The Europeans’ latest insufferable maneuver, GDPR, forced 10s of 1000s of tech companies to scramble toward “compliance” in mere weeks.
at Fomo we published a 20 page DPA and modified our T&C to stay in the clear.
some media companies, advertising platforms, and social networks even shut down European access completely.
the winners? lawyers.
and me.
when life gives you lemons
i acquire companies through 3 investment vehicles:
- Fomo (competitor add-ons, UGC content)
- mkay holdings (ecommerce apps)
- Fork Equity (small businesses, SaaS)
real estate agents claim the best deals fit one of the Three D’s:
divorce, debt, or death.
the same goes for startups, but today i’ll add a 4th: Regulation.
my old boss says businesses buy things to make money, save money, or stay out of jail. for these reasons my partners at Fork decided to turn the GDPR situation into a profit center.
we acquired a cookie consent plugin.
introducing Cookie Assistant
founded awhile back by a Slovenian developer, who also runs a successful SEO company, i discovered Cookie Assistant in April 2018.
after exchanging a few emails we acquired the tool, which organically gets 3-5 freemium signups per day.
redesign
here’s how it looked when we bought it:
and here’s an early glimpse of our progress:
marketing
i know nothing about the law or this tool’s competitors.
time for a SWOT analysis.
key learnings:
- Cookie Assistant should target ops folks at US-based companies w/ 20%+ pageviews in EU
- Cookie Assistant onboarding should begin with the theme editor, possibly on a logged out page
- Cookie assistant should have an annual plan
priorities:
- Design (90% done)
- Geotargeting (0% done)
- Pricing (in progress)
- Compliance controls (0% done)
roadmap
with these insights, a Trello board was born.
what’s next
businesses are either “build and sell” or “hold forever” opportunities.
for us, Cookie Assistant will be a forever-hold. passive income is more interesting than re-selling it to a bigger company or another micro PE firm.
in the coming months we’ll improve the stats, theme builder, and post-consent options, to give both businesses and their website visitors more control over compliance and privacy.
cheers to regulation, and cheers to profiting from it.
Been a reader of your site for a while now, was inspired to start looking at buying up some small SaaS apps myself.
Found a likely candidate on TransferSlot but ended up being outbidded…
That site was Cookie Assistant
Whoops!
lol!