Ask HN: Sell $15M/$4M EBITDA/15% YoY startup or milk the cow?
Hello HN. I could use some advice.

My co-founder and I have a b2c saas business in the fitness space. We have a website and a mobile app where we sell subscriptions and one-time physical and digital products. We have about 100,000 DAU across both web and mobile. We are at $15M topline, $5M ebitda (caveat: team size (16) and marketing budget (2M) are very small).

We have a formal acquisition offer from a big company at what I feel is a low valuation - 6x EBITDA, 2x rev. We do not have other interested parties so it's unfortunately, not a competitive situation, as obviously that would be ideal. With my co-founder, employee equity + seed investors liquidity preferences, if we took the offer I would personally bank $10M before tax, $7 after tax with a 2 year earn out for another 2M pre-tax. I've been working on my company for 8 years, and my entire net worth is tied up in the company (I was not born into wealth so this is my only nest egg other than $100K in stock from past jobs). I have navigated the company to grow profitably and as of last year, it's finally starting to throw off some cash. We made $4M in profit last year and should be at $5M this year, revenues $15M, growing 15% yOy, but, the issue is, user growth is stagnant as churn is high in the fitness space and so it's hard to grow quickly, we tend to just swim in place, from a MAU perspective. We have not cracked the code on customer acquisition. We have gotten better at monetizing our base (by increasing conversion rates, raising prices, offering more SKUs), but we have not cracked the code on how to increase our K factor and/or find explosive user growth. Our acquisition strategy is basically just buying FB/IG ads at pretty high acquisition costs and targeting spenders. The only reason the marketing is positive ROI is because we price our products on the high side, given how competitive user acquisition is these days. We’re also not especially good at it.

One thought I had was using the $5M in annual profits to buy out the investors (we only raised $1.2M) and run the company as a lifestyle business/pocket the dividends while I potentially start or invest in other ventures. This could earn me more in the long-run than the $10M I would get up front, as by 2025 I could have earned $10M by aggressively profit-sharing/paying out dividends and still have a company I could sell at that point in time, with revenues presumably higher ($25M-$30M). That being said, we do not have that many acquirers in our space so I'm a little nervous when that time comes we may not have an interested buyer if we're on the same linear trajectory.

I guess I am looking for some perspective on if you think bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, even when you have a nice cash flow business on your hands as the other alternative option that can provide a decent exit as well. I have the company pretty plug and play so it does not take too much of my time, maybe 20 hours/week. I wouldn't say I'm burned out, as a lot of stuff is still fun for me, but I am definitely not putting in the hours I used to and I have been enjoying having other hobbies.

Sorry this was so long but it's been weighing on me and I would really appreciate hearing how other people would approach this in case it helps me get clarity on one path vs the other.

Not sure if it is relevant but I live in NYC / highest cost of living area and would like to stay here.