Opportunity for a Microsoft Techie Entrepreneur
I feel a bit naughty using the blog to advertise for non-KashFlow reasons – but I’ve just had to say “no, thanks” again to someones money and that makes me feel even worse.
Are you a Microsoft Techie or running a Microsoft-based Hosting Company?
Do you want to provide streaming media services or (even better) perhaps you do already?
Prior to setting up KashFlow I set up a company that sells Streaming Media services – I don’t have the time to run it properly anymore due to the success of KashFlow and the demands that makes on my time. I feel awful turning away the sales enquiries that come in with a “sorry, we’re not taking on any new clients”
The Numbers
There is around £1,100 in repeat monthly income plus another £5,000 billed annually. So a total annual income of around £18,200k
We have billed £25.5k in the past 12 months. This is because in addiiton to the above there’s also extra income from:
– excess bandwidth charges to customers
– one-off set-up fees of £75 each
– a number of annually re-occuring events
Income from these is likely in the future, although not guaranteed.
Sales Approach to date
The approach to sales has been rather lackadaisical so far. An enquiry comes in, we give a price and some info on why we’re better than alternatives and then leave them to it. Where appropriate we’ve just told people how to get set up themselves (ie, if they only expect a small handful of views/listeners) If they call back then we go ahead. But we’ve never been proactive in chasing up leads.
The Customers
Current customers include a Scottish football club, a large production company plus lots of small religious organisations, radio stations and others.
In terms of looking after the existing customers – they’re all (with one exception!) very low maintenance. The occasional request to reset passwords, etc – but not much else.
These are all UK customers, but if you want a view of the market (although from a US perspective), take a look at this. $78bn over the next 6 years!
Extra bits
As well as the existing customers and income, I’m also selling
– list of all past customers
– the website at www.streaming-services.co.uk
(which generates a small number of enquiries each month with no advertising)
– our “Streamstats” software.
The software lets customers log in and see their bandwidth usage and gives you, as the administrator, an overview of everyones usage. It’s far from brilliant but it does the job and can be improved into something a lot better (all written in .asp/vbscript and MSSQL)
Running Costs
The cost of running the service is just the two servers. One leased with The Planet in the US at £70/month and another owned and co-located in London at around the same price. These can be sold with the above or you can migrate to your own servers. We’ve never incurred additional bandwidth charges for either server
Whoever buys it is welcome to spend a few hours with me for me to pass on what I’ve learned about selling the service.
What I’m not looking for
I’ve been offered a few joint ventures – I’m not tempted by these as I just don’t have the time to put in to one.
I’ve had offers of around £40k, but I can make that just by doing nothing and taking the revenue for the next couple of years.
Nor am I interested in any type of earn out/staged payments – why swap my £25k/year income for what is essentially a loan whereby if the person defaults they could have messed everything up so there’s nothing to foreclose on.
My expectations may be too high (especially in the current climate) and I may have to just settle for the regular income and continuing to turn away new business.
If you’re interested in the above, email me ( duane AT KashFlow.co.uk) with an offer.
UPDATE – This business has now been sold