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Are you a founder looking to sell your company, or already in the process of doing so? In The Big Exit Show by Peak and NP-Hard with our hosts Johan van Mil and Anke Huiskes talk to entrepreneurs about scaling their companies and the route to making a successful exit. They bring you real stories, valuable insights, and expert advice from entrepreneurs who have successfully exited their business. Learn what to expect, avoid common pitfalls, and get inspired to achieve your own big exit! 🔥 Subscribe now to stay ahead in your journey and get actionable tips from those who’ve been there before.
Anke Huiskes (NP-Hard) (00:01.656)
Starting a company is easy, keep on growing a company, that's harder. But selling your company, that's whole different story.
In the Big Exit Show, we lift the curtain of secrecy around selling businesses by learning from the ambitious and successful founders who've been on this roller coaster. Our host, Johan van Meel, founder and managing partner at Peak, and myself, Anke Huyskes, founder and managing partner at NPR Ventures, will help you on this exciting journey. And today in the hot seat, we have Antony. Antony worked at a number of startups, including Cedars and student money Safer, as well as a venture capital firm, DFJ Esprit.
Anthony (00:29.321)
Hello.
Anke Huiskes (NP-Hard) (00:38.461)
It was while he was working as an IT support analyst that he came up with the idea for the company Swogo, the company that we're going to go deep about today. His colleagues would consistently ask him to help him choose the right electronics products. Even though he kept up to date with the industry, he had to research for hours and hours across several resources to find the right product. He felt that there had to be a simpler way, and that's how he came up with the idea of Swogo. So, Anthony, thank you for joining us today.
I'm excited to have you dive in because it has been a journey for over 10 years. So let's get started maybe with the initial idea. Can you kick us off?
Anthony (01:14.473)
That's right.
Anthony (01:20.522)
Yeah, course. So I started my business back when I was 21 years old in 2012. It was my first full-time job and it was totally different to what we ended up doing. So we pivoted two times to get there.
So I was working in IT support and people would ask me questions about which products to buy. So for example, what laptop, what TV or what smartphone. And I wanted to create a way that made it easy for people to make good purchase decisions like an expert. So kind of like what a calculator could do to help you do math, I wanted to do that for purchases.
So we built a product finder where you could come and visit our website and you'd be asked a series of questions. And in 60 seconds, it will tell you what's the best product you should buy and from which store you should buy it from. So that was like a B2C company.
What we then saw was that conversion was low and marketing acquisition costs were really high. So we decided to pivot to go B2B. We private labeled that technology and sold it directly to retailers. This category later became known as guided selling. And I'm actually advising a company that also just exited a few weeks ago in the Netherlands called Aiden that was in that specific space. But it was actually while doing like customer development and selling that product that
There was one particular retailer that asked me, when you get to the end of that recommendation, can you cross sell an item to go with it? I remember at the time I gave some kind of default answer, like, you know, it's something that we plan on doing, but we don't have it right now. It will be in our roadmap, blah, blah, blah. And then I just stopped for a second. asked like, actually, can you tell me a little bit more about why it is that you're looking to do that? And they said, well, because the main item, let's say a laptop could give me five, 10 % margin on it.
Anthony (03:00.297)
but an accessory like a bag would give me maybe 70 % margin. And I thought, okay, now this is like interesting, right? And what basically I found was that you could make more margin on these add-on items or even services like warranty and installations. And so we created a way for retailers to be able to do that. And that was automated bundling as a technology.
And we found that a lot of retailers prior to that would do this all manually. So it would take them way too much time to do it. It was inefficient and they would leave money on the table.
Anke Huiskes (NP-Hard) (03:32.642)
You make it sound very easy. So like, the customer told me the insight I took it and, ran with it. But, from like that insight to work with that one customer, you didn't come to like a company with so many employees. Like what happened afterwards going from one customer to another, was that like within the same vertical that you decide to go abroad? How did you make that decision?
Anthony (03:41.597)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Johan Van Mil (03:46.806)
you
Anthony (03:55.643)
Yeah, I think...
What we did was quite interesting is that what we found is that retailers are conglomerates, right? So everybody owns everybody or they own a little slice of someone else. And so that's really important in understanding how you can break into it. So what we would do is find, let's say a retailer like Media Mart, where a lot of people know it's like the largest consumer electronics retailer in Europe. And we would look through all of the different countries that were there and see, okay, which one is the one that's most respected with the organization? Which one is growing quickly?
which one has a smaller team that would be easier for us to break into getting that particular logo. And we would identify where that was. In this case, it was actually the Netherlands. We would sell in there. And then what we would do is sell into all the sister companies. And then following that, also all their competitors as well. So you would get into, let's say, the Netherlands, then for Media Mart, then you'd go straight to like, Bol and Core Blue.
And that allowed us to kind of spider in and we were able to do this into like 40 different countries. And by the time I exited, we had eight out of 10 of the largest consumer electronics retailers as all customers.
Johan Van Mil (05:05.13)
And Anne, sound, it was really easy. Anthony writes the land and expand strategy. How did you manage that? Especially the first one you selected, how did you get to the second and third etc? How did you help these companies also to use your product in a broader sense?
Anthony (05:10.663)
Yeah.
Anthony (05:21.393)
Yeah, I mean, we were always very, very intentional. What I think is that it's interesting when you look at like the BDR job going out to like schedule appointments that really sets up the entire organization into the path they're going to take. So if you start booking in meetings in Sweden, you're now entering the Swedish market, right? So you, and the interesting thing is usually hire very junior people to do that job. So what I would do is I would actually control a lot of the lead selection that we would have to make sure that we were entering always into the right markets that we wanted to. but it was extremely, extremely calculated.
and one thing that I think that we did particularly well was being able to get somebody's attention. So I think starting really young, you know, you're doing like enterprise sales and like 21 years old, like that usually doesn't match very well. And I know that in hindsight.
And so people wouldn't trust the other person on the other side of the table. Like who is this kid selling me this thing that he knows nothing about industry that he's in and he's never even had a job before really. And so what we did is try to work out ways that we could go around getting credibility. So for example, a lot of people would go in and say, I sold a pilot for free so I can get the brand. And then I'm looking to then hopefully convert them into a client.
I would look a little bit beyond that and say, instead of just trying to convert that client and hope that works well, which to be honest, a lot of times it doesn't when it's a free trial because they don't value it fully and you haven't gone through the full sell cycle to get the right approval. I would, let's say for example, if I wanted one particular customer, I would sell to their competitor instead, give them a free trial. And then I would message the competitor to say, I'm working with them.
and I would use that to get into that particular company. So it's a bit of a different approach to the norm.
Anke Huiskes (NP-Hard) (07:01.496)
How did you get to that approach? How did you get to that approach? Because it's relatively innovative, especially to your point. Like if you haven't had a job before, it's a smart way to get the attention.
Anthony (07:03.561)
Sorry.
Anthony (07:12.379)
Yeah.
Anthony (07:16.361)
I was reading sales books since the age of like 12 years old. So it's something that I was absolutely obsessed with. And I recall like when I was a kid, like maybe 12, 13, what I would do is I would scrape the yellow pages at the time online, the online version. And then what I would do is take the copyright message at the bottom of the website as an indication of how old the website was. So if it was like copyright 2012, all rights reserved, I was like, that's like a few years old, for example.
Anke Huiskes (NP-Hard) (07:29.11)
Thank
Anthony (07:44.867)
And then I'll take the number of review ratings that they had and I would assume that was like an indicator of the size of their business and I would just cold call them. So like really since and then I'll sell them a new website basically that's what I would do and I'll outsource that to other kids in actually they were in America and I'll take a cover and basically I found that
that actually gave me a lot of the skill set that I needed in terms of being able to analyze somebody's website, do the research, find out where there was a gap and how to pitch it and not be afraid of just breaking down doors. So even though it was my first job, I kind of had 10 years experience in doing sales.
Anke Huiskes (NP-Hard) (08:20.558)
And this is when you were 12, that's what you're saying? So then like, help me understand, like when you're 12, so like all our kids like play soccer in school or like on the streets. So how like, that you have like an aunt or an uncle or a neighbor who's like, hey kid, this is interesting. You should look into it. Or like, how did you kickstart that little side business?
Anthony (08:26.321)
Yeah.
Anthony (08:39.781)
Yeah. So I mean, it grew to around like 3000 a month. It was like pretty good as a kid. I blew all that money, obviously. But what basically happened was my mum and my dad, one's a plumber and one's an accounting assistant. And they put me into private school for two years. So they put a lot of their savings into doing that. What that basically showed me was that it basically introduced me to wealthy people. And I got to see what that was like.
And my best friend at the time, he would always have something a little bit better than what I would have. I'd have like the Walkman that, you would run a walk with it. It would like kind of skip. And then my friend would have the job proof Walkman and I'd be like, why does he have this? Or like I'd see the cars my parents had versus the cars that his parents had. And it was kind of at this point that I was just curious to like why and how, and basically I found out that his father was an entrepreneur. owned five glass factories. And it was basically from there that I thought I'm going to be an entrepreneur one day.
Anke Huiskes (NP-Hard) (09:40.204)
Wow.
Johan Van Mil (09:41.61)
Good motivation, right? Really helped you, successful, especially also on the sales side. And how did you, because we met one time, long time ago, at the time you started Bootcamp, how did you fund the company, right? Especially in the early days and also longer in the history.
Anthony (09:43.335)
Yeah, very good.
Anthony (09:47.049)
you
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Anthony (09:57.403)
Yeah, so we did our first crowdfunding round. It was on Cedars. So it's quite a long story. So I didn't know how to raise capital. I didn't really know any like wealthy people. what I did was no, I didn't test raising capital. No. And I'd blown all that money as well. So not much. So, so what I, what I did was I, I thought, okay, I need to find like people that have got money. So
Johan Van Mil (10:07.531)
You didn't test it when you were 12, right? Probably.
Anke Huiskes (NP-Hard) (10:09.794)
you
Anthony (10:21.441)
There was a crowdfunding website called CEDARS at the time that equity crowdfunding was new. They were like the first ones doing it. So I didn't even know what it was. And I think most people didn't know what it was. So I just saw the founder and CEO at the time was Jeff Lin. He posted an article on TechCrunch. I literally read the article and I thought...
I need to find this guy because I think this guy's got money. So I sent him an email and said, look, I want to come work for you. I'll work for you for free. And I will just basically want to sit next to you. And this is what I plan on doing in the future with the company. He said, okay. So he hired me. I became their first like employee.
And that was like an internship kind of part-time. And then I realized that it was not paid, not paid. But I had a little bit of money anyway, so I could kind of self-fund. And then I realized that he was an equity crowdfunding platform trying to get investors. So he had no investors either. So I was like, this is the wrong guy. So was like, it turns out like venture capitalists are the ones with money. So what I did was I sent a cold email to another.
Johan Van Mil (11:00.84)
Not paid, right? Not paid, no.
Anthony (11:21.457)
VC, which was DFJS free. And it was a chap called Nick Brisbane, sent him a cold email, landed the same interview. I told him I want to work for free. And he gave me like a summer job as well. And then I started understanding, okay, now this is how the like the ecosystem works. You've got like the angel investors that got crowdfunding coming up and VCs. And what I ended up doing is I ended up creating
a campaign on cedars. So we were like the first batch going live with cedars and we were raising, I think it was 17,500 pounds. What I did is I was kind of like studying when I was at the time of cedars, like what would happen on Kickstarter, right? So, you know, people would just donate and get like a free bag or t-shirt and things like that. And what I found was that
As soon as somebody got around like 70 or 80 % funded, the rest will just fund automatically. like the crowd will just simply follow other people, but you needed that first bit of money. So what I did is I put money in myself as an anonymous investor and I kept drip feeding it into the campaign. And it was just creating that kind of FOMO that it was closing quickly. And we became, I think it was probably like sixth crowdfunded company in Europe because of that. Yeah. So was like a bit of hustle.
Anke Huiskes (NP-Hard) (12:32.864)
I remember that from that time I was at Pebble, the smartwatch who did the Kickstarter campaign and I came right after the first Kickstarter campaign which was like a 10 million funding round. Initially I think they only wanted to get to one and then 100,000 people wanted to have that watch and then for the second one it was even bigger but we also kind of like
Anthony (12:37.787)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Anthony (12:48.137)
Yeah.
Anthony (12:51.665)
Yeah.
Anke Huiskes (NP-Hard) (12:56.206)
mimic the system in that sense that you can definitely rally up people so people know like this is when it goes live. It's the same right now with product hunt. It's not like all of a sudden this project is live. Like there's a lot of massage going into it before the product or the project actually goes live. So it's, and from there, because I think I read somewhere that you did not one, but six of these campaigns. Is that correct?
Anthony (12:57.577)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Anthony (13:04.317)
Yeah.
Anthony (13:07.688)
Mm-hmm.
Anthony (13:12.777)
For sure. Yeah. There's actually...
Anthony (13:20.763)
Yeah, so we did like every time we would raise like another little round. So that's I think a mistake that I did is I raised a lot of smaller tranches instead of just going after like maybe a bigger round. But I think over time, we probably only raised around half a million over a 10 year period. So really wasn't that much capital. But what I would do is I would leverage crowdfunding sometimes to anchor the valuation that I wanted. So there were a lot of like tricks. So for example,
When I raised that round of 17 and a half thousand, I went through all of the list of the investors and I looked and said like, okay, anybody that's given me more than let's say, 500 pounds, I'm going to call them personally and ask them meet them. When I found this, nobody was doing that because it was like it's viewed as an online platform, right? So just the fact that I was doing that, I was immediately positioned as different. And what I thought was that, you know, if you dropped 500 pounds at the time that
Johan Van Mil (14:04.884)
you
Anthony (14:11.911)
you just read a one pager, you probably have like a little bit of disposable income, right? So I should be able to get more money out of you. that did actually happen. I had one guy give me like a quarter of a million, from doing that. and I also noticed that depending on the time of year, also, like say for example, with bankers in particular, if you went to them when they had their bonuses, they were looking to like offload their cash. and so what I would do is I would get them to invest in a crowdfunding round, where
I would anchor already the valuation before I the listing. I knew that they were like more likely to just like say yes quickly. So I would use them to anchor the valuation and go to the smart money to go and get them to fill in the rest of the route.
Johan Van Mil (14:53.852)
Again, you use a lot of the sales skills, right, which you learned early on for also for your fundraising, right, apart from commercially in your company.
Anthony (14:57.417)
Yeah.
Yeah, I used, sell skills to carry me, I think like a lot. I think, probably like it's a lot of it. That's like, was a huge advantage. And I think there's still some disadvantage to it in that, maybe sometimes like I could have done, I could have found even stronger product market fit if I wasn't as good at selling it. and I think that's something that I'm conscious of today.
Johan Van Mil (15:24.89)
you could easily sell it, right? You could easily sell your product without having the real proof that it actually works, I understand you correctly.
Anthony (15:27.473)
Yeah, I could.
Anthony (15:32.453)
Yeah, exactly. And I think like, so with each of the products that we had, I managed to sell all of them. And it's just the sales ability of doing it, think. And, but yeah, so think that's something that I'm very conscious of today.
Johan Van Mil (15:38.602)
Mm.
Johan Van Mil (15:45.374)
Hey, and you choose to go for this crowdfunding route, right? But not for the VC route, and at those years, VC came up a lot. What is the reason that you went for this route and not for the VC, typical VC route that a lot of tech companies do?
Anthony (15:59.601)
Yeah, I mean, honestly, I think at the time it was the perceived control that I would have over the company. I think that was something I was like quite concerned about. think now, like, you know, as a second time founder going in, that's not something that I'm worried about. Maybe I was afraid of, let's say being replaced or like something like this. So I kind of would avoid that at the time because I thought I was like a newcomer that didn't really know exactly what they were doing. It was just like weaning it every single time.
So I think that was like something that started there. And then after a while we started, you know, just generating cashflow. We were profitable and then it was cheaper to just raise debt. So I did, I decided not to go down that route. there, there was, guess, one other factor as well, which I guess, leads later on into exit is that I had other co-founders on the cap table.
that I asked to leave the company. So there were actually four others. I asked all of them to leave and continue the company without them and they remained on it on the cap table. And so I knew that if I was to raise VC, I'd probably have to do at least another five years in the journey, which would mean I kind of would be lining also their pockets and taking additional risks when me as the majority shareholder in comparison to them, I'd be able to already walk away with like, you know, substantial amount of money.
Johan Van Mil (17:10.954)
What was the reason, Anthony, that when you co-founded Leprite, I think you probably know that in this case, if it happens now, that you probably asked them to give back a part of their shares, have an investment schedule in place, etc. What was the reason that you didn't do it at that time?
Anthony (17:14.6)
Yeah.
Anthony (17:28.414)
So the thing is, I think we spent a lot of time pivoting, right? So we didn't actually make that much progress in the time that they were actually in the business, because we pivoted two times, going from B to C to B to B, and then changing the product B to B. And also, like, you've got long enterprise sell cycles and things like that. So to get it off the ground at the beginning, takes too long. And I think...
so I think even if I was to have the typical vesting schedule, the four years type thing, it would have fully vested anyway. so I think that wouldn't have been the actual answer for it. and I think a lot of it really was emotional between myself and the co-founders. So instead of just, you know, what's right for the companies, obviously some of that equity would go back. would use that equity to incentivize maybe like new people coming in. like they weren't willing to basically give it back. so.
Johan Van Mil (17:56.298)
Yeah, okay.
Anthony (18:17.809)
And that was Bev Challenge.
Johan Van Mil (18:19.626)
And then at a certain moment, if we now let's say go to the phase of the exit, right, also after the funding and growing the company, at a certain moment you decided somehow to sell the company, right? Can you take us a little bit when that process also started, right? Especially from your own thinking also, right? And then of course dive deeper in how it happened.
Anthony (18:24.112)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Anthony (18:35.996)
Yeah.
Yeah, sure. So I think, so basically, I would read a little bit about like exiting and I wanted to kind of understand more about it, right? Because I think a lot of founders, you never really go through that process or very many times, even if you, do a great job, maybe you're going to do three in your life at max. And so I think
what, one, one thing that I want to do is basically learn how I could maximize the value at the end. so one of the investors that I took on from startup bootcamp was my time, from end, capital. So he invested his own personal money. And I know that he said, he, he, one of things he was saying, I think he sold a lot of different companies involved in a lot of different transactions. So I remember saying like, I just need to get this guy to give me some money so he can just help me optimize the last part of the end. and that's what, that's what ended up happening.
He actually when we exited he bought a boat and named it my previous company name swagger actually Yes, yes, that's that's right. Yeah, and he helped us with that with the exit process as well Sorry, I kind of got sidetracked on the question what made me like ultimately decide to like go sell it or yeah
Johan Van Mil (19:34.41)
Martijn Hamon, right? From Endaeg. Very good. Yeah, great guy.
Anke Huiskes (NP-Hard) (19:35.513)
wow.
Johan Van Mil (19:47.562)
Yeah, indeed. Yeah, and this was a preparation, right? Indeed. What was the moment, the pivotal moment, right, when you as an entrepreneur thought, well, maybe it's a good time also to say goodbye to Swogo right, to exit the company.
Anthony (19:59.591)
Yeah, so things were going really, really well. And I think that was really, really important. So I had to get ready to sell it at time that I didn't really want to sell it. So like we were on a performance model. So earning commission on each sale that we were doing for the retailers. You can imagine during COVID, we were making an absolute killing. So like we were growing, if I remember correctly, around like 80 % year on year. And another thing that I started seeing as well is
Anke Huiskes (NP-Hard) (20:26.262)
Thank
Anthony (20:29.005)
I would read a lot about the annual reports of the largest retailers in the world. So for example, like let's say Best Buy and all of their quarterly reports, to understand really what was going on in the market, what their threats were, opportunities, et cetera. And one thing that they mentioned in there was that...
a lot of the purchases for electronics had been brought forward. So you bought a new TV when you were sitting at home because you know, couldn't go outside. And unless there was a new model that was so advanced to come out again, you're not really going to buy another one for some time. So those purchases all got brought forward. But at the same time, all of the reports that were coming out from like GFK, Forrester was saying, e-commerce habits have changed forever. E-commerce is going to continue growing. And I looked at my customer base and said, electronics forms about, well, a large part of our business
I won't disclose how much, but a large part of our business, we had eight out of 10 of the largest consumer electronics retailers as clients. And so I knew that I was going to grow slower within that category that was a large part of my business because of what I'd read in the Best Buy report. But everybody else, the messaging being sent outwards to also to buyers was that the e-commerce market was going to continue growing at like a crazy pace. And so I thought, okay, this information, the symmetry basically that I have is going to play to my advantage.
people are going to probably be likely to want to pay a premium for getting on the e-commerce bandwagon when I know how this is all structured. Another thing as well was that I still had co-founders on the cap table. So I knew that if I wanted to raise like additional capital, I'd have to put a lot more years into it. And quite honestly, I could walk away already with a strong outcome and secure my financial future. I think another thing was that,
I had this goal of becoming a millionaire by the time I was 30, since I was like a kid. And I was coming to the age and I got there at 31, but yeah, that was like, that was like a slight factor that I had in my mind as well. I wouldn't say that was a reason, but.
Anke Huiskes (NP-Hard) (22:26.574)
Maybe to the... I think it makes sense if I hear about your backstory, why you started being an entrepreneur in the first place. guess this doesn't come to me as a surprise that you have this goal, I want to have that money in the bank account before I'm 30.
Johan Van Mil (22:26.612)
Okay.
Anthony (22:34.056)
Yeah.
Anthony (22:39.005)
Yes.
Yeah.
Anke Huiskes (NP-Hard) (22:47.342)
But so it was mainly like, think if I hear correctly driven by internal factors as well as external factors where you like predicted where the market will go to from there, when you decide like, this might be a good time, I might have momentum to go and sell it. Like you just mentioned Sam or time was an important player in the whole process. But how did you actually almost like on a micro level went about it? Did you work with a banker and you do the work yourself? Did you make a long list?
Anthony (23:03.326)
Yeah.
Anthony (23:13.032)
Yeah, sure.
Anke Huiskes (NP-Hard) (23:17.318)
come to you, how did you create FOMO? Also to your point when you said earlier when you wanted to have like the big fish you basically try to tease them with like a small one. Is that the same strategy that you would have done for acquisition?
Anthony (23:27.187)
Yeah. So what I did is I did like, again, like cold outreach to different. So one thing I didn't do, a lot of people would say like, you you need to network and be like all the events where the other people were. Like, to be honest, I think I was so, I don't know if that's the right answer or not, but for me, I was so focused on just purely generating revenue. So I was like constantly chasing like more cash.
And so if I didn't feel that I could get a direct outcome from it in terms of cash, I kind of would avoid doing it. I wouldn't allocate my time to that area. So I was crazy, crazy focused, like, and that can be positive or negative, right? And I think so that's what I was doing. And what I did, so I didn't really know necessarily the bias. They would have heard of me because I would have got on their page. And I always thought that
If I do enough, one day you're going to know me anyway. I don't need to go to you. And I have the skill and ability to get from cold into somebody's like into a meeting with them. Like I never like kind of feared that ability. So what I did was I sent cold messages to each of the people that I thought could be potential buyers.
I just said something like, know, we're growing at this rate, like our net retention at the time, I think it was like 140%, like it was super high. We had a lot of the best logos that you could have in the retail space. So people naturally just, want to see what we were doing anyway, just because of like the, what we'd basically been achieving. so that bit I think worked. and then I just said that like, you know, seeing as we're in the same industry, and I would give them like a little bit of FOMO saying that like, we're also planning out to expand into the U S as well. and so I just wanted to like have
chat with you and get to know you as we're in the same industry. A lot of people just get on that and like took a call with me. from that, we actually started then immediately going into like an and a process with someone. They were just like, okay, this looks good. and we received like, we, started, I started seeing that we're getting very close to like being able to get like an LOI, or at least like,
Anke Huiskes (NP-Hard) (25:07.822)
.
Anthony (25:21.577)
sorry, not in L.O.I. maybe like a, just like an informal kind of thing. Yes, we'd be interested in it. And at that point is when I engaged the banker basically. And one of the reasons I decided to do that is because I think there's often a lot of a big bit of a dance with entrepreneurs and the buyers where you say, you know, no, I'm not looking to sell my company actually. I'm really enjoying doing it and we're growing really well. So like, maybe not, but maybe. And like, I think that dance is like,
Anke Huiskes (NP-Hard) (25:43.831)
Thank
Anthony (25:50.083)
I think they all do it, think everyone can see through that. I think that's like, it doesn't really work in my view. And I think when you have the banker there, it makes it look really serious. Like there's other people also at the table. And I think just that alone can cover the cost of the banker.
Johan Van Mil (26:05.933)
Yeah, it helps you also to show that you're really interested, right? And then you run a competitive process off from that end, right? You see that it really works out on the valuation in a lot of cases, at least. And how many people did you...
Anthony (26:11.751)
Yeah. Yeah.
Johan Van Mil (26:16.66)
did you reach out to, right? Anthony, let's say that first email and also on what level did you reach out? Because I know lot of entrepreneurs are struggling, right? How to start, how to kickstart this process? So how did you do that? On what level and what was the volume a little bit? What was, yeah.
Anthony (26:28.999)
Yeah, I probably reached out to around 10 and I reached out to the CEOs of each of those companies.
Johan Van Mil (26:39.484)
Yeah, so on your level, right? I think that's also key to do right also a founder CEO probably right? But they were more mature companies. And were they let's say, because we know of course, who bought you but were they in the same space as your buyer was it also let's say broader on that end?
Anthony (26:43.271)
Yeah. Yeah, for sure.
Anthony (26:54.938)
So we were in a similar space, but they were not direct competitors, which is actually something I think is quite important. If you want to really maximize the price, want not only that, like you have multiple bidders, but you have like the competitors of those. That's going to obviously like drive the price up a lot more, but.
Johan Van Mil (26:59.434)
Mm-hmm. Ended.
Anthony (27:10.838)
That's a learning for me. And I think, so it was actually a publicly listed company. I got the CEO to take the meeting with me. And then he expressed interest in wanting to do and started like putting me to other members in the team as well.
Johan Van Mil (27:24.724)
Yeah, and during that meeting, just said, because it was the male was, let's say, pretty polite, and we are thinking about entering your space, etc. to create a little bit of FOMO on that end. And during the meeting, you were, let's say, also regarding the reason for you to talk. So you skipped the dancing part, as you mentioned, or?
Anthony (27:31.112)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Anthony (27:42.045)
skip the dancing part yeah I said like this is where we're at we're currently looking going to the US or we're looking to basically like find the right buyer that we could grow with together and I presented that like straight up and he expressed interest back and from there like basically I got hold of a banker and said like let's go and start shopping this and the banker reached out to 80 different parties. A zero yeah.
Johan Van Mil (28:06.666)
interesting.
Anke Huiskes (NP-Hard) (28:07.517)
80. And from that process, because this is always the meat, think that people are most interested in. you had the, they showed interest, you've got the banker, they're reaching out to 80 others. Like how long was that process? How much were you involved? How did you figure out like what will be?
Johan Van Mil (28:09.278)
Yeah, yeah, sir.
Anthony (28:13.075)
Sorry, yeah.
Anke Huiskes (NP-Hard) (28:25.832)
right price point that you're satisfied with and I'm not sure if we mentioned but it was one world sync I think it's also good to get some color around like why them but can you like double click and give us some details
Anthony (28:33.097)
correct it.
Anthony (28:36.873)
Yeah.
Yeah, so I think one of the things that I did was I worked with a banker that was an entrepreneur. And I think that for me was a big, big difference to how I hear about the experience that I had versus what I hear other people have had.
so I find that a lot of bankers, know, the typical stereotype would be, you know, they're, they're good at basically doing spreadsheets and the finance and things like that. But I think really at the beginning, you're trying to like gauge interest, find that synergy basically between your company and theirs to get them to be basically like open doors. And I knew like, as a salesperson is like the person I want to open the door is the entrepreneur. I don't want a banker to do that and just like try to sell me on a multiple. so I really wanted to have that and I, he was an exit entrepreneur. He'd also been a CEO.
and a CTO before so he had really broad experience and I think like that made that process a lot easier for me because he could do a lot of those initial conversations on behalf of me and then I would step in when there was already like a bit of interest there and they're like let me see behind the curtain let's meet the team you know kind of like that so actually for me I didn't find it to be such a painful experience
Anke Huiskes (NP-Hard) (29:28.078)
Thank
Johan Van Mil (29:49.098)
And how was the conversion? Because you reached out to 10 people personally, met them personally and he did 80 anonymous, right? Because he didn't know them. Do you know a little bit how the conversion was on that end?
Anthony (29:56.754)
Yeah.
Anthony (30:03.849)
I I don't know by heart. mean, I know definitely he had like in the tens of like conversations. I had less than that.
But yeah, like, and one thing that was actually interesting though is on having these conversations is being like a more of a bootstrap type of founder or having having raised angel or crowdfunding money. One of the things that I'd missed out on was being able to communicate the vision in a better way that like typically venture backed entrepreneurs can do when they go out obviously to a VC, they're selling like the big dream, right? And I think that's something actually that my bank had coached me on doing as we were going through the sales process. And I noticed that as soon as we did that,
we really started ramping up in terms of people wanting to get more interested in going further along down the cell process.
Anke Huiskes (NP-Hard) (30:53.57)
And from my understanding, how many people were in the company while you were going through the process? And I think the reason why I'm asking, because you still have this business running and you're very focused on sales. While at the same time, you're doing this process. Like one, did you tell the rest of the team? And two, like how did you manage your time and also like in your head to separate these things out?
Johan Van Mil (30:53.674)
And the bank?
Anthony (30:57.107)
Sorry, say again.
Anthony (31:06.025)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Anthony (31:15.431)
Yeah. So I had 70 employees at the time. I told all my executive team, I believe in the executive team being like incredibly aligned to you. For me, my executive team were basically my co-founders because I lost those in like earlier on in the journey, right? So I really depended on them and they acted in that way for me. So they knew everything about that process.
Johan Van Mil (31:45.03)
first moment that you start reaching out also to these companies.
Anthony (31:50.269)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We were fully on the same page. And I think like in terms of the loyalty that I received from them as well, it's like, not only did they stay with me, so like they went through, you know, ups and downs that we had, they, some even relocated country with me.
I had people that they, every single one of them stayed with me until I left the company, even after we sold them. Like, so I had like extreme loyalty with them in both ways.
Johan Van Mil (32:22.484)
you give loyalty, you'll get loyalty, right? Especially also in these kind of topics.
Anthony (32:25.191)
Yeah. And there was no financial outcome for them to stay beyond that time afterwards, but they all stayed while I was there.
Johan Van Mil (32:31.818)
Okay, wow. And one question on the banker, right? Because it was, as you mentioned, right, an entrepreneur, CTO, CEO, like that you because you also see different ways of remunerating them, right? On a, let's say, percentage of the outcome level on an hourly basis or whatever. Can you reveal a little bit how we, this case, this person was working with you?
Anthony (32:52.554)
In terms of the banker? Yeah. So the banker just took like a percentage of the sale and as the, I think as the percentage, sorry, as the amount was rising, they took a lower percentage. I think that's how it was structured. And we gave them a retainer as well, a monthly retainer.
Johan Van Mil (32:54.057)
Yeah, no maker.
Johan Van Mil (33:06.282)
Okay, so not to incentivize to get a higher amount, right? On that end, mean the total outcome would go up, but not what you see a lot in these cases that they get a higher percentage.
Anke Huiskes (NP-Hard) (33:11.0)
Thank
Anthony (33:16.663)
this... Yeah, that's correct. Yeah. Yeah, that's right. Yeah.
Johan Van Mil (33:20.586)
Okay, interesting. And then the moment, so you had these meetings, he booked a meeting, etc. And at certain point, probably you had a few parties which were really interested, right? How did you take that process further also? And how did it lead to an LOI slash term sheet?
Anthony (33:38.471)
Yeah. so we received two, two LOIs, out of, out of all the ones that we reached out to. I remember, so the one that I was like messaging out that the CEO of the public company, so like he gave one, but we actually ended up going with the other offer that the banker brought in. I remember that process being, so I just bought like a really small flat, like a one bedroom apartment.
Johan Van Mil (34:08.34)
Mm-hmm.
Anthony (34:09.161)
was just doing like renovations and I remember I signed the LOI, I think it was on the day that I moved into that apartment. I just thought, I don't know how long I'm gonna be here anymore. But yeah, yeah, that was like on the day.
Anke Huiskes (NP-Hard) (34:17.784)
Okay.
Johan Van Mil (34:19.432)
Hahaha
How long did the process take in terms of, let's say, in time? Probably, let's say, the first meetings that you had with the CEOs and also the public company to, let's say, sign that LOI. So I have an idea about the exit potential there.
Anthony (34:28.498)
Yeah.
Anthony (34:35.753)
or signing the LOI, think was actually a pretty quick process. I don't think it took longer than like, I don't know, maybe like a couple of months or something like this. was relatively like quick, but I think the overall period overall, think it lasted about six months, I would say. Like from end to end from where you engage the banker to sell. Yeah.
Johan Van Mil (34:51.464)
Yeah, probably two or three months afterwards, right? Yeah, okay.
Anke Huiskes (NP-Hard) (34:56.312)
So about the price, we're all curious how much you sold it for. I know that you're under NDA, so you cannot refill that much. But we asked one of Johan's colleagues to give us an estimation, a guesstimation based on a few metrics that we found online. Are you OK if we pull it up? And then I think in the end, can say, because I know that you don't want to refill the exact number, but you can say if we're hot, cold, or whatever your first reaction is.
Anthony (34:58.547)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Anthony (35:07.773)
Yeah.
Anthony (35:14.441)
Yeah, of course, go for it.
Anthony (35:19.42)
Yeah.
Anthony (35:24.668)
Okay.
Johan Van Mil (35:25.386)
you
Anke Huiskes (NP-Hard) (35:25.454)
Let me try to share my screen here. You can see it.
Anke Huiskes (NP-Hard) (35:35.0)
Here we are.
Johan Van Mil (37:13.354)
Thank
Anthony (37:28.041)
Yeah. I literally can't answer the question. but there's some parts that, some parts that are correct. like, mean, you know, like we did have like, we had like more than a hundred different clients. So like we got to that threshold that we'd absolutely website, like more than 100, a hundred plus. we raised a lot less than that's there for some reason on crunch base, it like duplicated some stuff and like it's just there, but we raised about.
Johan Van Mil (37:31.417)
Ha ha.
Anke Huiskes (NP-Hard) (37:33.912)
But on the Matrix?
Johan Van Mil (37:34.154)
Up.
Anthony (37:57.629)
500 ish would say but we did take in around half a million in debt And yeah, I think at time of exit we had 70 employees, I think it was Yeah, I can't can't delve in more than that. Like obviously the ACV I can't share as well for them
Johan Van Mil (38:13.79)
I watched the ACV, Anthony, the revenue per customer, which I think was estimated by Tiso at roughly 50. Was it in that range, if I may ask?
Anke Huiskes (NP-Hard) (38:14.703)
No, you cannot
Anthony (38:19.325)
So we.
Anthony (38:27.297)
Well, we had like a, we had a really large range from, because we had basically like some smaller ones and some like really enterprise ones like Media Mart, Best Buy, Walmart and the style like that. So it's not too far off.
Anke Huiskes (NP-Hard) (38:41.653)
But then on the actual
Anthony (38:45.489)
Yeah, correct. Yeah. And obviously, like during COVID, that was increasing like quite rapidly, right?
Johan Van Mil (38:52.362)
great moment, great time also for you to sell the company.
Anke Huiskes (NP-Hard) (38:54.094)
But on the actual exit, yeah, 2022, yeah. And did you have a number in your head before you went into the process? Like what would make me happy? What is the minimum number? And otherwise I'm gonna cut off this &A process and keep going.
Anthony (38:57.742)
Yeah. Yeah. We...
Anthony (39:10.686)
Yeah, like, think one thing that I didn't do and I think a lot of entrepreneurs don't do is they don't, when you start the journey, you don't think about really what you want. Like, what is the lifestyle that I want? What am I looking to achieve? Why am I looking to achieve that? And what do I want to do with that? You just make up like these numbers in your head and say like, that's the number that I want, but there's no justification behind that. And I think it's quite important to actually have that.
justification because I think that could also even motivate you further on to say, don't know, have a deeper why into why I want this. For me, it was just like, I need to become a millionaire. I need to become a millionaire. It was almost like a panic and no matter what, I've got to get there. But it wasn't a specific number. And I think it was only towards the end as I was going through the process, I'm thinking, how much money am going to have? What am I going to do with this money? And it's like, that's too late to ask yourself these type of questions.
I think a lot of us, we just go day by day in our company and go grow, grow, grow without thinking what we personally want first. And I think that's a big flaw because oftentimes the company is feeding like a personal goal that you have, right? Or a personal gap or something that you're missing that you want to like bridge.
Johan Van Mil (40:23.498)
What is the gift Anthony, what's the gift because you had a very clear goal to become a millionaire before you were 30 or 31. What is the gift that you treated yourself with this exit?
Anke Huiskes (NP-Hard) (40:24.29)
Maybe as a follow up?
Anthony (40:27.536)
Yeah.
Anthony (40:44.249)
so, so yeah, of course. so one of the, things that I was told by one of our investors, so this was, Yannick and Eason, she told me the most important thing that you should do is like not spend any money for six months. and like, just so you avoid doing like,
you know, kind of big fuck ups basically, right? And I think your inbox starts going through on LinkedIn, like, Hey, do you want to angel invest in this? Do you want to come have a look at this? And you're at a point where you're like at your very peak, right? Where you kind of feel, I've even read like even the other day, some VC says that every time I get a big win, I don't invest for another three months, right? It's kind of like a similar thing where it stops you like doing something like really stupid. When you do think that everything you touch turns the gold, you're a kind of that moment, which I think you're a little bit vulnerable. So
I took that advice. I didn't spend any money for six months, literally zero. I was making decent money as an executive for when I was working at one more thing, they increased my pay and I think so that, so I would kind of spend that just kind of like. Not really like thinking about saving any of it, just like be free with it. And that was kind of my little release. and then later on I bought a McLaren, but that was my gift to myself. Yeah.
Johan Van Mil (41:52.424)
Okay. Indeed, that was my next question. What did you do after the six months? Yeah.
Anke Huiskes (NP-Hard) (41:54.287)
In month seven, in month seven.
Anthony (41:58.089)
Yeah, so obviously I was gonna do something, but I waited actually longer. think it probably took me like maybe a year and a half, two years to actually do it. I'm a massive, massive believer in delayed gratification. I believe that you always need to give yourself something to like work towards. So that's something that I always do. But there's the other side of that is also like when you have it, you've got it. You also need to live in the moment as well. So like this, there's a bit of both that I tried to juggle with.
Anke Huiskes (NP-Hard) (42:25.774)
And then I'm curious because you're, I think like I'm thinking, looking back to your 12 year old with your friends that they had stuff that you really wanted. So you're driving around in your McLaren, being the guy of the town. You could either say like now I'm like living my life, good lifestyle, retired, but instead you decided to go all in again and start a new company. What made you spark?
Anthony (42:38.141)
Yeah. Yeah.
Anthony (42:44.648)
Yeah.
Anthony (42:48.921)
Yeah
Anke Huiskes (NP-Hard) (42:51.53)
that and is it you're not done yet like the curious for your face too
Anthony (42:57.457)
Yeah, I'm definitely not done yet. I'm still young. I'm 34 years old and I've got many in me. think like, you I never had a full-time job apart from when I became an executive when the company was acquired. And I don't believe really I'm ever going to have that. So I think I'll always be an entrepreneur.
Johan Van Mil (44:04.786)
and
Johan Van Mil (44:45.844)
Cool.
Anke Huiskes (NP-Hard) (44:46.722)
Yeah, it's very cool. I should share it with our founders, guests It's something that everybody should strive for, to be super fit.
Johan Van Mil (44:54.096)
Hahaha
Anke Huiskes (NP-Hard) (44:59.66)
I guess now that we've been going through the journey, like how you got started, why you got started, what was driving you, how you got to the exit and now like a phase two running this new company. Are there any things that we didn't discuss that you really want the listeners who are like entrepreneurs, like the people that you hang out with best that they should know?
Anke Huiskes (NP-Hard) (46:13.88)
Can I call you? Like what's the best way for them to reach out to you? The stuff that you didn't share on the podcast, but they do want to either like as a client for the new company or double down on a few of the things that you mentioned in this podcast. So what is the best way?
Anke Huiskes (NP-Hard) (46:37.506)
Good. Johan, any other last... not, not, okay. No TikTok, yeah. Johan, any last questions from you?
Johan Van Mil (46:45.651)
No, no, no last question. think really thankful for your story, right? Especially, I think it's really inspiring how you started as a 12 year old to read sales books and use that reaching out to Yellow Pages and that turned into a successful entrepreneur, exiting your company and now starting a new company, right? Because I feel a lot of power.
entrepreneurial spirit in yourself and you're way too young to sit behind the curtains. So great that you take that next route also again.
Anke Huiskes (NP-Hard) (47:14.392)
Thank you, Anthony. Bye.
Johan Van Mil (47:15.85)
Thanks a lot. Cheers. All the best.