Menu
October 26, 2018 |
Subscribe:
Backing out of a deal is never easy, so when Keith Weigand discovered his acquirer was going to buy his company and terminate his employees, he had a tough decision to make.
Keith Weigand founded DataNet Solutions in 1999. The company provided electronic medical records and prescription software for the non-profit healthcare industry in the United States. Over the course of 14 years, DataNet grew to a company with 10 employees, 3500 users, and almost $1 million in revenue. Facing a changing marketplace with the introduction of the Affordable Care Act, Weigand was ready to take the lessons he’d learned with DataNet and move on to something new.
Weigand got two offers for his business and accepted one. Months later, as negotiations dragged on, he discovered the buyer was quietly planning to move to another city and fire his employees in the process. Not wanting to see his team be disposed of, Weigand pulled out and tried to resuscitate the offer he had originally turned down.
In this episode, you’ll learn:
Weigand knew he wanted his employees to be taken care of and selling to someone who planned to fire them all was not going to work. Have you figured out what’s most important to you in the sale of your business? If not, consider answering the 5 questions in The Exit Checklist.
Selling to a Publicly Traded Company
In 1988, Tony Falkenstein started Just Life Group, one of the first water-cooler companies in New Zealand.
In 2016, Falkenstein identified the need to diversify into new service offerings and opted to start acquiring companies. Since then, Falkenstein has acquired six businesses, aligning with their overall focus of enhancing lives through healthy living and healthy homes.
Exit Like a Tycoon Without Losing Your Soul
In 1995, with just $5,000 in start-up capital, Ashok Vasudevan launched Tasty Bite offering ready-to-eat Indian entrees to American consumers.
Twenty-five years later, Tasty Bite is America’s largest brand of prepared Indian food sold everywhere, from Walmart to Whole Foods. In 2017, Vasudevan announced he had sold the company to Mars, which has a portfolio of beloved brands including everything from Uncle Ben’s to Skittles.
Drew Goodmanson started Monk Development as a custom website development shop and evolved it into a product enabling churches to establish an online presence. With more than 300,000 churches in the United States, Goodmanson’s company took off and he grew it to more than $3 million in recurring revenue per year, leveraging the Software as a Service (SaaS) business model.
Bootstrapping a 2-Sided Market to a 7-Figure Exit
Anna Maste built Boondockers Welcome, a kind of Airbnb for RVers, to $100,000 in Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) when she received an offer of 3.9 times ARR. Maste was about to accept the offer when some soul searching led Maste to believe she could do much better. That kicked off a two-year journey of building the value of her business.
The Inside Story of Petco’s Acquisition of Shark Tank-Featured PupBox
Like many young couples, Ben & Ariel Zvaifler got a puppy and found themselves trying to figure out how to train it. They wondered what toys were safe and what kind of food to give to their brand-new puppy.
The couple figured they weren’t alone and decided to launch PupBox, a subscription box for new puppy owners that offered owners training guides, treats, and toys for puppies appropriate for their age and stage of development.
Why Policy Medical Got 7.2 x Revenue
Saud Juman built PolicyMedical, a company enabling hospitals to document their procedures and policies, into a software company growing 100% a year when he sold it for 7.2 times revenue. It was a remarkable exit for a business Juman started in his mother’s basement.
Jeremy Nagel started his entrepreneurial career teaching clients how to get the most out of Zoho, a popular CRM platform. Nagel began cultivating a small following on YouTube by sharing his advice for Zoho enthusiasts.
Given his status in their ecosystem, Zoho approached Nagel about creating an SMS plug-in for their application to allow users to text their clients while using Zoho. Nagel developed the application while keeping his day job. Despite only dedicating one or two days a week to its growth, the feature quickly became one of the top five applications in the Zoho marketplace.
How to Time Your Exit in Any Economy
The economy has been a roller-coaster over the last quarter.
In this special episode of Built to Sell Radio, John Warrillow reveals the downside of trying to time the market and shares four alternative ways to know when to sell.
How Mike Winnet Sold His E-learning Company for Around 4-Times Revenue
In 2015 Mike Winnet started U.K.-based Learning Heroes after recognizing that most e-learning programs were long and boring. Winnet saw an opportunity to transform the industry by creating short, engaging, animated training courses.
Winnet started by trying to sell his courses to job seekers, but when his efforts failed, he pivoted to selling to companies. Instead of a few hundred dollars a year from job seekers, selling to companies meant he was getting a few thousand dollars a year.
How to Make Your Email List Worth 7-Figures
In 2007, Laura Roeder started selling online courses on how to market through social media. Her courses gained popularity, resulting in Roeder growing an email list of around 70,000 people. Inspired to further serve her customers, she decided to create social media scheduling software.
It was one of the first social media planning tools that allowed you to schedule your social media content. Piggy backing off the list she had built from her online course business, the company hit $1 million in recurring revenue in only 11 months.
Play Hard to Get, Without Risking Your Deal
Rob Walling started an email service provider named Drip back in 2012. Walling bootstrapped his growth to almost $2 million in Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) when, in 2015, Clay Collins, the founder of Leadpages, came knocking.
In 2001, Haroon Mokhtarzada and his brothers started Webs.com, which allowed anyone to build a professional website. Eager to grow the company, they decided to raise money from a venture capital firm – a decision Mokhtarzada would later regret.
They ultimately grew Webs.com to over 50 million users and sold it in 2011 to Vistaprint for over 10x revenue, totaling $117.5 million.
