Running & Cycling Media Brand - SDE 186kk - 2.9x

Listing Type (?): Interesting Find

Profit: $185,880
Revenue: $212,484
Asking: $542,161
Multiple: 2.91
Established: 2023

💭 My take: This is a social-first content business in the running and cycling niches with a combined audience of roughly 700k followers and about 35k email subscribers across two Beehiiv newsletters. Revenue is diversified for a media property — roughly 55% Facebook Partner Program, 33% display ads (Mediavine), with the rest from newsletters, sponsors, and affiliates.

One thing that stood out looking at the earnings chart is that the business was actually losing money for a good portion of its life and only turned meaningfully profitable in the last ~12 months. So while the listing highlights strong margins now, the business really only has about one year of proven profitability, which is important context when evaluating the valuation.

The overall structure of the business is solid for a modern content model: multiple traffic sources, diversified monetization, and audience capture via email. But it’s also still founder-driven, with the seller spending around 25–30 hours per week producing and repurposing content. A content creator was hired recently, but there isn’t much history yet showing the model works without the founder doing most of the writing.

The big upside would likely come from productizing the audience — coaching marketplaces, training plans, or other digital products that monetize the enthusiast nature of the running and cycling communities.

At ~$542k asking (35× monthly profit) the price feels aggressive given the short profitability history and founder dependence. It’s doing many things right from a content-business perspective, but the timing of the sale — right after the first year of strong profitability — is something that doesn’t sit well with me.

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I’m now trying to send these out quicker and from my phone so excuse the lack of formality and proper grammar.