privacy.
The point I (badly) wanted to make was that more and more services are leaving Google Analytics and move their analytics to a more privacy friendly service. Only accepting Google Analytics causes the service to lose a lot more sellers. Granted, being on Andrew shoes, that requires more work (integrating with all these services).
In reality, what bothered me is that they should have been upfront about it. Having a clear message saying that all the metrics are required, before filling all the details would have saved me a lot of time, and I would have been ok with it.
And you are right, there will be no guarantee that the buyer will respect my user's privacy.
The point I (badly) wanted to make was that more and more services are leaving Google Analytics and move their analytics to a more privacy friendly service. Only accepting Google Analytics causes the service to lose a lot more sellers. Granted, being on Andrew shoes, that requires more work (integrating with all these services).
In reality, what bothered me is that they should have been upfront about it. Having a clear message saying that all the metrics are required, before filling all the details would have saved me a lot of time, and I would have been ok with it.
Oh yeah, that's a really deplorable practice on their part. I didn't have anything to contribute to that part though as I haven't actually heard of acquire or chartmogul before.
I was specifically responding to:
> Do you prefer your user privacy? Too bad you can't sell on Acquire
which I guess would have been more clear if I had included that quote in the first place.
The rest of your point (that Acquire is misleading and irresponsible with their treatment of other peoples' time) wasn't lost, don't worry
I was specifically responding to:
> Do you prefer your user privacy? Too bad you can't sell on Acquire
which I guess would have been more clear if I had included that quote in the first place.
The rest of your point (that Acquire is misleading and irresponsible with their treatment of other peoples' time) wasn't lost, don't worry
Yeah, that was not appropriate to the thread, I agree.
I went through the process of submitting one of my projects on acquire.com, and the experience has been disappointing, to say the least.
TLDR: They purposely lie to you by making you believe you can submit your service easily, while in reality, you need to create an account at ChartMogul, have a Google Analytics account (forget Plausible, Fathom, and the like) and ... have an accounting service like Xero, Quickbooks, etc. (WTF?). What a waste of time...
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I'm sharing my experience here in the hope that you'll know the situation before losing hours writing every aspect of your project for nothing.
Acquire has a page where you have to fill in all your service details, including why you are selling, the stack, details about your visitors, customers, etc.
This is standard and makes sense to fill. As you want the sale to succeed at your highest expected price, you spend a lot of time writing each part well, ensuring everything is clear, well explained, and complete.
You also have to give some numbers - manually - about your revenues, profits, and the like. Again, this is standard.
Once all the fields are filled, you can submit them for review.
This is where the "fun" part begins.
Your project will be declined.
That was the case for me. They tell you an email has been sent to explain why; I never got the email (and the logs at my mail server shows it never came).
So your request why, and it turns out that despite the illusion they gave you of being able to submit your service for review, you need to connect your revenues metrics to Acquire.
That should be easy, most of the entrepreneurs out there use Stripe. Except they don't have an integration to Stripe, you need to create an account at ChartMogul and connect this to Acquire...
So here you go, having to create an account at ChartMogul, connecting your Stripe account, and waiting for the data to be imported.
Once it's done, you reach out to support, hoping they will accept the submission. It turns out you also need to connect to Google Analytics and an accounting software, both of which I don't have - and more and more entrepreneurs don't have either.
The worst in all that is that I've asked multiple times to the support if ChartMogul was the only third-party service needed, as I was annoyed but okay to connect to it, and they purposely never answered straightforwardly.
(Why is beyond my understanding).
So here I am, sharing this:
If you want to sell your service on Acquire.com, keep in mind that *you need to have the following*:
- ChartMogul (not Stripe, not Paddle, but exactly and only ChartMogul) - Google Analytics (Do you prefer your user privacy? Too bad you can't sell on Acquire) - A accounting service (because, why not).
I think FEInternational still has great days ahead.
Sorry for the rant, I had my hopes up, and they came crashing down.