website, acquisitionFirst, a brief history:
About five years ago, I created an online game to rival an existing game - it used the same core mechanic, but everything else branched from there in a different direction. For most of the creation time, I followed the principle of “learn from their mistakes”, and as a result we are now significantly more liked than the rival. Everything from Alexa rank through general site activity to ongoing development is at least an order of magnitude greater.
However, there is one thing they still have over us: more users. Having been around for longer, this is practically a given, but it didn’t help that we went through a massive reboot last year, essentially purging out all the inactive users. As it stands, we have about 30,000 users, to their 140,000. Not bad, considering we barely advertise and it’s all through word-of-mouth!
At this point, their site is faltering - the owners/developers are increasingly busy with “real life” (whereas I’ve made my project be my “real life”) and their features have stagnated - they haven’t been keeping up with new releases of the source material that both our games are founded on, for instance, and more recently they had to put out a feature that is a very thinly-veiled “we don’t have time for this, here’s the stuff”.
The reason I bring all this up is because there are some features of theirs that are particularly good, and that I’d really like to have on my own game, but am wary of doing so because of past accusations that we are “ripping off” their site. Which, in all honesty, we kind of are; we’re just doing it right. The point is, I fear backlash if I just outright steal the features. Which is why I’m considering the idea of acquisition.
It’s kind of a scary prospect to me. Until more recently, this has just been a rivalry as we drive each other to do better, but now that we’re blazing ahead I’m afraid to lose what I’ve built. I don’t want to make any false moves. It doesn’t help that I was 17 at the time this whole thing started, and correspondingly stupid - I did what a lot of teens do on the internet, and any friendly bridges between myself and the other site have long been burned.
I’m wondering if I could get any advice regarding how to go about contacting them with the idea of buying their site, especially considering that my intention would be to migrate the features I want, and the users, over to my version of the game and close theirs down… I want to ensure I go about this in a professional manner, and one that hopefully leads to ongoing success.
Most people sell their business to someone they’ve built up connections with - which is often other companies in the same or a similar space. Your challenge is that your connection is, you think, pretty negative.
If you are in a hurry, I would look for someone else you know and trust in the industry who’s willing to keep you in the shadows right through a potential deal. Your objective is to buy, at a price no higher than a figure you have in mind; or if that fails then you’d like to learn all you can about their intentions for a future sale.
If you’re not in a hurry, reach out to them yourself, not mentioning your interest in buying them, but just to say hi. If you’re up front that you’re embarrassed how you played this a few years back, there’s a good chance you will get a conversation going. Keep the lines of communication open and play the patient opportunist - look for the right moment to test the water - preferably some time when you’re face to face at an industry event where there’s a bit of buzz about deals.
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