The listing had no information with which to value the site. Nothing about the traffic sources. Nothing about the handover process. Nothing about billing the customers. 37Signals did not answer a single question posted to the auction.

It's no surprise nobody bid. Actually, someone did bid but nobody at 37Signals approved it, so the bid expired. You have to wonder why they spent money listing it at all; and, since the auction was essentially abandoned, whether they would've honored a sale if someone had offered the asking price.

The way they approached this sale feels amateurish for such a successful company

For those of us who have no idea what this is all about or why it's important: http://thenextweb.com/insider/2012/05/10/37signals-lists-web...

The sale price ($480k) is just greater than twice 1 year of income ($212k). Why does this seem low enough to be a red flag?

It has good revenue, but it relies upon 37 signals to promote it. Without their support, revenues could tank. Its a big risk for many potential buyers.

What they ought to do instead of selling it, is pick an entrepreneur from their community and give him/her a go at running Sortfolio for a year or two with some kind of incentive based equity sharing deal.

I wait for the "where we did wrong" blog post.

What really surprises me is that the same people who did the revolutionary Rails years ago came up with rather mediocre products afterwards.

I don't know anybody who is using Basecamp nowadays (and that's their best known product), the same with obscure Highrise and Backpack. Campfire is the only one which is quite popular and well used. But Campfire is just a chat server, really no rocket science and could be substituted by tons of similar services (but I still like it because of the hooks).

I think that everyone who is assuming that 37 Signals is being neglectful or unprofessional here, may be missing the possibility that they let the auction fail with intent.

It is possible that private negotiations have been in process.

I'm ignorant to the rules of posting an auction on sortfolio, and to the fees, but I'd bet that there would be plenty of reasons for a buyer to prefer a different process, and once said buyer approached 37 Signals with a serious offer, they may have changed their mind about it "not being worth their time" [1].

Or, someone they respect and trust could have shown interest and taken initiative to run the site.

[1] I read an unsourced claim in another thread that 37 Signals felt that Sortfolio was not worth their time.

It's not clear if this was a legit auction. I had some interest and contacted Jason from 37signals and he indicated that he was still looking for $480K, no less.

It would be a good buy if they give the potential buyer a time window of 18 months to work out an alternative customer acquisition channel.

Immediate separation will hurt it significantly and sortfolio will not be able to recover when the only growth driver is killed off.

In fact, Why not hire a typical founding team to find a second growth driver under the 37signals brand and then try to sell it? 212k annually should be enough for such a team.

I briefly had a paid sortfolio account right around the time it first launched. I got one good lead which more than paid for my investment, but every other person who contacted me from that point on was an overseas developer trying to sell me their services. I cancelled the account a month later. I see the biggest challenge with this site being coming up with a strategy to reduce spam.

Interesting to see if he closes Sortfolio down, as quoted: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3941504

No surprise here. Sortfolio's value comes from its association with 37 Signals. Without it, I'd be surprise if more than 10% of the clients renew their annual listing.

What are the alternatives to Sortfolio now that it's dying any day?

This was expected...