When a Buyer Offers Real Money, Run This Offer Test

When a buyer makes an acquisition offer for your side project, the first move is not excitement. It is a test. You have spent nights on a small AI tool, maybe with a few paying users, and now someone wants to buy the thing you built. That is a good problem, but it can also be a mistake if you accept a number before you understand what the number is buying.

The offer is only real if a stranger can check it

The clearest recent example is TrustMRR, a revenue-verification site built by indie maker Marc Lou. He announced a serious all-cash offer of $2.5M for TrustMRR.com. He rejected it. His bio listed TrustMRR at about $43K per month in November 2026. The marketplace charged a 3% finder's fee, saw one acquisition per day, and listed 30 startups per day, which he said was 10 times more than at launch. He said he started with an AI coding tool and had a working leaderboard six hours later, calling the project vibe-coded. TrustMRR verifies revenue using a payment API key.

That example works because the revenue is tied to a mechanism a stranger can inspect. If your project depends on a private spreadsheet, a manual payout, or a narrow customer base, the buyer has less to underwrite. You want the proof to be boring.

The offer test you can run before saying yes

Keep this list next to your keyboard. Each item is quick to run, and each one exists because a buyer can pressure you into skipping it.

• Can a stranger verify the revenue? Ask for a read-only proof, and if the answer is no, stop.
• Does the product have an exit path? Name a marketplace, broker, or buyer pool you could use if you change your mind.
• Does the offer beat your run-rate plus a compounding second curve? Compare the cash to your monthly revenue and the next product you would build.

The first item protects you from unauditable stories, the second keeps your options open, and the third forces you to price the future, not just the past.

Run the test before you send a number. If the buyer asks for exclusivity, run it again. If they ask for a discount, run the same check. It is cheap because it uses facts you should already have.

The exit path is part of the price

An offer is easier to judge when you know where the product could go if you do not sell. Acquire.com provides an exit channel with more than 500,000 verified buyers who must show proof of funds. That matters because a side project can have a buyer now and a different buyer later. A buyer targets capital-efficient businesses with $2M-$10M ARR and values them using EBITDA rather than headline ARR multiples. For smaller tools, the channel may be a marketplace, a broker, or a direct conversation with a strategic buyer.

Using a broker for a SaaS sale can produce higher multiples but adds a 10-15% commission, a cost that may be justified for transactions above $1M. If your project is smaller, the fee can make a quick exit less attractive.

The number must beat the curve you are building

A sale is a bet against your own next move. Bootstrapped SaaS sales are generally expected to reach 3-5x annual profit multiples, and the multiple can rise with strong net revenue retention, low churn, and diversified customers. That benchmark helps you see whether an offer is generous or merely normal.

In email-list transactions, buyers commonly price a list using a multiple of 12 to 24 times its monthly revenue, varying by niche. A list producing $500 monthly can be offered at $6,000 to $12,000. For a 1,000-subscriber e-commerce list, including repeat purchases can lift three-year value to $15,000-$20,000 instead of $7,500.

Most side projects stay side projects, and that is fine. If the offer fails any of those checks, the sell or build decision is to keep building.