I had a soft offer in the $3 mil range from a big company for that real estate product I mentioned. They reached out to me. I pretty much blew it off because it was in a growth phase and I felt I could grow it more. 6 months later, the real estate market crashed and that product lost 50% of its revenue within a year. In hindsight, I wish I took that offer a little more serious.
I wholeheartedly agree that advertising and acquiring users are the most important pieces, and also one of the hardest. Finding a niche and the market to go after (who do I approach? what do I say? what sort of problems can I solve that hasnt already been done? etc) has been a stumbling block, not to mention the fact that I'm far from technically fluent to spin up a basic prototype to demo.
As such I kinda put that aspiration on hold and decided to hone my craft in CS / programming in general, so that at least I have a solid, technical base to built off on.
Anyhow, I really appreciate your response and am excited to hearing back from you.
I ran an advertising agency with employees at one point and grew it to $50k/mo but hated it so stopped and went back to single founder SaaS stuff.
Before the recession hit, I also ran a SaaS product in the Real Estate sector that brought in over $70k/mo at its height. I had a few employees during that time too.
I personally enjoy being a single founder running niche products but it has its downsides. Also, once you reach a certain growth point, it becomes much more difficult to go it alone. At that point, you can either hire employees to help or decide maybe it is best to sell.