A Hidden MacBook Feature That Became an App Acquisition

All right, I'm here with Will, the founder of Knock, who recently got acquired. Will, how you doing today? It's it's morning, so I should say good morning for you.

Yep, good morning. No, it's yeah, doing pretty good.

Nice. And do you want to tell everybody where you're based?

I'm based in Brisbane, Australia, so that that's in Queensland. Yeah.

Yep, I'm in America. He's in Australia. It's morning. morning for him. Day's about to end for me. Super excited to hear your story. Recently got acquired. Before we dive into that, do you want to just give a brief introduction for people that may not know you?

Yep. Yep. So I'm Will, I'm 24. I've only gone into software mainly this year actually, but years ago, well, you know, many years in the past I've been doing, you know, design, animation stuff as a hobby, keep in mind. But I actually just ran a business in labor industries. So automotive. Did a bit of coding back in the day, but AI has now helped accelerate that. So decided to dive in and now I do this full time. So yeah.

Right on. Tell me about Knock. What did it do? What problem did it solve? Who is it for?

Yeah, so Knock was an interesting one. It essentially used the accelerometer in Silicon MacBooks, only a certain range, keep in mind, so M2 to M5 chips. And it used it to detect, well, knocks on your Mac so you could trigger shortcuts. Open apps, play paused music, switch desktop, stuff like that. So it was quite a unique one. And I guess I didn't really build it to solve a problem. It was more, I found it really just cool and interesting. No one had really done it. And then it just turned out people love the idea. People were like, this is awesome. People were also talking about accessibility permissions. So people who possibly, you know, couldn't use their fingers that well to type or stuff like that. So. It ended up solving a bit of a, I guess, just like accessibility problem without me even realizing, I would say. Yeah.

Interesting. That's super cool. How did you initially market it? How'd you get users and customers?

Well, I just jumped on Reddit actually. I jumped on a few of those groups and it started off as free for just, I guess you could say beta testers. So I made the app and then I just made a DMG. Got a licensing system and then just gave a few free license keys out and basically said, can you test this? Or who wants to test this? I got, I think it was 15 to 25 people with a whole range of different Macs. So that way you can also confirm compatibility and just got a bunch of feedback, what they didn't like, what they liked, what I could do better, all that stuff. And I just reiterated. So it started mainly on Reddit and then once I refined it to a proper product. I took it onto Product Hunt and then from there it kind of just blew up. So I think it was number 8 on the day, which I'm pretty sure is okay for Product Hunt. I'm not too clued on with that, but yeah, it got a lot of traction from there. And then after that, I took that onto Instagram and it just blew up completely. So just by reels.

That is awesome. What was the business model? Was it like There's a free version and then a paid version.

What did the paid version get? It was on, it was actually all just paid. So it was my first. Yeah. So it was just paid. I never even had a free version. I had like, you could download it and test it worked. So you could, you know, go through the onboarding process, tap on your Mac, see if the sensor's registered and it would, you know, just do a basic, you know, play or pause shortcut, but everything else So yeah.

Nice. What was, walk me through the thought process of not having free users. I think that's really smart. I think a lot of founders waste a ton of time with free users that never upgrade. Yeah, it's weird.

Yeah. No, to be honest, there wasn't really a thought process. It's actually my first app that ever made money. So I've tried and failed a few times beforehand with other small things and nothing really took off. So it's the first app that actually made me money. My, you know, first dream of online income. So I was, didn't really know what I was doing, to be honest, in that front, especially marketing. I had no clue. So I was like, I guess paid is the way to go. Just make it cheap, see if people like it. And then I slowly raised the price based on demand and popularity. So yeah.

Even smarter. You did a price increase. Super smart. I think those are 2 of the biggest mistakes that first-time founders make where they have free users and they index way too much on that, meaning they just have a ton of free users. They're afraid to push them into paid and then their paid plan is too cheap. So it just becomes hard to build like a sustainable business. So that's great. I mean, charge right off the bat, increase your prices.

Yep, exactly. That's what happened.

So I love it. So you had product market fit, you had happy customers. What made you decide to ultimately sell the business?

Well, that inspired me to make other apps, I guess. I've always been creative, so I had all these other ideas that came up and I kind of started finding my niche that I fit into. So I made a few other apps and then they made money as well and they still make money, still own them and I'm gonna keep them. But the attention kind of went into the other apps and I got to the point with Knock where I was like, I don't really know What I actually want to update anymore, because I refined it so many times so quickly, maybe too quickly, to be honest. But then that was based on popularity to the point where I was like, what do I do next? And, you know, I was like, do I do subscriptions or, you know, I was weighing up all my options and, you know, being honest, I didn't really see the app at the time as a subscription app. Everyone's, you know, in this era of hating subscriptions. So essentially, yeah, I just ended up focusing more on my other apps, kind of hit a bit of a bottleneck on what was next. And I'm like, let's see if I can exit cleanly. And cause I was happy with it. And that to me was my first goal to tick off the list of making online to it is selling the asset as well as, you know, be able to make money from it as a product as well.

I think that's super smart. You know, if you're at a point where You know, you don't have any super obvious ideas and the business is, you know, pretty self-sufficient. That's a great time to sell because then a buyer could acquire it and maybe they have a ton of ideas and they can take a crack at it. Maybe they can grow further, but that upside is what really gets buyers interested.

So I think 100%.

Perfect time to sell. Tell me about your expectations on acquiring. You create a listing, you go live. What were your expectations and what are the first, like, couple of weeks look like?

Yeah, I actually got quite a lot of interest. First off, it was just super easy. So just, you know, put all in the important information and just listed it. Super easy also from first interactions with buyers. So I just found it quite easy to communicate with them, see if it was something they wanted. I, yeah, I just, it's just an easy process to list and then just let it sit there and then get updates and See if people are interested, I suppose. Yeah.

Nice. How did you land on the buyer you eventually sold to? Did they have the best terms? Did you just get along with the person? Do they have a list for what they do?

They were just most interested, I think. A lot of them saw the app and they're like, this is really cool. But they were like, oh, I don't, maybe it's still a little bit too early stages. Or, you know, since it was such a niche idea. There were, there was some skepticism there. So, but they did have no skepticism at all. So they were just like, oh, this is awesome. This is what I can offer you, negotiated a bit. And yeah, so they just seemed to fit their niche as well and what they were interested in. They saw a bit more of an upside than the others did, I would say.

So nice. And how was due diligence? Was that A week-long process or was it longer than that?

It was a bit longer purely because they were just gathering it. The handover was, you know, a bit of a longer process, but they were newer to this stuff as well. So it was a bit of a walkthrough on my end, but everything went through smoothly. The timeframe was a bit stretched out, so to speak, just because of that. But yeah, it was every, there was no, no concerns, no nothing. I got my money. They're happy. So yeah, I love it.

It's a successful acquisition. Did you do anything to prepare before you began speaking on Fires? Did you put together any docs or anything special? Yep.

I basically before, well, after I listed, I put together a full doc of how the app worked in terms of code base. So how the licensing system works, how the sensor works, all that stuff. So essentially they could read through that, understand it, and then, you know, if they say fed that into AI or if they knew code, it'll be super easy to start implementing that into their licensing system or, you know, their website, their database, all that kind of stuff. So.

Nice. And then when you got through due diligence, did you use escrow to close and all that fun stuff?

Yep. Escrow.

Yeah. What do you do to What'd you do to celebrate? Did you go out to a nice dinner? Did you buy anything nice?

I upgraded my laptop.

Nice. That's a great investment.

I didn't really need to, but I'm like, I wouldn't mind the brand new MacBook Pro. So, and coincidentally at the time I've started to do a lot of like animation and After Effects. So kind of needed it, found out because the old, well, by old, it was only 2 years old MacBook Air was probably going to struggle on that front of it with rendering, but nice. Yeah.

If you were talking to another founder and they were looking to sell their business and now you have experience selling a business, what's like a piece of advice you think you'd give them?

It's an interesting one. I would say like, you know, you would have to calculate if it's worth it based off the numbers and your passion involved in it. Like if the numbers don't line up, I don't know, say making $300 a day passively and you have all these other ideas, then why would you sell it? You gotta calculate the upside. Like if you sold it now, yeah, it'll be a clean exit, But if you left it running in the background and kept putting your ideas into the app over a year, what's that going to make you compound into? So I would say definitely base it off your passion for it. What else you have going on, if you have other apps that are making more and, you know, just your attention as well. At least that's what I found with mine.

I think it's great advice. So Will, what's next for you? You successfully sold a business. You mentioned you had other apps that you're developing. What's next?

I'm just continuing to develop my other apps basically. So I started up a software studio. I do, so I manage these 3 other apps. I also freelance on the side. So do some websites, design, all that stuff. So essentially just getting my name out there and hopefully coming up with the dream of a million dollar idea. So, um, yeah.

I'm sure you're going to keep crushing it. I doubt this is the first business you're ever going to sell. I'm sure you can Tell many businesses like this.

Yeah, I hope so.

I hope so.

There's plenty of ideas circling around up there. It's just time is really all it is right now and commitment. So yeah.

Right on. Well, Will, if people want to learn more about your story and follow you online, where can they find you?

My Instagram is @will.geez, which is G-E-E-Z. And my software studio is called Little Engine Labs. So yeah, that's where you can find me for project work and see all my apps.

I'll be sure to put that in the show notes. Well, Will, congrats again on the acquisition. Rooting for you all the way. And thanks again for coming on the podcast.

No worries. Appreciate that, Andrew.

Cheers.