Any business "for sale" listings?

I'm starting to get the itch to open and run a business. I was also thinking about just buying an existing business and maybe customizing it a bit to suit my needs. Is there any actual way to find just listings of business's that are for sale? Any franchises? Just curious. Any any all suggestions are welcomed. Thanks.

Bit of a touchy subject.

Often people will make an offer if someone is leaving SL to buy out their product line, but it's not too common with someone staying in SL itself.

I dont know of any listings; best bet is probably to put some feelers out for people leaving sl.

-Adam

Thanks, I'll try that.

When new commitments caused me to no longer have time to operate my old event based business, I posted a forum ad and sold the whole thing, complete with customer base, as an operating, profitable, turnkey business. It simply relocated under the same name, and while it seems to have slowed down lately, went on operating after the transaction as if nothing had happened outside of a change of management. It turned out that the whole was worth significantly more than the sum of its parts.

As an interesting development, the new owner and I are now working on setting up a cross-promotional marketing relationship. This experience leads me to believe that the development of turnkey business solutions (single locations and perhaps franchises as well) would be a highly viable market sector in Second Life. I’m really surprised that more virtual business people aren’t pursuing this market. Could it simply be one of SL’s best-kept secrets? Well if that were so, I guess it isn’t anymore.

Shaun, one challenge may be the difficulty of forming a properly enforceable business structure and enforcing executory contracts in SL. Although SL has efficient ways to make "real time" sales of objects, there is no hard-coded way to enforce contracts that are executory, that is, to be performed in the future.

As you probably know, in FL, a sale of a business is typically on terms that include hold-backs and future considerations (often based on future sales). When one has no process to enforce such agreements if the promisor defaults, such transactions have a high risk factor.

Also, if two or more wish to combine into a partnership or more complex arrangement to buy a business, such an agreement typically includes a sharing of future profits and losses. In the absence of a reliable means to enforce such an agreement, such business organizations also carry a high risk of default.

Of course, players can and do proceed with such deals based on mutual personal trust. Expanding the ability to rely on something more concrete could expand the market for the sale of going concerns.

That is one reason for our exploration of theoretical methods of contract enforcement, dispute resolution and incorporation in a thread at: /148/86/78317/1.html . While we've identified some theoretical solutions, they all seem to have fairly high "transaction costs" that may discourage small business people. We may be waiting for a breakthrough in methodology or in the LL's hard-coding of the SL system.

Others' thoughts?

People seem to sell malls and commercial sims frequently, but I have a feeling most are not healthy businesses at the time of sale.

Yes there was some element of trust involved in this transaction as the objects in question were of a fairly high value. This was a bit of an issue as the buyer and myself didn't know eachother very well at the time of the transaction. It was a fairly straightforward transaction though, which in a nutshell worked like this:

1. The buyer gave me L$
2. I handed the objects which the business is based upon to the buyer
3. I made the buyer an officer of the business's guests relations and managment groups
4. I provided some instruction on the business's operational methodolgy
5. The buyer rezed the objects at his location and continued operation of the business

This transaction was a little bit different from the hypothetical you've cited above, in that it did not involve any continuing obligations on behalf of either party after the deal was closed. It still did require a "leap of faith" on the buyer's part between the completion of steps 1 and 4 though. I agree with you that the extent to which we must take such "leaps of faith" in order to conduct business within this environment is counterproductive. There needs to be better ways of getting things done.

But then again, maybe they are.

My company, Cybersim Corporation, Is up for sale for L$800. It is a company that creates public events every once in a while. I was very sucessful in The Sims Online and when I came to SL I could not afford it anymore and had to close it. It also has a website (http://cybersimcorp.simmedia.co.uk). It also manages United Sims Online, a The Sims Online based website that closed in early 2004. It's still open for archival purposes.

P.S. If you think that the Second Life Times comes with it, think again. Because I am keeping the Times.