Once a founder decides to sell, the app often starts to drift. Nobody plans it. The roadmap feels pointless if someone else will own it, marketing spend looks like money you will never get back, and support replies slip to once a week. The trouble is that a buyer prices the app on its most recent months, and the last year is exactly where that drift shows up. The founders who get the best outcomes run the app as if they were keeping it, right up to the day it transfers.
1. Keep shipping, even small releases
A buyer reads your release history in the store and in the repository. A steady run of updates, even modest ones, says the app is maintained and the codebase is alive. A gap of eight or nine months says the opposite, and it raises practical questions: is the app built against a current SDK, will it pass the next store review, does it still run cleanly on the latest OS versions? Keep dependencies current and keep a predictable release rhythm. It costs little and removes a whole line of questions from diligence.
2. Do not cut acquisition to make the profit look bigger
Turning off paid acquisition in the final months will lift profit on paper. It also shows up in the install and cohort data a few months later, and buyers look there first. A falling install curve and thinner new cohorts tell the buyer that revenue is about to soften, and they will price the app on where it is heading rather than where it was. If your paid channels pay back, keep them running at a steady level and show the buyer the payback. If some do not, cut them early enough that the trend has settled before you go to market.
3. Change pricing with time to prove it
A price increase or a new paywall can be a real improvement, and buyers do pay for proven pricing power. Proven is the key word. A change made a few weeks before going to market has no renewal data behind it, and a buyer will not credit it until the first renewal cycle shows how many users stayed. If you want to test pricing, do it early enough that at least one renewal period has run through, and keep a short record of what changed and when.
4. Keep answering users and reviews
Ratings and reviews are public, and the trend matters as much as the score. A slow slide over the final year, with unanswered complaints near the top of the list, reads as an app the owner has already stepped away from. Keep support response times where they were, keep replying to reviews, and keep an eye on refund and crash rates. These are the numbers a buyer can see before they ever sign an NDA.
5. Keep the books current every month
The numbers a buyer reads should come from the same place each month: RevenueCat or Stripe for subscriptions, AdMob or your ad network for ad revenue, and a bank account that reconciles to both. Founders who let the books slide in the final year end up rebuilding months of figures under a letter of intent, which is slow and makes every number look less certain. Close each month as it ends and keep the reports together.
The takeaway
The last year before a sale is not a wind-down. It is the period a buyer studies most closely, and it sets the run-rate they will pay for. Keep shipping, keep acquisition steady, change pricing with time to prove it, keep looking after users and keep the books current. None of it is dramatic, and all of it shows up in the offer.
