This is a long established business in the UK sports/betting market, It's got a known brand, a community of dedicated users, profitable, lean with enough money in the bank to cushion bad months or invest in further growth.
I'm one of the two partners/shareholders, myself holding 33% as engineering director and the other the remaining 67%.
This other partner passed away quite suddenly in May 2020 after a cancer diagnosis, leaving the ship to myself, a family member inheriting his share, and onboarding an old friend with a finger on the pulse of this market, which would supposedly take care of the financial aspect and help us sell the business. Selling was always the goal.
Current history:
* Business expert friend that is supposed to find us a buyer is dragging their feet preparing a proposal and the necessary documents, profits are going down rapidly as no business deals have been closed since 2020, they're mostly idling collecting their pay check.
* The family member holding 67% doesn't know anything about the business, the market or how to run it. I am in excellent terms with them.
* I have been taking care of the day-to-day, tech side, staying on top of everybody while trying to keep the whole business afloat, and it is rapidly destroying my mental and physical health.
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Since we're not making any progress and just losing money, I now have to sell the business myself. I am a software engineer, I'm no business nor sales expert, I'm extremely stressed out trying to get ourselves out of this situation, and I have no idea where to go from here.
My only desire right now is to help our 5 employees land on their feet and take a long break from total burnout. What's the best way of going about this? I am running out of time and energy.
I don't have the expertise nor interest in growing the business further, and no idea how to find an interested party and good hands to carry the torch of what is a profitable and well placed business with no one at the helm. Do I need a business broker? Do I need to do the first step and contact competitors and prospective buyers myself?
Please, I am not interested in what we _SHOULD HAVE_ done better. I am interested in where to go from here.
They are experts for selling online businesses.
IIRC they also have a list of people who are ready to move fast. It's not uncommon to sell an online business within a few days.
Alternatives: https://quietlight.com/ https://dealflowbrokerage.com/ https://empireflippers.com/ https://microacquire.com/ https://www.tinycapital.com/
Are you able to say what you offer. Is it historic data? Live feeds? Arbs? Value bets? Advice/tactics? News?
Depending on that you could go look for the right kind of buyers who might want the business revenue or the data or the expertise of your staff.
Let’s say for argument sake you have predictive models for football. There are companies that might buy you out for that even if they don’t want your customers, because of the money that can be made betting on it or taking bets.