Weeks spent working 15-hour shifts paid off for the founders of GoNabit, who have revealed that three rival bidders were in the running to buy the site.
The daily deals website, based in Dubai, was last month acquired by the US web giant LivingSocial, a global network of sites offering discount coupons.
The web entrepreneurs behind GoNabit say LivingSocial was among three bidders - and claim they "didn't really expect" such international interest.
"We'd looked to potentially raise some money, and we'd ended up with three different offers to acquire all or some of the business," says Dan Stuart, the co-founder of GoNabit.
"That was in January and February. We went back and forth with a few … They were all interesting potential opportunities for us," he added.
The news is likely to spark interest among internet entrepreneurs based in the Middle East.
For while dozens of daily deals sites have launched in the region, there has been relatively little general international interest in Middle East startups.
GoNabit operates in the UAE, Egypt, Lebanon and Jordan, and claims to have saved shoppers more than US$5 million (Dh18.3m) in the past year. The site launched in May last year, after a period in which Mr Stuart said he worked 15-hour shifts to get it online.
Having approached several international players in the internet industry, Mr Stuart went to visit LivingSocial at the company's Washington headquarters.
But the Middle East was not high on LivingSocial's agenda at that point, he says.
"They are very honest and said 'no one on the board is ever going to blow up because we didn't close that Middle Eastern acquisition. We have a list of international priorities, and the region is not really at the top of that list'," Mr Stuart says.
But the entrepreneur says LivingSocial "left the door open" for future negotiations, which took place in January.
That eventually led to the announcement last month that LivingSocial had bought GoNabit for an undisclosed sum.
A week after the acquisition, it emerged that LivingSocial was selecting investment banks for an initial public offering that may value the company at $10 billion to $15bn. It is reportedly looking to raise $1bn in the offering.
Mr Stuart said GoNabit would eventually rebrand under the LivingSocial name. "At some point we're going to be LivingSocial, and people are going to buy their deals through LivingSocial," he said. "When that happens, we make sure that everything is migrated in such a way that the user experience is seamless."
