Hello Fellow HN,
Last year myself and two other partners got together to work on our startup. We got an offer from one of the YC competitors for 40K seed money. We turned down the offer because one of the founder was expecting a baby 2 months later and one founder was in process of re-location.
Fast-forwarding to today, we kept on working on the idea and bootstrapped it. We all are making 100K plus salaries so did not feel the need to quit our jobs for 40K.
We are at the stage where we now think that it is better to spin off the startup as we can no longer contribute our time to it due to personal commitments.
What do you think something is worth which had 40K seed offer and has a working product?
Note: we have not launched the application yet to public. It was only shared with Friends and family and few investors and got good feedback.
There's a potential problem of perception from a buyers perspective:
The buyer is getting an unlaunched, friends & family market tested batch of code. Further, it is apparently something the founders don't believe in enough to take a chance on. (big red flag.) I'm not saying it doesn't have value, I know all about life choices and timing (spouses, kids, mortgages, car payments.) You just have to be aware of what you may be communicating to a potential buyer.
If they were planning on building it they might buy it but if they can build it for less, they might just do that.
I would be very tempted to launch it and see if I could get some traction. It's going to be worth much more if you can get some adoption. Yes this is riskier, if it flops out of the gate it might be worth less, realized than it was when it was all potential energy.
When it comes to the $40k: was the seed offer about the product or the team? Very commonly in seed people are betting on the team as much as the product.
Can you find someone to take over and execute on the product but leave you and your partners in the equity mix? This is risky too, you might get washed out but it's an alternative if you can't sell it. Some return may be better than none.
Can you sell your codebase to a potential acquirer? What large company would benefit most from having this product in their offering? Could you sell it to a potential incumbent who hasn't innovated in a long time and is suffering from stagnation? It might be cheaper to buy it than for them to pay to have it built. Essentially a contracting gig on spec?