In this specific case though, Sparrow was far from a low-to-modest traction product. Judging from their ranking history, they've been consistently in the Top 50 grossing overall on the Mac App Store[1], and Top 20 grossing utilities on the iPhone[2]. That's likely worth $2000-3000/day in revenue.
Those numbers are sustainable if you have a small team (1-3 people), but I'm not sure how big Sparrow's team was. Either way, I would say that they were in a very similar position to Instapaper, except the only difference being they had raised some VC funding (with all that implies regarding needing an exit in the future).
Those numbers are sustainable if you have a small team (1-3 people), but I'm not sure how big Sparrow's team was. Either way, I would say that they were in a very similar position to Instapaper, except the only difference being they had raised some VC funding (with all that implies regarding needing an exit in the future).
[1] http://www.appannie.com/app/mac/sparrow/ranking/history/#vie...
[2] http://www.appannie.com/app/ios/492573565/ranking/history/#v...