iOS Hecta Media wants to acquire my app

[dejo]

Just received the following email yesterday:

Hecta Media, the owner of AppCraver.com, is interested in acquiring iPhone apps. We are looking for quality, entertaining, and innovative apps to add to our portfolio. We have recently discovered your app A.K.A. Your app really sparked our interest and we would love to discuss the possibility of acquiring your company. If you are open to the idea please send me an email and we can proceed further.

Regards,

Neal Hamou
VP Sales & Business Development | AppCraver.com
818.519.6051 | neal@appcraver.com

I just wanted to check with others here. What have you heard about Hecta Media or AppCraver? Has anyone dealt with them or received a similar email? Any other thoughts?

As some background, [app]a.k.a.[/app] is my name generator app and since I released v1.2, I've been getting 3-4K downloads per day and the app is currently #25 in the Top Free Entertainment apps. Much more popular than I ever imagined.

 

[jnic]

a.k.a seems a fairly straightforward app to clone if that's what they were after, so presumably they're actually buying up your user base in order to plug their other apps (which in the long term creates a wide ad network for them to sell on).

Never dealt with them before; if they're running on VC you might be able to push for a decent price / some sort of revenue share, but that'll depend on your ad numbers / expected future revenue and the value of the time you put into it.

Good luck, keep us posted

 

[CommanderData]

Exactly. They are looking for high visibility free projects to acquire, probably to load up with advertising- because if you were willing to give it away, you certainly wouldn't want much money for them to buy it would you?

You never know, they may offer you a reasonable amount of cash. Just be careful if the deal seems shady at all!

 

[dejo]

Exactly. They are looking for high visibility free projects to acquire, probably to load up with advertising- because if you were willing to give it away, you certainly wouldn't want much money for them to buy it would you?

Well, a.k.a. is currently ad-supported so that loss of ad revenue will certainly factor into my valuation.

Anyways, thanks jnic and CommanderData for the advice. I will keep it in mind.

 

[drivefast]

congratulations. i would probably sell, but i'm biased, because i dont keep ownership of the apps that i build. i'm a software engineer, and i dont plan to be my customers competition, nor having to take care of things like marketing, customer support and so on. you can ask them, contractually, to preserve your developer name and make it visible somewhere (in the info page, for example).

 

[detz]

It all depends on the price. First, take how long it took you and a [high] hourly rate. Take about 1/8 of that for the idea and then add up 6-8 months worth of revenue and that should be a good starting point.

 

[rjgrune]

i have actually been contacted, with the same basic email as you. i haven't had the chance to discuss all the details with them yet, but i'm very curious as to what they are considering to offer.

have you actually talked to anyone yet? i was supposed to get a phone call today, but it is supposedly being re-scheduled for tomorrow or wed.

 

[dejo]

have you actually talked to anyone yet?

No. I haven't yet responded to their email. I hope to send them something tomorrow. I'll keep everyone posted, if they could do the same.