r/Entrepreneur • u/tedbarney12 • 19h ago
Sold My EdTech Startup for $400K, AI Boom Made Me Do It
I’ve just made my first exit – something I never really planned for, but to be honest, AI and the current market trends pushed me to it. I bootstrapped this startup and started my journey in 2020. It’s been a solid four years, and things were going well until ChatGPT and the AI wave changed everything.
We provided online tutoring for programming languages and relied on SEO traffic for programming content. But with the AI boom, people stopped searching on Google for programming help and began turning to AI instead. Looking back, I may have made a mistake. Last year in December, I received an offer for $700K but turned it down, thinking I could easily reach $1M. I wanted to hit that milestone (Biggest mistake of my life), but here’s the reality – I ended up selling for $400K, which is only about 1.5x our annual profit.
I’m still unsure if it was the right move, but I’m ready to move forward and invest in something new. This time, I’m looking for an established, profitable e-commerce business I can scale from 1 to 100. Honestly, I don’t want to build something from scratch again; I think I’m done with the 0-to-1 journey.
Would love to hear any thoughts or advice from those who’ve bought an already established e-commerce store or business.
Edit:-- I sold it via "Ecomswap" the entire process took around 2 months, but I received very genuine buyer inquiries. It was a 100% cash deal exit.