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Exit-Ed: Stories from Grind to Sale
Join us on Exit-Ed, the podcast where successful founders share the untold stories behind building, scaling, and selling their companies. In each dynamic episode, we go beyond the headlines to explore the challenges, strategies, and pivotal moments that shaped the journeys of entrepreneurs from each corner of the globe.
From the long nights spent grinding to the high-stakes negotiations that led to rewarding exits, our guests provide practical insights, hard-won lessons, and inspiration for anyone on the path to success. Whether you're an entrepreneur preparing for a sale, an investor looking to understand founder dynamics, or a business leader seeking new growth strategies, this podcast is for you.
Learn from those who've been there. Get Exit-Ed.
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Welcome to Exit-Ed stories from grind to sale. This is the podcast where we dive into the journeys of founders who have navigated the path from building their companies to successful exits. We interview entrepreneurs from around the US and around the globe, exploring their experiences, scaling processes, and the lessons they've learned. We'll talk about the good, the bad, and the ugly. We're excited to have you with us. Let's get started and let's get excited.
Hey guys, how's everybody doing? I hope everybody's doing good. I have here with me, Iago Rodriguez. Iago is a good friend of mine and we actually got the chance to work with him in an exit not too long ago. Iago is in Spain. I'm sorry. Iago is from Spain, but Iago lives in Argentina. So what's going on? What's up, Iago? Hello, Gabriela. Very glad to be here with you, especially because you've been significant.
piece of our last month and our great last victory, would say. The exit that we finally got after a lot of work with you and with many other people. So extremely happy to be here. Awesome. Well, obviously we appreciate it. I know you're busy and you're going from meeting to meeting and in your post-closing months and maybe a couple of years are always.
Pretty busy. But you know, here at the podcast, we want to talk to the founders, to the people grinding that, you know, are doing business. And I wanted to talk to you because, you know, you are in the software development space that is huge, right? And particularly, guess what it's known as the outsourcing world, where you actually, together with your partners, you guys develop this beautiful ecosystem of developers.
with multi-country delivery and all of that. you know, what's your background like in engineering? Like what's your background in like your profession? So I did what is called in Spain, electronic engineering. my background, well, and my story is a little funny because I never thought I was going to create a company. I was actually in my...
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Career path was more oriented to the academia. I was doing my PhD, but while I was doing my PhD, I started reading Hacker News, in reading about all these stories about entrepreneurs. And at some point in my PhD, I decided to switch gears and try entrepreneurship. first, I tried to do a product company, but that didn't work that well.
we had to switch gears pretty fast to, okay, apparently we are not good enough to create a product, okay, but we are good at doing software development, why don't we start doing this? And that was the very early stage, the very early days of the company, but as very specific on your question, it's a completely technical background and.
Definitely the company had grown my competencies long time ago. Right. And that's obviously one of the challenges, right? Like you are trained in, you know, as an engineer, you have these, you know, mind and then you have to build a business. Like you find yourself as a business operator, you know, having to learn about scaling. what was, what was, what is your story? Because a lot of what, what we see.
is with very successful founders is one of them or a group of them, you know, in a company, one of them has the technical knowledge and then the other guys have, you know, the business background marketing. how, how, how did you guys do it? Did you DV app or kind of learn by trial and error? Like I always like to say it's 100 % lack and a lot of work, both things at the same time. So in our
case, we almost started like a collection of, actually it's for freelancers that were doing work together for clients. That's how we started and we were doing, we were not doing a lot of sales and actually selling has never been our core strength in the company. would say actually strong weakness if that's something.
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The only way we could compete with other people who has connections, are good at sales, etc., is to really work extremely hard to have a extreme great quality of client satisfaction. That's being our secret sauce. Sorry, I wouldn't call it a reality, a secret sauce, but put our heart and our souls in.
to make every client we work with as happy as possible. Availability, technical quality, be there for conversations. Understanding that we are not in the technical business, but we are in the trust business. It's about generating trust relationship with all those clients. If you understand that, I think that it's always a good path for anybody doing. You are not in a business of
product or services or doing software or selling shoes during a business of generating trust. And that's what makes you successful long term. Short term life comes and go. You have little control. You can go through good times, bad times. Long term that trust is going to pay off because that's basically what human relationships are made of. Yeah. Well, that's big. mean, you're already hitting one of the main
things that we talk about in the podcast, which is that human component of, of, of the business, right? Because... And this applies for clients and for the internal team. The team, the internal team has to trust you and the clients has to trust you. That's, that's basically my job description, trust. How many years did it take you to learn that lesson? The trust and the importance of the customer and really going for what they need.
That's not an easy lesson. have to believe it's a long, it's like, have to have a few good years to, to, understand that word. And even as you evolve as a professional, whatever your profession or business is, continues to, you continue to develop that. It's a great question. I wouldn't have a specific number, but I can tell you a little bit how this happens. So you have your first client and you're, you don't have a ton of experience with clients. So.
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you are expecting that you are going to do the technical work and that's it. And you just start doing this with one client and the result is not that fluid. The outcome is not that good. And well, what should be a long-term relationship that is what any business research nurtures from, it's a short-term commitment that only is about execution. You see this happening several times and
suddenly you realize that this business model is not sustainable because if I have to spend most of the time finding new clients, I'm not actually shining where we are good at the technical aspect. And obviously you're gonna fail. our success story, and sorry, let me explain these success stories.
When we were acquired like five months ago, we have been in business for 15 years. I think in at least half of those 15 years, we were barely able to pay a check for ourselves. that means you have seven years of trying, failing, seven years of...
We'll say suffering because it's not a suffer, but definitely not not shining, not not getting any, any kind of applause of what you're doing, but resisting. So I think those years are one of the biggest teachers that you can have in life. A living one day at a time, living one client at a time, trying to get, trying to survive as simple as trying to survive. And every day thinking.
What am I doing wrong? What can I do better? Asking that question that is not easy, listening the answer that even harder because we always, as I like to say, we only hear what we want to hear. We don't hear what the other person is trying to tell us. So, but eventually it's just start listening or you're never going to get in a good place. Right.
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So, you know, I want to go back to the discussion of trust because you guys operating international business. How do you develop trust with clients that are in a completely different country? And when you're basically you're talking to them virtually and then like, how does that work? How do you develop? Because trust is a very human intimate thing. How does that work?
give you an answer for this, I'm gonna again take a couple of steps back. So we started in Spain. Well, actually our company is basically the merge of two companies, one from Argentina and one from Spain, two founders on each side that many years ago, about 10 years ago decided to join. And when we started, now I'm talking about the company that started in Spain.
Well, we tried to sell AIS, as I was saying before, and failed over and over again. And that took me to Germany, took me to England, took me to Netherlands, and then to the US. Here I have to say, US, as any other place, has great, great things, and not so great things, like every other country, like every other place. But US has something that is a little bit differential.
US gives more opportunities, or at least that's my experience than most of the other countries. They take more risks, as simple as that. And that, for a know-one like myself, it doesn't generate trust because it's a bigger reputation and really great network behind. The trust that trust is, someone gave us
it for free and I can even give you a name. Anirudh Chauhan is a former VP of SAP. He decided to give us trust for free. What we did is with the trust, we treasure it, we work it, we put our heart and soul to keep it, to really embrace that gift and not take it for granted and return more than provided or at least try to return more than provided.
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And that was one of the corners. And that was our one, our first big client that allowed us to later on to references, to referrals, through many other things, well, grow to other clients and start growing as a company. That's amazing. I mean, that's amazing because we see, I mean, the cross-border aspect of this outsourcing industry is very unique because you don't get to, you're not in the same city as, and even the same culture.
What about the culture? How do you develop trust between, you know, your background from being from Spain and then an American company with their own culture? How do you bridge all of that, like big ocean in between? Now that's more like, okay, now someone gifted the trust, not to talk about the tactical aspect of how to keep it, how to grow it. That's, I think is the bottom line. you were asking what we did well.
First of all, commitment, commitment and availability for that company, for that project, for everything and quality of work. What means commitment? Commitment is, yes, I like to tell the team, bad news remains three months in advance. It's not that bad news. It's just something that you have to navigate. Transparency, hey, I'm struggling with this. I'm having a problem with this. Transparency is key for any human.
For any human relationship, transparency is going to be one of the key things that is going to be trust. Try to be helpful. Okay, put the other before yourself. Okay, you have this need. Okay, I'm going to adjust to your need. My needs are secondary because I know you are, I'm trying to provide you a service. All those kinds of things are tactical things. Then other things that you should be, we were doing, or I think anybody should be doing is travel.
travel a lot, get in front of the people, invite to coffees, invite to beers, invite to just to spend time with someone. I remember, for example, one of the executives, had a trip to visit one of their clients. One of the company's we work with was to visit one of our clients.
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I just went and acted. I was there helping him and just without any and I was not getting anything but be there so to support him. Do those kind of things. Go the extra mile with the extra effort and that slowly is going to is going to reward you. And that doesn't mean that as soon as you do it, you're going to get something we're going to because it doesn't. It doesn't work like that. It's a very, very long game. You see it. You you.
you plant a lot of seeds, millions of seeds, and maybe 10, 20, 15 of them eventually flourish. And you can live with, you can live off them. You can live off 10, 15 seeds. You don't need one billion seeds, or at least that's our goal. Right. Right. Okay. So here's, here's a question that I like to ask. Is the customer always right?
That's a, that's a difficult one. It's, it's a difficult one. mean, and there's many camps on that one, but what's, at least in, the outsourcing world, because it's very competitive. It's a very competitive, industry. they always right? Everybody's always right regarding the point of view that they have. Let me put it in different way. Are they right in selecting a support technology stack because
whatever the reasons are, maybe not. Do they have to deliver quarterly results? Do they have to deal with legacy systems? Do they have to deal with a team that they don't want to change or they can't even change and they are only experts on the technology? Maybe that they are doing a suboptimal decisions from one angle and an optimization from the other angle.
understanding their motivations to execute. And then there is the mistake in the logic. I'm taking this because of blah, blah, blah, blah. Of course, we all make those decisions, those mistakes all the time. It's not a problem of not making those mistakes. But usually everybody gets one. There's a mistake in my logic today because I thought 1 plus 2 was 3. I was saying 1 plus 2 was 4 and 1 plus 2 is 3.
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In that case, everybody's mistaken 20 times every month, every week, depending on how bad your week is. everybody recognizes those mistakes. It's not a problem. Right. And I mean, it sounds like you've done a really good job, like smoothing out those relationships because, you know, issues can happen, you know, with any costumer, right? And they just adjust, accommodate, you know, do the best you can.
What about? issue is the opportunity. I like to say also, if a client didn't have any kind of issues, then they wouldn't be working with them. So embrace them. And those are the opportunities to help them with their issues. I love what you're saying, because that's a very actual entrepreneurial spirit that we see. Every problem is actually an opportunity. It's not really a problem. So if you even if you have an issue with a customer that may not be the most positive thing, you know, at the very least,
You have an opportunity to try to work it together and, you know, even build on that trust. can actually be an opportunity to build a trust to show loyalty. How important is loyalty in your industry? Very important. In any human relationship, how important is loyalty? Let me ask you back. But is loyalty trust, probably they can be used almost in the same context here.
A loyalty means that you're always going to be on his side. Doesn't mean say yes to everything and we can spin back to what you were saying before. It means that you're always going to have your best interest, at least from the angle you are seeing everything in mind. And be transparent when you tell them, hey, I think this is the right approach because this reason, this reason, and this reason.
And maybe the reasons that you're giving are not the right ones for him because he has other priorities. And then you have to switch here. You have to listen to those things. loyalty is another component of generating that culture of that relationship with a person that both of you know, when the winds go against you, can navigate them anyways. And you're going to go through the rough time because nobody's going to nothing. No one is.
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protected against the rough times. Right. happens over and over again, but at least you're going to try to do it together. And if you think, you think together. That's the only thing that matters. I love it. I love it. That is so true. Now you mentioned, you you, just taking a step back, you know, you had founded the company many, many years ago. You did the merger with the two other partners. How, why, why did you merge? What was the advantage like, and how important was that?
to get to then the other victory you talked about, which is you guys eventually your exit. So tell us more about that process, meeting the guys, finding that partnership that seems to have worked so well. Well, that's a great question. Well, again, let me tell you the backstory of this. At that point, I was living in Bay Area with a hacker house in 20 and Mission.
My partner was living in the same hacker house. This is like the most terrible place that you can imagine. It's like 40 people living sharing a bathroom, sharing a kitchen with a small office downstairs. That's basically what hacker house means in this context. Okay. Because I didn't know, I was going to ask what is that, because I'm not familiar. No, it's basically a place, a living, it's a bedroom that's private.
with an office space that they shared, a kitchen that they shared and a bathroom that they shared. I tell you lots of stories about that place, but I'm going to spare you the details. Yeah. And both of us arrived, we're living there. So we met and at that time we were like seven people in the company and they were again seven, eight, I don't know, six, seven, eight people in the company.
And we realized that both of us were trying on our own. We could try together. We didn't have anything to lose trying together. From being a no one of seven to being a no one of 14, why not? We are doubling our strength with very little effort. And that partnership that was a little bit, let's say,
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Random a the reality is brought us way more than we anticipated because then we started realizing that there were competing capabilities because all of us are technical and always have been technical, but even in our technicalities. Maybe one of us more like a talker. One of us like more organized more one of my small structure of one more. It's more like more. It resists more in the difficult times.
So we saw that the four together were way stronger than two and two. And four together, of course, that has a big challenge. Now you have more mouths to feed. And that's one of the big backpacks that you are going to put on your shoulders, the mouth to feed. But four together, we have more means, more capabilities that we could show to the world to try to keep growing together. Right. OK, so you guys.
meet up, you say, we're going to do this together. And then you go out to the world. And then in a matter of, think, just a few years, you guys scaled, right? And so how was the scaling process? Because you're getting, it's two things, right? With the software industry, you're scaling your clients and then you're obviously your workforce, which is so unique because they're spread often, you know, throughout a number of countries.
So how did you do that? How did you scale? the other question I have is what kind of clients were you guys aiming to get? I'm going to start for the late, for your last question. Anything that came. Anything that could put on the table, that was our client. We were not picky at all. And for us, the scaling was...
something resulting of the good work as I, or what I think is a good work as I was saying before. And basically, well, let me talk first on the scaling on the clients and the scaling of the clients is basically what I was saying before. Do good quality work. The people are going to be happy and proud of the work you're doing together. And they move from a different company and hey, want to, I'm just pretty sure Gabriella and why we're working with you because
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We trust each other because I know what you are capable of. I don't want to risk going to somewhere else that doesn't know all my context, doesn't know how this person reacts in the good moments and the bad moments. That's the only reason, that's the core reason why we work with people around us. And we love that feeling is, hey, I know what this person is gonna do in every situation.
And that's what happened when the people start moving from one client to another. Well, someone moved from one of our clients, Elly May, moved to, I don't know, to SAP. Actually, the other way, SAP to Elly May, Elly May to Airnap, Airnap to SmartBeats. So many of them started moving. And because they have been working very well together, they were taking us with them.
So which way I just want to highlight. mean, and then really proves how your relationship because if you hadn't built that relationship with that person that moves from these companies to that company, you would have never been able to work with some of these other great companies. Like, so what an important factor to have that strong trust in loyal relationship. Every month and a half, I was taking at that time, I was already living in South America at the time I was living in Chile.
Every month and a half I was taking a plane. Of course, not in first class, not in premium, not in anything like that. I actually never thought in any of those classes. I don't do it even now. And I was traveling the 14 hours or when you were lucky because you got a good connection. But if the flight was expensive, OK, maybe 20 hours. So you use the weekend to travel.
and spend one week in their office doing work, meeting people, inviting coffees, all those kinds of things. So it's the nature of the work is the nature of what you have to do. I could even tell you more crazy stories of how you can spend a week in a hotel next to the office of one of your clients waiting for him to have a window. And so you're in the hotel clothes, so you can be in five minutes into his office for that 30 minutes.
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And you spend the whole week in a very cheap hotel, not to one of the fancy ones. Yeah. Just working there in the dark, waiting for that call. That may never happen. Yeah. Well, that's amazing. I I love, I'm literally, visualize everything. So as you're saying that I'm literally imagining in my head, the building and the hotel, and you're kind of like waiting to see what the guy will be ready. And I mean, that's what it takes. I mean, that's what it takes sometimes. It's just to.
pursue the people you'd really want to. And people know, I mean, when you pursue, you know, when somebody comes to me and they show me they really want to work with me, you know, whether it's a potential, you know, one of our employees or somebody, I mean, that, tells me something, you know, if they want to really, they're sold, you know, for what I believe, what I do. So, I mean, that's, that's amazing. That's amazing. Okay. So that is basically your strategy is, is, is the, the human touch. Absolutely.
the trust and really caring and serving their needs. And I know, I mean, I think you're gonna say the same applies to the employment side. But that side, I mean, it's not a client. How do you develop and how do you grow and scale a remote workforce? Okay, if you have team members, the first thing that you have to know is that, at least from my point of view, you are at their service.
I am the one cleaning the after party. I like to use this sport as an example. You know curling? This is a sport that they throw a stone on ice. Yeah, the thing that they... And someone is sweeping in front. Yes, with the ice. Yes. The team members are the ones who throw the stone. Me, in my case, and my partners, we are the ones sweeping in front because with all of our effort...
throw that was some millimeters away, right to the life. Wherever you want to put it, we're going to be sweeping as hard as we can to correct that throwing and go straight to the target. That's our role. We are their service. We are cleaning in front of them or taking care of them. That's my way of looking at what we do for them. And I always try to have that picture in mind. We were the sweepers. We are not the throwers. We are there to
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With all of our effort, it's more correct if they did any little mistake to simplify their lives and to make them successful. And with that mindset, what you have to do is to start hiring people. Some of them are going to be amazing. Some of them are going to have good moments, bad moments. Some of them are going to be okay. At the time of the selling, more than 300 people, that 290 more than a very modern item.
both several times, know their names, know how are they doing, check on them frequently, understanding what they are going through, understanding how the project is going through, what problems are they having with their project, with the people in the project, with our teammates. Ask, ask, ask, listen, listen, Be at the service, be at the service, be at the service. It's extremely basic, but extremely important. And then of course.
a find the right ones. I think everyone who joins a company at some point goes through 15 minutes with me or with one of my or partners to understanding with us. We have that feeling with them if they are in the culture that they fit in the culture. I think I knew everyone by face name, my status, kids or not kids until we were like 200. At some point, lost track. We were going too fast for a period.
And I'm of it. I'm really happy that that was the case. Yeah. But I still I still try to understand with it being remote because you were in in Chile for part of this. I mean, you came from Spain and then most of these say 200 or 300 people are where are they? And how do you how do you transmit that passion and care that obviously I can tell you're passionate about them as as you're as about the clients?
How do you transmit that like virtually or remotely? That's a great question. And I tend to have answers for many things. I'm not sure the right ones. I'm not sure I have the right one for this because I have asked this myself many times. I'm not 100 % sure because I'm going to say something maybe a little bit serious. For us, came naturally. We didn't even think about this a lot.
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It's one person from Argentina that was in US, so was communicating with his partner since they were two from the very day one. Remotely, one person that was from Italy but was living in Spain and one Spanish guy that was in Germany or England or the US. The communication, the trust was generated remotely every day from the very beginning. So again, think for us was extremely natural and actually
COVID happened in good, difficult times, depends on someone. I remember companies thinking, and of course you have a factory, this doesn't apply at all, but in services company struggling to keep the remote culture, struggling to understand, okay, what are we going to do together? How are we going to be sure that everybody is doing their right work? How are going to ensure that everybody is working properly?
For us, we never had that question. We never had that fear because for us it was always like the case. We grew up, it's like when you're a child and your dad and your mother swim, so for you swimming comes naturally. In our company that wasn't the thing because we were born with this. Right. And I mean, it does sound, mean, like you all had like this incredible synergy.
that really created very organically. mean, there's another way to explain it very organically, success story, both with your clients and the people. Okay. So what interesting fact, right? I'm thinking it was four of you. And obviously I'm sure that different opinions may have, you know, from time to time come up. What is, what is your, you know, maybe conflict resolution strategy, you know, what, how do you make sure that four people are aligned?
you know, and going in the same direction, especially because all of you, where were your partners? mean, you guys were not in the same country, were you? We never, I think we never been in the same country living, but now that we are two of us in Buenos Aires, I think this is the first time. Yeah. A conflict resolution with my partners. I'm going to be extremely repetitive. about this. It's almost the same principle, maybe like the same principle of, you know, empathy to your position.
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What is good for the company? What is right by the client? The people? I'm never going to be always right. It would be ridiculous. I'm not a genius. Nobody's a genius by definition. So I'm never going to be right. So listen to the others. You may not be 100 % convinced with what they're saying, what they're proposing, and articulate your discrepancies with logic.
what's the logic behind and even again, once a view from different angles, two things can be equally true and be different at the same time to solve the same problem. So have that in mind and whenever those situations happens and you end up, let's say, let's say in a draw, let's say two of them, two of them want to do different things and there's no way to untie that. Okay, what's the minimum test that we can do?
to move forward, not to be blocked because being blocked is the worst thing that happen. Baby steps. Baby steps. Take it one step. Okay, what's the minimum test that we can do to test one of the idea? And if you don't know which one of you are going to try A or B, throw a dice, pick one and go with the best of your heart to make that idea successful. Even if it's the other one. That's the only way to make it work because you're going to...
If you get stuck on your ideas and I'm the best, I'm here to command or something like that, it's never gonna work. But it's never gonna work in your company, with your employees, with your clients, with your partner, with your friends. And you can apply the same principle to any human relationship. Amazing, amazing. So, I mean, what an awesome story. We're talking a little bit about all the different angles. So at some point, you guys...
I mean, the pandemic comes, I'm sure a lot of the companies in the digital industry jumped, did a big jump. Was that the case? you guys, so many companies digitalized, adjusting to the market? We were already growing. We started growing 2017 more or less. But when our growth started in pandemics, maybe we were at the beginning of COVID, like 90 people. But definitely it was a boost.
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that growth rate accelerated. And in a matter of one year and half, were like 200 people. Yes, that was like everybody was looking for developers. At that time, I remember pretty clearly that the goal was how to keep a stable quality team. There was because yes, we were having more project offers than before.
At the same time, our team members were getting more job offers than before. How do you compete with big companies that have billions of dollars? There's another thing that happened. America, as I like to say, joined as a single market. It's not that now it's US, Canada, Argentina, Chile anymore in services. It's one big market that is
defined by a collection of time zones, but basically a time zone. That's a trend that's going to keep happening and probably some stop all at this point. When you have this situation, you really have to think and that again, caring mindset, that listening mindset, that servicing mindset is going to be the only difference between the company has a 50 percent turnover that is destroyed
is basically destroy your team to have a 20 % turnover. Because that 30%, the 20 % difference between one and the other is the difference between having a healthy company and having a company that's really struggling to survive. constantly. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the industry is very competitive both with optic client acquisition and maintaining your workforce. Might make it easy.
It's especially some of those local economies like Argentina where the US dollar, the peso and all that stuff. so great. guess we can say better time, the pandemic was good, I guess, for the business. It was good with all the personal stuff. Of course. Employees struggling, people worried about their families. I remember that at that time we were doing an all-hands meeting where we gathered with the whole team.
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every week because we needed to be very close to them. For us, not about the remote work or how we're going to work together. There were people that were really struggling, people with family sick. I mean jobs, money, I'm sure all of that. My wife lost her job and my husband lost his job and my kid is not going to school. My kid was going to college and now it's not going to.
college, all the situations that everybody, all of us have lived and have listened or have friends or family members that have gone through this. Yeah. And I will add, mean, and you guys had team members in different countries, so every jurisdiction was doing their own version of COVID. So also affected, you know, like we talked to people from Germany and they were in complete lockdown for a full year, no school, nothing. We talked to like here in Texas, we actually, I mean, it was pretty
not as severe as other people. you know, so that that must have been a challenge. Yes. No, I'm definitely I can tell you how the public's experience was for many countries, for all the countries that we have ever operated. Spain was different than Argentina, than Chile, than the US and Colombia, than Peru. Each of those countries had at that time I was living in Chile and Chile, for example, had a very hard lockdown. Argentina had a lockdown, but was
little bit more gentle, at least in terms of capabilities of going out and et cetera. Spain has a very spiky one where at the very beginning it was super hard, but then they soften the rules faster. So every country was a different experience than it was before. Yeah. I'm sure challenging and at the same time, probably getting all these new potential clients and potential work. So yeah, that's challenging.
And then at one point, at one point you and your partners were like, okay, how, how did this selling come into, into your minds? Is this something that you were building to sell? Were you building to have fun, to scale, to challenge yourself to just to solve problems? Like how does selling a company come into, into the minds and, and also for, or how many, many, partners you were at the time?
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How do people agree on such a big milestone? Yeah, it's difficult to answer such a big thing. So first, let me start from your initial question is how sales comes to your mind? I can tell you how sales came to my mind and how do I think the rest of the team members received that. And so I never thought about selling because it's for me.
I'm too to average I could not I never stand I never stand it so selling is for important people for successful people and of course it was way out of my need for it to put in a very stupid way. But companies starts growing you keep doing good work you have good brands in your clients list. And suddenly there you start receiving some messages I would like to understand this.
or you go to a meeting or a conference and you meet other companies similar to what you're doing, and they start to express interest, would say, expressions of interest. Maybe some of them are subtle, some of them are more direct. Without wanting it at all, we'll receive what is the proposal, an initial proposal for selling.
that didn't come to an end. that's the first time you realize, hey, apparently I have something that can be sold. But you never imagined that was the case. So now you start thinking, OK, that means that I need to understand how companies are sold and what are the companies selling. Not because I want this, because I want to have that option. You just want to know. Yeah, you're curious.
You start understanding, okay, what they look at, how do they operate, how the process goes through. And you understand just to a certain point. It's not that you really understand because at the end, every process, I think it's a little bit different from every one. absolutely. So you start thinking things like EBITDA, that for us was the magic word of EBITDA,
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We were most basic company in the world. We just received money from our clients. We were sure that we had enough in the bank for as many months as possible and we paid salaries to the team. That was all the financial strategy. for it. I know this is simple because at that point we maybe were company of 200 people, but this was the way we opened.
We never went into a bank, we never had a credit line of credit, we never had investors. So you start learning. It's important to understand this financial concept that we acquired very late in the game compared to other companies. Yeah. Sorry, I'm taking too much. Just to close your question. this...
This started to move forward, you start to learn, more people start to come. Now you have the right answers and eventually something, something triggers and you sell your company. Yeah. So, I mean, and, and, so many things to talk about, like the process of selling. Cause I think for most people that we either work with or me that are on in the game, it's like, none, none of them, I mean, not a lot of them are building just to sell.
I think a lot of them are building because it's fun because it's, I think like humans, you know, we're created to build things to, improve, to have these relationships, all these different people. And then one day, you know, somebody tells you, you know, we like you, we want to acquire you. So I guess how emotional is the process? mean, how emotional was for you? And I get different answers from different people, but was it like how attached?
were you to the business that like, is it hard to let go? Is it like so many things that come into play with the process? Okay. How emotional was for me? Let me answer that first. And for me, it was a very little emotional. And I just experienced nervousness. I think one week before the deal, I went.
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Okay, apparently this is really going to happen. I'm not the smartest person on the box, as I like to say. So I was moving forward, but without the actual realization that I was actually going to sell the company. It's like, don't really think that's going, again, that's for important people, not for someone like me. So it was very emotional for me. It was very emotional because of this.
For my partners, for one of them, it was more emotional. actually, we had this conversation with, hey, but you're not taking this seriously. am taking it. Yes, but I don't know. I'm just doing my day-to-day work. I'm sure that we are doing the right things. And this happens good. And if it doesn't happen, it's also good. I'm not crossing. I don't have a...
I don't have an end game on this. Of course, if this happens for good reasons, perfect. But that's the way it happened to me. Very different product from many other people. But it's like, I'm doing my work and apparently the selling of the company is part of the daily activities that I have to deal with. Right. I mean, I use it something, I mean, that strikes me and I think you mentioned it twice. You're like, you know, that is for important people.
But I mean, you guys, mean, maybe that was what was in your head, but I mean, building this company came so naturally to you guys. And then you just went and sold it. mean, it's for people like you. It's for people that, you know, I don't know, did you have a background like in your family of entrepreneurs or business people? No, mother is homestay is his housewife. And my father is a
public sector legal lawyer, he worked his entire life in the public sector, not much more than that. So that's why I'm British foreign to you. was foreign to you, Completely foreign. And even as I was telling at the beginning of our conversation, I was
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going more for an academia career than an entrepreneurship career. And I never expected any of this. I never planned for any of this. For me, it was about day-to-day operation, having a team that was happy where they were, having a collection of clients that were happy with us. And one day at a time, not much more. I would like to have that I was one of those people with a great vision.
But that's not the reality. I still think you're very special, I really do. I know I got a chance to work with you and I think you are actually pretty cool guys. So I would give you a lot more credit. So in terms of preparing, you you're again in the software outsourcing, what should these companies be doing to prepare if at the end of the day they think they want to sell?
like sell a company, merge, know, grow. No, actually, the joke is, again, considering you have a similar profile to us, because if you are someone who has a different kind of structure and you're more closer to these kind of business operations, maybe the answer would be completely different. You should learn a little bit.
On this and I'm pretty sure there's people around you that you can ask questions to people who were sold. They are pretty sure they're going to love to tell this story. Well, learn about the I don't have to have to be an expert, but you know you need to know what the due diligence is. That is all these basic concepts that are like the basis of a deal with an earn out what.
And even more important, you really need to know why are you selling for us? love that. We had several offers and we discarded several offers. Why did we sell to the company we sold? Because there was a cultural fit. were not, they are US first company. And because of what I was saying before that I think America is one big country in terms of services and it's going to keep. I know I'm not.
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good enough to keep putting food on the table for more and more and more people because that means that you need to have several structures in place that I'm not sure I'm the right one to create them. That it's my limitations. One of the main reasons why our limitations, one of the main reasons we decided to sell. But also, let me also say from your personal point of view, what are you trying to achieve with this? So are you trying to...
What are your numbers? The numbers that you have in mind that maybe make a difference or not, but have your team first. Don't put yourself first because if not, there is 300 people that have put their time, their effort, their, they, they, have neglected family time, friends time, working with you, working for you. And if you betray those, it's no selling that's going to go well. And it's not about the day of selling.
It's about the continuity, the day before selling and the day after selling, because it has to be almost the same day. And it should be actually almost the same day. And if you betray those people, you are not doing any good to anybody. Maybe you can go away with some cash, but nothing to be proud of. you touch a beautiful point that we also like to talk about.
And I think they merged together because I think you were saying to prepare, you need to know all these letters, all these words and all these things, which we actually, the way we put it is you need to speak two languages, finance and legal. Am I missing anything? Is there one more language that people should speak on the sale? Finance legal and I would add, it's not finance legal and understand where
What are you trying to get out of your end goal? Not from your point of view, from the company point of view, also in the company point of view, you're a part of it, but you're not all of it. You're not it. It's an entire, I love it. I love it because you truly have taken that servant position and really it looks like even in your sale process,
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You're not just thinking about, what am I taking? But what are we all doing and where are we all going? Okay. And then we talked a little bit about culture fit to your buyer. needs be... What are the weaknesses of your company? Sorry, I interrupted you there, but I was thinking of all the M &M process. Your strengths and your weaknesses, you need to know who you are as a company. I love that.
who you are as a company. Wow. That's actually a really good one. I'm going to add that one the next time I'm invited into a panel because we do a lot of panels on &A and that's a good one. You need to know who you are. Okay. So you find the company with a good fit. It works. And then what, you know, there's this whole emotional the day before, the day after, then, you know, you have this whole process with who bought you and all of that.
But in your personal life, as you find yourself with more wealth, more access, more input, a lot more of everything, literally the day after, more of everything, what's next? What's next for you as an entrepreneur? Are you going to continue on this new path that you went from academia to entrepreneurship to the experience that you have working with?
you know, the buyers and all of that. What is next for a guy like you? don't know. My honest answer, I don't know. Right now, for me, the most important thing is that this process of selling, because again, is the before selling, is the after selling, is as successful as possible for our team members. And that's my currently only thought. And that's what I'm thinking about.
I've never, again, I've never been a very visual-like person. For me, it's always what bridge can you build with the sticks that you find on the path, not to build the perfect bridge. So right now it's understanding how can I serve better to my team to really be embedded in this new... I like to use the reference. Before we were a small boat in the middle of the sea. Now we're in a small fleet in the middle of the sea. We're still our own boat.
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but we're in a fleet and that means if you're running out of fish, you can ask the boat next to you, hey, do you have some fish to spare? We're hungry here. So being sure that we create those communication channels, I think they use flags or something. I'm not an expert. I love it. Be sure that we know how to use these communication channels to take the benefits of being in a fleet and don't suffer.
the problems have been as you because now you have to coordinate the turns. You cannot take the wind up to the other guy. So sorry, I'm using an analogy. I love analogies. You know, I love analogies. I speak by telling stories. that's my current status, trying to navigate this situation. That's amazing. That's amazing. OK, so just to close, I go, if you had
And maybe we know because we heard you talk about trust and building, but one piece of advice to the entrepreneur, not necessarily somebody who's looking to sell, but building the building process. One piece of advice you can leave with people. It's service. It's about service. Nothing else, nothing more. And this applies to everyone. Take this mentality of the giver's mentality. Be a giver. It's way more.
way more profitable in the long term than being a taker. Maybe you can win today, you can win tomorrow, but what really gives you the compounded interest is being a... It's a very soft reason. Being a giver is way more profitable than any other thing, or at least that's my experience. But it's even a very selfish reason. It pays way more in the long term.
I love it. love it. It almost sounds like we're preaching here, giving and not taking and all of that. I love it. Okay. So what kind of company would be, I if anybody's hearing and they want the services, what's a good fit of a client that you would love to work with? Maybe there's a potential client for you listening, you know, maybe a company that needs software. What would be an ideal type of client that you would love to work with? I love to work with anyone who has a
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problem we can help with again. If they have an issue, technical problems we can solve almost any technical problem. Data, AI, of course AI now there are beautiful problems around that and beautiful new solutions around it. But data problems are even more interesting nowadays because all AI that we're building, the reality is it's as good as the data that you have. So take care of that data.
And how do you service that? The application you're going to build around to provide other enterprises in your B2B or to the customers you are built to see. That's also another beautiful way to put it. I love technology. I love what we do. And I love in every piece of it, as you can see what I'm saying. It's about people that really want to work in a team, in collaboration, and be open-minded.
Be there if the things don't go as good as we anticipated and celebrate together when the things go great. That's what you can expect in life and friends, in clients and partners. Awesome. Okay. Well, Iago, thank you so much. So excited to have you. We'll post your contact information if anybody wants to get in touch. But yeah, this has been great. Thank you so much. Thank you so much, Gabby. It was a pleasure to speak with you. Thank you.
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