Reaching out

In early 2025, when Ace Trace was already a mature product and I was personally feeling tired of pushing it forward, someone reached out through a community chat I’m in - Vas3k.club. They were growing a portfolio of mobile apps and had just scaled a fishing app to a few million users. Outdoors was their next focus — they were exploring boats, hunting, golf. Ace Trace fit that narrative.

First call

We scheduled a call. The conversation was straightforward: they liked the automatic shot detection, the UI simplicity, and the fact that it ranked high for “golf tracer” in the App Store. I gave them access to my dashboards — revenue, App Store Connect, retention, churn, all of it.

The first number

Over the next couple of months we had a few more calls, including one with the CEO. The pace was slow, but the interest felt genuine. Eventually we got to the numbers. They proposed a price around 1.5× annual revenue. That was much lower than I expected.

Multiples vs reality

At the time I still had a fantasy about 10× ARR — a number I’d absorbed from Twitter threads, indie hacker stories, and podcasts without ever sanity-checking it. I later learned that this number was mostly a myth. For consumer indie apps like Ace Trace, realistic multiples are usually closer to 2–4× annual revenue, depending on quality, growth, and how hands-off the product is.

Once I started looking at Ace Trace more honestly, the metrics mattered more than the stories. EBITDA, year-to-year growth, and especially retention turned out to be the biggest drivers of valuation. And retention was Ace Trace’s weak spot. I had a steady flow of new users, but only a small percentage stuck around long enough to use the app regularly.

Deciding to sell

Still, even after adjusting expectations, we couldn’t agree. The deal went cold. That was the push I needed. I realized I didn’t want to hold the app for another two years just to earn the same amount slowly. The product was mature. I was burned out. It was time to sell.

So I listed Ace Trace on Flippa. That decision kicked off a very different phase of the journey than I expected.

Learning the market

I run a small indie hacker meetup in Belgrade. Every Thursday we get together to share progress, product news, tech rants, and whatever else comes up. One week we invited a guest — someone building a whole portfolio of consumer apps with his team. I asked if he had experience selling apps. He said yes, and even recommended Flippa. But when I asked for tips, he told me to buy his eBook. We laughed. That kind of thing doesn’t land well in our group — it’s not the culture. I decided to figure it out myself.

So I researched it myself. I spent time understanding the market better, looking at comparable deals, and slowly improving my negotiation skills.

Around the same time, in Serbia, I met a guy in a coworking space who was also an indie developer. We talked a lot about building apps and even tried collaborating on something. Spending every day in the coworking space felt good — like having an office friend again, something I hadn’t had since my days at ALM Works in Saint Petersburg. He also decided to sell one of his smaller apps — a tool that tracks Instagram unfollows — and closed the deal pretty quickly. Watching that happen was genuinely motivating, even though his app was much smaller and easier to sell than Ace Trace.

Offers that didn’t fit

Over the next year I had interested buyers now and then. The app got good traction, but serious buyers maybe once in a couple of months. One weird offer I received from an asian company - they said they would even give me bigger evaluation than I requested - I was very interested! Turns out they wanted me to sell them the asset for about 1X ARR and then keep me working on the app. Every month I’d keep earning money - whatever is greater than my current average revenue. They said they would help with marketing and it will make it easy to significantly grow the revenue while keeping me as essential part of the team working on this.

It was funny because it meant I would have to make it very successful working hard on it, and only then I would earn something on top of 1X ARR. Well if I could make it very successful why would I sell it then? The whole point of selling was, that I kinda gave up. I did plenty of experiments with pricing, offers, features, UX, promotions. None of them gave meaningful results. That why I wanted to move on from the app, work on something else. So the offer was very off and weird to me.

Another guys had some gold related products already and wanted to expand now and have a golf app. That was a good match, as my app was super complementary to their business. However, I quickly learned that they wanted to pay just a little percent upfront and only pay the whole amount after 3 years. No bueno. I didn’t want any risks and having more anxiety waiting for them to hold their end of the bargain. So I decided to move on as well.

The right buyer

After nearly a year of sporadic conversations, misaligned offers, and deals that looked promising but fell apart for one reason or another, I finally found a new interested buyer. They were from Italy and already had portfolio of acquired apps, that they successfully grew. The app quickly passed their due diligence and they expressed firm interest in the acquisition.

We started negotiating and they were agreeing to everything I asked them to change in the contract - one year of non compete instead of two, arbitrage in the US instead of Italy, etc. The price was harder to negotiate, but I managed to hold my original price and didn’t reduce it below original discount I offered myself for a fast deal.

Second thoughts

Then I started seriously questioning whether I should even sell the app at all. For the first time in a long while, the doubt wasn’t about numbers or multiples — it was about whether I was making a mistake letting go of something I’d built and lived with for years. It look all so good. And I check recent rating and downloads and they were much better than the last year, app rised to the second place in the AppStore again and got 4.4 stars in the reviews. Damn, this was a difficult desigion to make - I could earn the same money in a few years by doing nothing, and I could finally figure out how to grow it. I consulted with my friends and mentors and could not come up with easy desision. Eventually I think I realized it would give me too much anxiety to hold on to the app, having risks of competitors over playing me on the marketplace somehow. And I was very tired of this business already. So stick to the sell.

Negotiating the fee

Then I found out that the flippa.com fee was too much. That didn’t make much sense, so I decided to negotiate it as well. I reached out to a few managers and eventually got a call with one of the vice presidents. I had all the leverage on my hands, so it wasn’t too hard to reduce the platform fee a little bit. Without the deal they make nothing, and I still was a very good amount they would make.

Lawyer vs AI

So the platform fee is done, now I hired a lawyer to review the contract. Also I want a specific form for the buyer to fill so I could probably reduce my tax burden in the future - we will see. The lawyer was provided right from the flippa.com platform and honestly he was very helpful. Initially I wanted to just use ChatGpt for all the contract related stuff. But I quickly saw how inconsistent it was in giving me advice. So I could not rely on it. I tried some payed law specialized ai chat bots - they were better, but not convinsing. The human is still bettter than AI in law in my opinion, at least it gave me something to not think too much about.

Escrow and release

After a few days the money were wired to the escrow.com. More than the money itself, it felt like a mental release — I no longer had to carry the app in my head every day or worry about what I should do with it next. I released the assets, signed off the trademark for Ace Trace and boom. It’s on my account. I had this crazy week and now it’s all over, I could not believe it. Just like that

It felt great - that’s how I knew I made the right choice by selling the app.

What’s next

Now I can take a real vacation and relax. In fact I’m having honeymoon with my wife - we just got marride in June. It’s time to pack my motorcycle and ride through Bosnia and Montenegro. Only she and I. Only road and the stars!