33503 users, 2.61% are paying 'plus' customers, at, say $20/year = ~$18k in revenue. You'd need to grow and monetize that base a lot more to get back $125k purchase price.
I'm guessing someone might buy it, but there's a heck of a lot more ways you could spend $125k building a similar company to get to profitability faster. There's even more ways to spend $125k to make $18k/year. I'll happily let you invest in my company at $125k with returns of $18k/year for few years. :)
This is the classic example of the seller mixing price (cost) with value.
You are totally right when you say "There's even more ways to spend $125k to make $18k/year" - there are plenty of corporate bonds paying a yield of 10% vs Cheddar's gross yield of 14%.
Subtract from that 14% your time, additional investment to grow user base, taxes and salary; your are left with nothing and $125k less in the bank.
No doubt, and it wasn't meant as a potshot, although perhaps it came across too sarcastically; anyone that can build an audience of that size, especially with paid users as a portion, is doing something right. I wrestle with free user bases barely 20% of that, and growth is harder to achieve that most people think.
Serious question here: what portion of the audience base is using this because of you personally? Not that you know 30k people, but perhaps a large part came because of your connections. Relatedly, how many of them might leave if they saw it changing hands to someone they didn't know (or perhaps everyone would cheer because someone with more time for new features was taking over)???
"a lot more ways you could spend $125k building a similar company to get to profitability faster"
... Not necessarily. It's actually pretty difficult to start something that's consistently driving revenue at all or even into the 5-figure range. That said, $18k/year isn't super high and he's looking for roughly 5x the revenue to acquire the business, which someone would obviously only do in hopes of growth.
I'm guessing someone might buy it, but there's a heck of a lot more ways you could spend $125k building a similar company to get to profitability faster. There's even more ways to spend $125k to make $18k/year. I'll happily let you invest in my company at $125k with returns of $18k/year for few years. :)