Saying No To 7 Times Revenue

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Eddie Whittingham started a company called The Defense Works in 2016. His idea was to provide companies with information on how to avoid getting hacked. Whittingham created a series of animated video clips explaining cyber security best practices and offered his content on a subscription model to companies.

By 2020, Whittingham had bootstrapped his business to 8 full-time employees when he attracted an offer of 7 times revenue from Proofpoint, one of the largest players in the cyber security industry. Whittingham got Proofpoint up to 10 times revenue and agreed to the deal. Listen to this episode and you’ll discover how to:

• Cut your churn on annual subscriptions
• Leverage an accelerator to answer your business model questions
• Slash your costs for developing a subscription business
• Get on the radar of an acquirer (without saying you’re for sale)
• Convince your customers to write a review for your business
• Protect your secrets while being wooed by an acquirer
• Explain a visit from a potential acquirer to your employees
• Push an acquirer to increase their offer (without sounding like a jerk)
• Protect your downside when accepting equity as a currency when selling your business

 

Check out our article on How To Decode An Acquirer’s Maximum Offer.

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Check out our full M&A Glossary

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Definitions

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Minimum Viable Product (MVP): A minimum viable product, or MVP, is a product with enough features to attract early-adopter customers and validate a product idea early in the product development cycle. In industries such as software, the MVP can help the product team receive user feedback as quickly as possible to iterate and improve the product.

Because the agile methodology is built on validating and iterating products based on user input, the MVP plays a central role in agile development.

Source: https://www.productplan.com/glossary/minimum-viable-product/

 

About Our Guest

Eddie Whittingham

Eddie Whittingham is a former police officer and lawyer, who bootstrapped a cyber-security SaaS business, The Defence Works in less than 4 years for a multi-million exit to a NASDAQ-listed company.