Warary: A Comedy-Show Search Site Run Solo for 2.5 Years, Sold to a Company
Indie developer Kashii ran Warary, a search service for Japanese stand-up comedy shows, alone for 2.5 years before selling it in 2020. The price is undisclosed, but the developer published the standard Japanese valuation for small web services: about 24 months of profit, plus goodwill.
This is a translation of the Japanese original. The Japanese version and cited primary sources are authoritative for all figures.
The business
Warary let comedy fans in the Tokyo area search live-show schedules that were scattered across agencies and venues. Its Twitter account had about 5,400 followers — a small but intensely engaged niche community.
The sale and the market rate
The buyer and price are undisclosed. But the developer shared the rule of thumb for selling small Japanese web services:
Sale price ≈ monthly profit × 24 months, plus a “goodwill” premium depending on synergy with the buyer.
This matches real transactions like an affiliate site that sold at ×20 monthly profit.
Sell or keep? The developer’s framework
- Keep it if: costs are low enough to sustain and you still have passion for the domain
- Sell if: you value cash and a track record now — accepting you lose the future income and can’t watch it grow
- Ask honestly whether you’ll regret it. Don’t sell just because you can.
Lessons
1. Access to a community can be worth more than revenue. Buyers priced the hard-to-reach audience of comedy fans, not cash flow. The harder it is to reach your users any other way, the more your product is worth.
2. The ×24-months-plus-goodwill rate is a negotiation anchor. Goodwill only becomes visible when multiple buyers compete — talk to more than one.
Related cases
Sources
This article summarizes and analyzes the public sources above. Please refer to the primary sources for details.