<p>My product is a one-time-purchase desktop app that repairs Snapchat Memories exports. When Snapchat hands you your data, every photo and video has lost its date, its location, and the captions, stickers and drawings that were burned onto it. You get thousands of files that all look like they were taken today, split across multiple ZIPs. My tool puts it all back: timestamps, GPS, overlays, captions, in the original order, with the option to export straight to Google Drive. It was built against a hard deadline. Snapchat is archiving Memories behind a paywall starting January 2027. Anything older than a year that falls outside your oldest 5 GB gets locked: you keep the thumbnail, but you cannot open, edit or share it without paying for storage. The critical detail most people miss is that this is a rolling one-year rule, not a one-time event. Every year another cohort of memories crosses the line. Demand regenerates rather than ending. We launched in June 2026, took it from zero to ~945 sales a month on entirely organic traffic, and got covered by Bloomberg in August.</p><p><b>Key highlights:</b></p><ul> <li>Annual revenue (current run rate): ~$170,000 gross</li> <li>Annual profit (current run rate): ~$159,500</li> <li>Trailing actual (June to mid-Sept): $21,200 net revenue, $2,000 costs, ~$19,200 profit</li> <li>Churn rate: N/A, one-time purchase with no subscription</li> <li>LTV: $14.26 net per customer at current pricing ($10.60 blended historical across the $9.99 and $14.99 eras)</li> <li>CAC: $0.50 blended ($1,000 total ad spend across ~2,000 customers)</li> <li>LTV:CAC ratio: ~28:1</li> <li>Gross margin: 94%</li> <li>Net margin (trailing): ~90%</li> <li>Monthly operating cost: ~$179</li> <li>Owner time: 3 to 5 hours per week</li> <li>Conversion rate: 2.36% of unique visitors to paid</li> <li>Traffic: 40,000 monthly unique visitors</li> <li>Total customers: ~2,000</li> </ul> <p><b>Team</b></p><p>Two-person California general partnership, registered with a Sacramento County FBN filing and an EIN. Profit split 50/50.</p><p>1. Co-founder, non-technical: marketing, growth, SEO, content, business operations, partnerships, affiliate program, press, tax and regulatory compliance. Built and ran the TikTok channel that drove the launch. </p><p>2. Co-founder, technical Backend architecture, the media pipeline, CI/CD, infrastructure, code signing, and the desktop builds for Mac and Windows. Neither of us is staying on. We are open to agreeing a short paid transition period for knowledge transfer if a buyer wants one. No employees, no contractors on retainer. The only outside spend has been one-off UGC creator fees.</p><p><b>Tech Stack</b></p><p>TypeScript monorepo, ~37,000 lines of code, 108 test files.</p><ul> <li>FRONTEND</li> </ul> <p>Next.js 15 (App Router), TypeScript, Tailwind CSS, shadcn/ui.</p><ul> <li>BACKEND</li> </ul> <p>Node.js, Express with oRPC, Kysely query layer.</p><ul> <li>WORKER</li> </ul> <p>Pg-boss job queue handling media processing.</p><ul> <li>DESKTOP</li> </ul> <p>Electron. Signed builds for macOS and Windows, distributed directly.</p><ul> <li>ADMIN</li> </ul> <p>Separate internal review and operations portal.</p><ul> <li>MEDIA PIPELINE (the core IP)</li> </ul> <p>Standalone package handling manifest parsing, EXIF and GPS restoration, overlay compositing via Sharp and ffmpeg, and streamed ZIP delivery.</p><p>Format-agnostic by design: it repoints at Google Photos Takeout, Instagram exports, or any other data-portability dump with modest work.</p><ul> <li>DATA AND STORAGE</li> </ul> <p>PostgreSQL on Railway, kysely-mig migrations, Cloudflare R2 with a 3-day auto-delete policy, Direct-to-Google-Drive cloud export with OAuth, and a provider facade built for adding Dropbox and OneDrive</p><ul> <li>AUTH AND PAYMENTS</li> </ul> <p>Clerk (Google and Microsoft OAuth)</p><p>Stripe Checkout with webhooks and UTM tracking</p><ul> <li>HOSTING AND CI</li> </ul> <p>Vercel (master auto-deploys to production, dev branch), GitHub Actions, Terraform for infrastructure</p><ul> <li>CODE SIGNING</li> </ul> <p>Apple Developer Program (Mac, live and signed) Azure Trusted Signing (Windows).</p><ul> <li>TESTING</li> </ul> <p>Vitest and Testing Library</p><ul> <li>ANALYTICS AND MARKETING TOOLING</li> </ul> <p>PostHog with a typed event registry TikTok pixel with server-side deduplication via Stripe session ID</p><ul> <li>MONTHLY RUN COST: ~$179</li> </ul> <p>Railway ~$25, DigitalOcean worker ~$100 base, GitHub ~$42, Apple Developer ~$8 amortized, domain ~$4. R2 is effectively free at ~$0.15 per user because of the 3-day deletion policy. Worker cost scales to ~$250/mo at peak volume.</p><p><b>Marketing and growth</b></p><p>TIKTOK (primary acquisition channel).</p><p>Our TikTok account grew to 10,000 followers and ~1.5M total likes from a standing start. Best-performing videos hit 4.8M and 2.3M views. September delivered 2.8M post views and 27,300 profile views. 88% of reach is on the For You page, so growth is content-driven rather than follower-driven.</p><p>SEO (compounding channel, now the larger opportunity).</p><p>71,482 search impressions and 9,248 clicks in the last 90 days.</p><p>Impressions grew from 3,509 in July to 40,207 in September, roughly</p><p>11x in two months, and are still climbing toward the January date.</p><p>Page one rankings on the main commercial queries. Five published blog posts plus a documented 14-piece content plan.</p><ul> <li>PRESS</li> </ul> <p>Featured in Bloomberg on August 6, 2026, "Snapchat users bristle at plan to charge for Memories storage." Local Sacramento media outreach executed to KCRA 3, CBS13, FOX40 and ABC10.</p><ul> <li>AFFILIATE PROGRAM</li> </ul> <p>Live on Endorsely at 30% commission with tiered cash bonuses and a monthly leaderboard. Recruitment infrastructure built: creator briefs, Brevo email campaign, tracked outreach to 91 vetted TikTok accounts.</p><ul> <li>WHAT HAS NOT BEEN TRIED</li> </ul> <p>Ad creative are all built and sitting unused.</p><p>No email list despite 40,000 monthly visitors.</p><p>No mobile app on either store.</p><p>Blog CTR sits at ~1% on 58,000 quarterly impressions because of weak title tags. Pages already rank; it is a metadata fix, not a content problem.</p><p><b>Revenue and profit</b></p><ul> <li>MODEL</li> </ul> <p>One-time purchase, $14.99. Price moved from $9.99 in August 2026.</p><p>No subscription, so no MRR and no churn.</p><ul> <li>TRAILING ACTUALS (June 2026 launch to mid-September 2026)</li> </ul> <p>Units sold: ~2,000</p><p>Net revenue: ~$21,200</p><p>Total costs: ~$2,000</p><p>Profit: ~$19,200</p><p>Blended revenue per customer: $10.60 (spans both price points)</p><ul> <li>CURRENT RUN RATE (September 2026)</li> </ul> <p>Unique visitors: 40,000/month</p><p>Conversion: 2.36%</p><p>Sales: ~945/month</p><p>Gross: $14,166/month</p><p>Net of Stripe fees: $13,471/month</p><p>Net of all costs: ~$13,292/month</p><p>Annualized gross: ~$170,000</p><p>Annualized profit: ~$159,500</p><p>I am showing both numbers deliberately. The trailing figure includes the ramp from zero. The run rate reflects where the business actually is now and is still climbing toward the January date. Pick whichever you think is fair, and I will walk you through the Stripe exports.</p><ul> <li>UNIT ECONOMICS</li> </ul> <p>Price: $14.99</p><p>Stripe fees: $0.73</p><p>Infrastructure per sale: $0.19</p><p>Net contribution: $14.07</p><p>Gross margin: 94%</p><p>CAC: $0.50 blended. Total paid spend to date is ~$1,000, all through</p><p>TikTok's Promote tool, across ~2,000 customers.</p><p>LTV: $14.26 net per customer</p><p>LTV:CAC: ~28:1</p><p>CAC payback: immediate. Single purchase at the point of acquisition, no payback period.</p><p>Caveat on attribution: Promote boosts organic videos, so the spend drives both direct clicks and additional algorithmic reach. $0.50 is a blended figure, not a clean paid CAC.</p><p>LTV: $14.26 (equals first and only purchase, net of fees)</p><p>LTV:CAC: ~28:1</p><p>RETENTION / CHURN: N/A. Single-purchase product.</p><p>Refund Rate: 6 refunds lifetime</p><ul> <li>PRICE ELASTICITY TESTED</li> </ul> <p>The $9.99 to $14.99 increase cost roughly 10 to 20% of conversion and more than paid for itself in revenue. There may be room above $14.99.</p><p><b>Return on investment</b></p><p>At the $115,000 ask and current net profit of ~$13,292/month:</p><p>PAYBACK: 8.7 months.</p><p>Three scenarios:</p><ol> <li>Volume holds through the January 2027 archiving date and settles at today's level. Payback in 8.7 months, then ~$159K/year.</li> <li>Volume halves after January as the first cohort clears. Payback in 17.3 months at ~$6,650/month.</li> <li>Volume rises into January as search impressions keep compounding (they grew 11x between July and September). At 1,500 sales/month, payback in 5.5 months.</li> </ol> <ul> <li>HOW A BUYER ACCELERATES IT</li> </ul> <ul> <li>Fix blog title tags. 58,000 quarterly impressions converting at ~1% on pages that already rank page one. Metadata work, measured in hours, not weeks.</li> <li>Launch paid acquisition. Pixel, campaigns and creative already built. At a $14.99 price point and 2.36% site conversion there is room.</li> <li>Ship mobile. Zero presence on either app store today, and a material share of the audience is phone-only and literally cannot buy.</li> <li>Capture email. 40,000 monthly visitors, no list.</li> <li>Raise price. The last increase proved demand is inelastic.</li> </ul> <p>At ~$179/month in operating cost and 3 to 5 hours a week of maintenance, the downside is bounded. The asset can sit idle without bleeding cash while you decide what to do with it.</p><p><b>Startup assets</b></p><ul> <li>The domain</li> <li>Full private monorepo: ~37,000 lines of TypeScript, 108 test files, Terraform infrastructure definitions</li> <li>Signed, shipping desktop builds for macOS and Windows</li> <li>The media-pipeline package as standalone, reusable IP</li> </ul> <p>AUDIENCE</p><ul> <li>TikTok account: 10,000 followers, ~1.5M total likes, 2.8M post views in September</li> <li>Customer database: ~2,000 paying customers with full purchase history</li> <li>Full Google Search Console and Cloudflare analytics history</li> </ul> <p>SEO FOOTPRINT</p><ul> <li>71,482 search impressions in the last 90 days, growing ~11x between July and September</li> <li>Page one rankings on the main commercial queries</li> <li>5 published blog posts</li> <li>Documented 14-piece content plan with the remaining 9 unwritten</li> <li>Product JSON-LD structured data, 4.8 star rating markup</li> </ul> <p>MARKETING INFRASTRUCTURE</p><ul> <li>Endorsely affiliate program, live, 30% commission, with bonus tiers</li> <li>Brevo email account and campaign templates</li> <li>TikTok pixel with server-side deduplication, fully configured</li> <li>TikTok Ads Manager campaign structure and Spark Ad creative, built and never run</li> <li>Trustpilot business profile</li> <li>Creator brief PDFs and a vetted outreach list of 91 TikTok accounts</li> </ul> <p>OPERATIONAL</p><ul> <li>Apple Developer Program account (Mac signing)</li> <li>Azure Trusted Signing configuration (Windows signing)</li> <li>Support email and all support history</li> </ul> <p>NOT INCLUDED</p><ul> <li>My personal TikTok account</li> <li>The Stripe account itself. Stripe does not transfer between legal entities. You will connect your own; all transaction history and exports are provided.</li> </ul> <p><b>Risks</b></p><p>Writing these out plainly because you will find them anyway.</p><ul> <li>DEADLINE DEPENDENCY</li> </ul> <p>Demand is driven by Snapchat's January 2027 archiving change.</p><p>Mitigation: it is a rolling one-year rule, not a one-time deletion.</p><p>Every year a new cohort crosses the threshold. Verify this yourself in Snap's own policy documentation rather than taking my word for it.</p><ul> <li>NO RECURRING REVENUE</li> </ul> <p>One-time purchase. Revenue requires continuous acquisition.</p><ul> <li>COMPETITION</li> </ul> <p>The app launched on iOS September 16, 2026 at $4.99 with a free tier. As of early October, it had 2 ratings and no visible distribution.</p><p>Mitigation: it is on-device only, which caps the library size it can handle. Our users routinely have 20 to 100 GB exports, which is precisely why direct-to-Google-Drive export exists. The competitive gap is distribution, and that is what you are buying.</p><ul> <li>PLATFORM RISK</li> </ul> <p>Snap could change the export format or reverse the policy.</p><p>Mitigation: the format changed once already (February 2026) and the pipeline absorbed it while competitors relying on a JSON-upload trick broke. The architecture handles format churn. A policy reversal is the real tail risk and cannot be hedged.</p><ul> <li>TIKTOK ALGORITHM DEPENDENCE</li> </ul> <p>Mitigation: SEO impressions grew 11x over a period, so the channel mix is already shifting toward the more durable one.</p><ul> <li>ONE-TIME-PURCHASE SUPPORT LOAD</li> </ul> <p>Maintenance runs 3 to 5 hours a week, mostly support email.</p><p><b>Summary</b></p><p>You are buying distribution into a market that regenerates every year.</p><p>The numbers: ~$13,300/month net profit, 94% gross margin, $179/month to run, 3 to 5 hours a week to maintain. At $115,000 that is an 8.7 month payback on current performance.</p><p>Four reasons it is worth more to you than the trailing revenue implies. First, growth is compounding, not decaying. Search impressions went from 3,509 in July to 40,207 in September. That curve is still climbing into January and it was built with zero ad spend.</p><p>Second, nothing has been monetized properly. No paid acquisition. No email list on 40,000 monthly visitors. No mobile app, on a product whose audience is teenagers and twenty-somethings, a large share of whom do not own a computer and physically cannot buy this today. Each of those is a known, specific, unpulled lever. </p><p>Third, the demand does not end in January. The archiving rule is rolling and annual. A new cohort of memories crosses the line every year, and the people affected are the ones who have been on Snapchat for a decade.</p><p>Fourth, the media pipeline is not a Snapchat product. It is a manifest parser, an EXIF and GPS restorer, and an overlay compositor. It points at Google Photos Takeout, Instagram exports, or any other data-portability dump with modest work. The Snapchat business pays for the acquisition; the pipeline is the durable asset.</p><p>Why we are selling: two partners, both with other things we want to build, neither wanting to run a consumer app through 2027. Both have either newborns or are expecting very soon. We would rather hand it to someone who will push it than let it coast.</p><p>Happy to share Stripe exports, Google Search Console, Cloudflare analytics and repo access with anyone serious. Open to reasonable offers and to a structure that works for you.</p><p>✅ $26,600 TTM revenue</p><p>✅ 2,200 customers</p><p>✅ Business model: LTD</p><p>✅ Built with Node.js, TailwindCSS, Next.js</p>