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The Wise Exit is an open dialogue with fellow founders and former business owners sharing real stories and offering honest advice around selling their companies to some of the top acquirers in the world.
Beyond the entertaining and educational exit stories, host and M&A Advisor, Todd Sullivan is here to help demystify the Mergers & Acquisitions (M&A) process. For example:
- How much is my business worth?
- What is Net Working Capital?
- When should I get a Quality of Earnings analysis
- Should I hire an Investment Banker, M&A Advisor, or Business Broker?
- When do I talk to my Key Employees about a possible transaction?
We hope you enjoy... and learn a few things along the way!
OLIVER LOW - E50 | CASHING OUT PODCAST
00:00:00:00 - 00:00:16:10
Oliver Low
Looking back, we probably saw that being young and slightly inexperienced versus our competitors was a disadvantage. But it can be a complete advantage, you know, to be young and to have energy on your side and to have new ideas and to be disruptive.
00:00:16:12 - 00:00:38:22
Todd Sullivan
Welcome to the Cashing Out podcast, where our fellow founders share real stories and offer honest advice around selling their companies to some of the top acquirers in the world. My name is Todd Sullivan, CEO of Exitwise, where we help business owners create the exits they deserve. Today, my guest is Oliver Low, a serial entrepreneur with almost 20 years of experience in the tech and startup worlds.
00:00:39:00 - 00:01:04:14
Todd Sullivan
Oliver started his career at Microsoft in 2006. He spent time at MySpace from 2008 to 2010 and then launched a digital agency called Platform360, a B2B agency which was purchased by a strategic acquirer Silverbullet in 2018. After the acquisition, Oliver joined Silverbullet and helped take the company public in 2019, where his team is still benefiting from the acquisition structure.
00:01:04:14 - 00:01:32:06
Todd Sullivan
Oliver and his M&A team helped design Today, Oliver runs Tiny Studio, a venture studios that sits within Tiny.com. Tiny is a holding company which was started to invest in and acquire companies. So Oliver now sits at the center of helping make tiny portfolio companies grow. In this episode, Oliver shares his views on the types of buyers business owners should consider from strategic buyers, private equity firms and holding companies.
00:01:32:08 - 00:01:50:20
Todd Sullivan
The value of great M&A expertise to help maximize financial outcomes and how exiting earlier than the conventional wisdom suggests creates better liquidity and professional options for business owners. I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Oliver Low.
00:01:50:22 - 00:02:12:21
Todd Sullivan
Oliver, thank you so much for joining me today. I am very excited to have this conversation. I think you bring a unique perspective that our audience is going to be really interested in. And I say that because you've had this long entrepreneurial career. You've built companies that have then launched companies. You've had your exit. You helped that company go public.
00:02:12:23 - 00:02:35:04
Todd Sullivan
You joined Tiny.com, right. As helping all of these new entrepreneurs see another way to liquidity. And you're helping build all those companies. I think you have just a very unique perspective on M&A in general when it should happen, how it can happen. Just really excited to get you on our show. And just so you know, Mark Cuban had this spot before you.
00:02:35:04 - 00:02:39:06
Todd Sullivan
And when I got you booked, I bumped him. Right. So thank you for being here.
00:02:39:08 - 00:02:57:01
Oliver Low
Thanks, Todd. That makes me feel good. Yeah, thanks. It's a pleasure to be here. And, yeah, I'm excited to share some of my learnings. As you say, it's been kind of a long journey and I'm really keen to to kind of dive into my experiences and very hopeful that they can help others who are going through similar things.
00:02:57:03 - 00:03:19:01
Oliver Low
You know, when I went through the early stages of launching a startup and then going through to my first exit, there wasn't really so much content out there for startups. Like, you know, podcasting wasn't really a thing back then and there wasn't really such a community as well. So there were very few opportunities for us to learn from other’s stories and, you know, ideally learn from others mistakes.
00:03:19:03 - 00:03:23:21
Oliver Low
And so hopefully I can spread a bit of knowledge and wisdom and help others to do that.
00:03:24:02 - 00:03:49:15
Todd Sullivan
That's so interesting. It is the same for me, right? Have been doing startups for 25 years and the resources were certainly not what they are today. I think we've had one guest who seemed to learn every step of the entrepreneurial journey, including the exit through podcasting. It was really kind of inspirational. Let's let's jump in. I know that you had a career working in companies before doing the startup and the value of that.
00:03:49:17 - 00:03:52:10
Todd Sullivan
Maybe you can explain kind of the beginnings of your career.
00:03:52:12 - 00:04:16:22
Oliver Low
Yes, absolutely. So when I graduated university, I had taken advice from my father and various other people that I respected. And whilst I'd always had the intention of jumping into launching a business, at some point, their advice was to get as much experience as you can, you know, put the reps in and learn on someone else's dime and grow your network and all of these good things.
00:04:17:00 - 00:04:40:06
Oliver Low
So when I left university, I had the intention of doing that, and this was early 2000. It was post the dotcom kind of crash. Most startups had been obliterated. There weren't a ton of options for a grad looking to work in startups around about then I wanted to work in tech because I was obsessed with the internet, as everyone was back then.
00:04:40:08 - 00:05:01:23
Oliver Low
And in tech there were really two companies at that time. There was Google and Microsoft. I was very fortunate to be offered jobs at both of them. I chose Microsoft based on their reputation for training. People said to me that it was the absolute best place for grads, you know, that you could learn the ropes. The training was incredible, and I can totally see why.
00:05:02:01 - 00:05:26:11
Oliver Low
I loved working at Microsoft. I spent a couple of years there working on product. I worked on the early Xbox product. This was just after Microsoft had acquired Xbox. I worked on MSN back when portals like Yahoo! And MSN were big thing. I worked on Hotmail and other tech products like Atlas, and I really enjoyed being part of a respected organization.
00:05:26:15 - 00:05:45:21
Oliver Low
They really look after you at the big tech companies and look, I can absolutely understand why so many people choose and stick to this path. The life is is very, very good. You have these people in Microsoft who've been there for like ten, 20, 30, 40 years, and I can totally see why. On the other hand, I recognized that that path wasn't for me.
00:05:45:23 - 00:06:07:14
Oliver Low
I recognized very quickly that to succeed in places like Microsoft or Google or whatever it might be, you know, you've got to play the games. It was highly political, and doing well ultimately meant aligning with certain people and going to certain events and getting close with certain people and with a slightly rebellious nature. This didn't quite feel right to me.
00:06:07:14 - 00:06:28:02
Oliver Low
Microsoft probably wasn't going to be the place for me in the long term, and I wasn't quite ready to launch my own business yet. I wanted to take a step more towards the startup world. And by that point, you know, the startup world was beginning to pick up momentum. There were a number of players in the space, but the biggest player in the game was MySpace.
00:06:28:04 - 00:06:51:03
Oliver Low
They had just been acquired by News Corp and what I think was the biggest tech M&A deal done at the time, it was probably tiny in comparison to today's numbers. I think it was like $200 million or something of that nature, but it was massive at the time and MySpace felt like a safer startup path versus a lot of the kind of boom bust, you know, that many had back then.
00:06:51:05 - 00:07:15:13
Oliver Low
I was also offered a job at Facebook in that same moment, and I turned it down. This might be one of the few regrets that I have on my journey so far. I think I would have been in the first 200 people to join Facebook. So super early joiner in the company. And I imagine that the stock options that I would have been granted at that point would have gone on to probably allow me to never have to work again.
00:07:15:15 - 00:07:25:17
Oliver Low
So I could certainly say that was a bit of a regret. But, you know, such as life, we all have some of these. That said about the value of the MySpace options is probably better.
00:07:25:19 - 00:07:35:00
Todd Sullivan
Well, I appreciate you sharing that. Let's just say you've gotten to lead your authentic life, right? Maybe Facebook, you be on some island doing something that is not your authentic life.
00:07:35:02 - 00:07:56:19
Oliver Low
All these exciting experiences since then. Yes. So, yeah, I spent a couple of years at MySpace and I loved it. It was chaotic. It was far less structured than Microsoft, to be honest. It was kind of chaotic and I loved that being in my early twenties. It was a fantastic place. People were drinking and doing all sorts of things in offices that they probably shouldn't have been doing.
00:07:56:21 - 00:08:18:08
Oliver Low
The company culture was very much aligned with the music industry being MySpace and had some of that kind of pizzazz and and magic and madness. And perhaps that's why ultimately things didn't work out well for MySpace. MySpace basically died in the 2007-2008 crash. Every employee in the company was offered voluntary redundancy. I was the first to volunteer.
00:08:18:09 - 00:08:43:15
Oliver Low
I remember vividly standing up and saying, Yes, please. I knew that this was perfect timing for me. I wanted to launch a business and the severance package was extremely generous. It was like a year of salary with no tax. So this was like the perfect launchpad to launch a business of my own. Redundancy, I think, can be a dream come true for people who are trying to get on the entrepreneurial path.
00:08:43:15 - 00:09:06:14
Oliver Low
Definitely a bit of a blessing in disguise. And so I took the cash. I took a bit of time out. I think it took a couple of months off and went traveling and thought about what I wanted to do. But I really set my heart on launching a business around about the same time. A lot of people were in the same boat in that, you know, all industries were kind of collapsing, everyone was being made redundant.
00:09:06:16 - 00:09:31:01
Oliver Low
And so a bunch of people that I'd worked with previously were in the same boat. We started to throw some ideas around. After a couple of months, we committed to launching a business that was our first company. It was called B & C (Breed & Craft). We launched B & C in 2008. It was a digital agency and it was an agency that made websites and apps and games and a whole bunch of other digital content.
00:09:31:03 - 00:09:56:00
Oliver Low
We launched an agency because we knew that we could do that with minimal cash. Back then, the VC world was really small. The startup scene was just unrecognizable to what it is today, especially in Europe and especially during a credit crunch. There was basically no cash being involved where we were, especially now for a bunch of 20 somethings with, you know, only a few years of experience.
00:09:56:02 - 00:10:15:22
Oliver Low
So yeah, that felt like a really good option for us. If I'm honest, we didn't spend a huge amount of time idea-ting around the concept. We simply jumped in headfirst in a way that only people in their twenties can do. But we had a really compelling narrative. We were young and disruptive, and we use this to our advantage.
00:10:16:00 - 00:10:40:09
Todd Sullivan
Can I interrupt you just for a second? There's a ton to unpack, but maybe we talk about that essentially gift, right? You're creating some liquidity by leaving My Space. You get a year salary. It's fantastic to be able to think about going to start a company. And I always encourage people like either start with a customer in hand in your building towards that customer or you've saved up cash to buy yourself time, right?
00:10:40:09 - 00:11:05:14
Todd Sullivan
Because these things take time before they start generating revenue. And what's nice is when you go towards something that is agency, like you're really selling your time in your expertise and you have a rate card, right? You're going to start charging your first customer right away. So, yeah, it's a great business to be getting into to have the cash flow and take some of the sting out of early entrepreneurship companies that may not make it someday.
00:11:05:16 - 00:11:15:11
Todd Sullivan
So I just wanted to throw that in there. So your first company really B&C, Right. Tell me how that goes. Like, when did you decide or know that that was going to be successful?
00:11:15:13 - 00:11:39:06
Oliver Low
I think that we we knew pretty quickly that it was going to be successful in that. I think within the first three months we'd signed up a bunch of customers. They ranged from a World Economic forum to Coca-Cola, and we could tell that we had something quite special between the three of us. We were a kind of perfect Co-founding team also kind of came about fairly randomly.
00:11:39:07 - 00:12:03:23
Oliver Low
I handled the sort of sales and new business, and I had one partner who was more operationally oriented, so he kind of built the team internally and we had another co-founder who was our CTO, so we had a really good set up. We had a really good narrative. I think we kind of could see where the puck was going in a way which probably the older incumbents in the space couldn't.
00:12:04:01 - 00:12:28:19
Oliver Low
It was a time of massive change. You know, like the iPhone had just come out. It's 2007, 2008. And so off the back of that, there was just this like massive explosion in building that occurs when mobile finally became the thing which we'd all hope that would become. And so we leverage that. We turned our idea via just energy and relentlessness into a scale business.
00:12:28:19 - 00:12:54:13
Oliver Low
I think we probably did about $1 million in our first year signing up a bunch of amazing customers. We were just relentless. We simply outworked and outhustled everyone that we came up against. We often would beat massive agencies, you know, big incumbents that had huge teams that would work on pitches for weeks. We did not have those resources, but we did have kind of good ideas and we had a lot of energy.
00:12:54:18 - 00:13:16:04
Oliver Low
And I think that, you know, looking back, we probably saw that being young and slightly inexperienced versus our competitors was a disadvantage. But it can be a complete advantage, you know, to be young and to have energy on your side and to have new ideas and to be disruptive. I think that these can be awesome things on your side.
00:13:16:09 - 00:13:35:08
Todd Sullivan
I would argue also that your dad's advice plays really well here, right? Because as a young, energetic guy now you have like a real understanding of tech at one of the biggest companies in the world being Microsoft. And you're able to tout like, Hey, I worked on Xbox, I worked on MSN and I worked on all of these different platforms.
00:13:35:08 - 00:13:51:08
Todd Sullivan
That gives you exposure that nobody else had? And then you jump into the startup world where ideas are flowing at MySpace. I bet your partners very similarly had backgrounds that just kind of blew everyone away. Like, Hey, these are the guys to take us to the future, right?
00:13:51:10 - 00:13:52:05
Oliver Low
Yeah.
00:13:52:07 - 00:13:57:11
Todd Sullivan
So your dad, your dad's advice, right? Go get that experience. Really? Probably paid off in spades.
00:13:57:13 - 00:14:24:15
Oliver Low
Totally. Just knowing how things work, you know, you don't know that innately. You have to figure out systems and processes and how businesses function. All of that stuff was super valuable, as was the network. You know, like people that we hired came from a lot of my early network building in both Microsoft and MySpace. A lot of our customers were people that I had met through those early jobs.
00:14:24:20 - 00:14:31:19
Oliver Low
So, I mean, I'm amazed that people can do it without putting these early reps and getting this early experience in elsewhere.
00:14:31:21 - 00:14:48:11
Todd Sullivan
What a great point. Right. The network that you're building is amazing, right? Just for customer contacts, but also the employees that you're going to hire. Yeah, that I think that is fantastic to share right. And a great reason to get some reps in before you go and actually launch a company.
00:14:48:15 - 00:14:50:06
Oliver Low
Absolutely. Absolutely.
00:14:50:11 - 00:15:09:22
Todd Sullivan
What I found interesting about B&C is that now as you're building a real company, you're also seeing opportunities to create offshoots right from that original company. Can you talk about how you saw that as an entrepreneur, how you saw opportunities to spin out, you know, new efforts, new businesses?
00:15:10:04 - 00:15:32:19
Oliver Low
Yeah, absolutely. So I think we had always envisaged that B & C as an agency would have a lab because, you know, and this is a great model. We were actually doing this today within Tiny with agencies that we own. You have a big team of people, you know, designers, product designers, engineers, developers, and, you know, a lot of the time they're deployed on projects when they're not.
00:15:33:00 - 00:15:52:18
Oliver Low
You can use their time really well to like spin up side projects. And so we call this a lab, really. It was a kind of proto venture studio or startup studio. We used our team’s spare time and they weren't, you know, working on projects to build products that we would then launch into the market using our media buying team.
00:15:52:19 - 00:16:16:09
Oliver Low
The media buying team is really a kind of early growth marketing resource before people referred to it as growth marketing. So we did that constantly. We were always launching little mini projects and experiments into the market. We had some early success doing that with a video ad network or Vice, which was really cool. And then we spent a lot of time focusing in on programmatic adtech.
00:16:16:11 - 00:16:37:01
Oliver Low
This was really, you know, one of the boom areas in tech at the time. It was around about the time that DoubleClick was bought by Google, and Google really became the behemoth that it is today. And so we became obsessed with advertising technology because we needed it internally. And using third parties was kind of painful and it decreased our margin.
00:16:37:03 - 00:17:03:04
Oliver Low
So we thought, why don't we just build all of this stuff ourselves? Which in hindsight was kind of insane, you know, like we were taking all of the profits from our agency and funneling it straight into the lab. And, you know, that was both very smart and very stupid. It was very smart in that we had exposure to launching a bunch of other businesses that were kind of increasing our likelihood of success.
00:17:03:06 - 00:17:23:21
Oliver Low
But it was insane that we were building really complex, machine learning oriented technology without any funding. As a team, we never fully agreed on whether to raise or whether or not to raise VC by that point. You know, the VC world was was a lot more advanced. And given that we had significant revenue by that point, it was very much possible that we could have gone out and raised.
00:17:23:21 - 00:17:44:02
Oliver Low
But for better or worse, we didn't. We bootstrapped and so all of our money went back into building the team so the team could build our products. And this was hard with transparency, you know, this was extremely hard. We probably didn't pay ourselves enough when the team needed to be grown. We we paid for that rather than paying ourselves.
00:17:44:02 - 00:17:54:02
Oliver Low
And, you know, in hindsight, I don't know if I recommend that others do this. It's incredibly risky. And, you know, I think the experience probably aged me by about 20 years.
00:17:54:05 - 00:18:20:23
Todd Sullivan
I would say that, yeah, it is a young man's game, right in that to be able to continue to just double down on building your visions. It's a tough thing to do, particularly when you build a lifestyle that has you know, certain requirements, right. Or family. So yeah, I do think for, you know, younger people, that is it is a little bit easier, particularly when you're excited in changing the world and you've got a great team that that is supporting you.
00:18:21:01 - 00:18:41:21
Todd Sullivan
That's interesting. Like the idea that could have raised and you decided, you know what, let's bootstrap. Can you talk just a little bit about that decision? Because I think a lot of our listeners get in that position of like, should I exit or should I raise? You're not talking about exiting, but you're certainly making this decision to not raise capital.
00:18:41:23 - 00:19:09:03
Oliver Low
Yeah, well, it's a really pertinent point. This became a significant point for us because we built the agency business for several years. It was going really well. We probably were generating three or $4 million a year for that business. We eventually launched the advertising technology business as a standalone, a kind of SpinCo. We spun out as a separate entity and around about then our board advised us that we needed to focus.
00:19:09:03 - 00:19:26:13
Oliver Low
We couldn't keep running an agency and, you know, at the same time run an adtech business. Again I can totally see why it was it was insane what we were trying to do. So we actually shut down the agency, which in hindsight again was kind of insane because that was our cash cow that hadn't been proven yet.
00:19:26:15 - 00:19:47:08
Oliver Low
And we just kind of presumed that the ADTECH business would take off. Not raising again, you know, not raising or raising came back to disagree minutes in the team I wanted to raise, but my co-founders didn't. And so, you know, we had to reach an agreement on that. Even though I was the CEO of the business, we were all equal shareholders in the company.
00:19:47:08 - 00:20:09:04
Oliver Low
And so we we decided not to raise we doubled down on on the ADTECH business and put all of our focus into that and luckily it did work out in that, you know, that product really took off. Our customers were the big media buying agencies of the world, the WPP and the public businesses and, you know, behemoths like that.
00:20:09:06 - 00:20:28:21
Oliver Low
It took off. We built that for, you know, probably two or three years more before realizing that we were in perhaps the most competitive market in the history of business. We were competing with Google, we were competing with Amazon and Facebook and a bunch of Tier two players that had raised hundreds of millions of dollars. It was brutal, you know.
00:20:28:23 - 00:20:35:10
Todd Sullivan
Oliver just for listeners, this this company is Platform360, right? Had you named it that at that point?
00:20:35:12 - 00:21:00:04
Oliver Low
Yes, it was three six. That's right. Yeah, It was a fantastic product business and our customers loved it. But we were just competing with businesses that had really deep pockets in comparison to ours. Like to an almost ludicrous extent where you're competing with the likes of Google and Facebook, but you're this little upstart startup that hasn't even taken funding.
00:21:00:04 - 00:21:26:21
Oliver Low
You're kind of bootstrapping it all the way. It was precarious and it was hard. And again, I don't necessarily recommend that people do this. I think it was really bad for our mental and physical health. It was it was a tough time having not raised, I think, you know, I probably still have the scars from that time. But I also think that I respect and admire people who have been through these tough times.
00:21:26:21 - 00:21:47:14
Oliver Low
I do think that you learn more from the hard times. And I think that when you speak to an entrepreneur who has been through it, you know, someone who's been in the trenches, you can tell they're often both sharper and smarter as a result of it, but also more modest and probably more humble. It is a very humbling thing to go through when you're in that boat.
00:21:47:16 - 00:22:06:21
Oliver Low
So I think they're good people to work for or with, certainly in my experience. So going back to the point about raising or selling, we were gearing up to sell our business. We knew that to achieve the next level of success meant raising significant capital. There was no way that we could continue to bootstrap it and take it to the next level.
00:22:07:03 - 00:22:34:18
Oliver Low
And to do that would have been, you know, committing another ten years of time to this business. And we were burned out, we were exhausted. And personally I'd kind of begun to hate the advertising industry. It's an industry that is at least on the media side, defined by not having, you know, the best product or service, but being able to do deals, you know, often kind of sketchy deals.
00:22:34:18 - 00:23:04:15
Oliver Low
You know, even for these massive corporations, it's all, you know, kickbacks and incentives and stuff like that. So I began to get very frustrated with the adtech industry, and we had no desire to continue building that business for another ten years. So we decided to sell and we were lining up ourselves for the sale process when suddenly the EU implemented the GDPR regulations.
00:23:04:17 - 00:23:25:16
Oliver Low
We knew that this was coming and we had prepared ourselves for it. We were completely compliant with all the regulations and we didn't think that this would cause any issues for us. We actually thought that because we were so obviously compliant and so many of our competitors so obviously weren't, that we might actually see an increase in revenue because of these regulations.
00:23:25:18 - 00:23:27:22
Oliver Low
But that did not turn out to happen.
00:23:28:00 - 00:23:34:22
Todd Sullivan
Can I interrupt you just a sec to explain the GDPR, our regulation around third party and first party cookies?
00:23:35:00 - 00:23:55:06
Oliver Low
Yes. So GDPR, much like the the regulations in California, were were designed to protect people's data. So, as you say, first and third party data, you know, as a result of GDPR, we have all of these annoying pop ups every time you visit a website and you have to give you consent for data collection, that's because of GDPR.
00:23:55:10 - 00:24:18:22
Oliver Low
Yeah, so it had huge repercussions in our industry because, you know, the penalties for not adhering to the regulations were severe and the brands who were the ultimate customer of everyone in the advertising ecosystem, they were really paranoid about being caught out and, you know, finding themselves in a position where they were working with partners that weren't fully compliant.
00:24:19:00 - 00:24:40:19
Oliver Low
And so as a result of that, the advertising business basically ground to a halt for a number of months. People just stopped buying media whilst they figured out who was and wasn't complying. And yeah, this went on for months. Everything just kind of stopped. And for us that meant our revenues basically fell off a cliff. Right before we were about to sell.
00:24:40:19 - 00:24:46:01
Todd Sullivan
Even though you were compliant, which sounds like it would be a big advantage, right, in an M&A process. Yeah.
00:24:46:03 - 00:25:04:15
Oliver Low
It was. Yeah, it was. Yeah. We we did not see this coming. No, look, I'm much more aware of regulations and the impact that they can have on businesses these days because while we were very much victims of that, it was brutal, you know, like going into a sale and your revenue fell off a cliff. We considered raising a bridge round.
00:25:04:17 - 00:25:27:15
Oliver Low
But, you know, given our situation, the terms that we were being offered were terrible and we were kind of halfway through the sale process to then have to pivot to raising with terrible terms, you know, just seemed like an even less appealing option. So we just plowed on with the sale knowing that our valuation would be decimated.
00:25:27:17 - 00:25:49:02
Todd Sullivan
Oliver So I guess where we jumped over this idea that you guys decided, Hey, the timing is right for us. We don't want to do this for the next ten years. You clearly have some competitive advantages, but tons of competition coming towards you. So you say, okay, we're going to sell this business. From that realization and decision, how do you go about selling your business?
00:25:49:02 - 00:25:56:11
Todd Sullivan
Did you hire a group to essentially take you to market or is there a business already knocking on the door? Can you talk a little bit about that?
00:25:56:13 - 00:26:19:02
Oliver Low
Yeah. So we had, you know, had a number of inquiries over the years and, you know, typically they wouldn't come to anything. We tried not to get too distracted by that. We got serious about it when it was our decision, you know, when we made the decision that we wanted to sell our business and our board were great in that they connected us with all of the kind of major M&A firms from our sector.
00:26:19:04 - 00:26:40:02
Oliver Low
And we met probably five different M&A firms. They were all impressive. You know, they were great people. They clearly knew what they were doing. But we decided to go a different route. In the end, we decided to go with a consultancy and this is a very nonstandard option. We found a consultancy that was very specific to the ad tech sector.
00:26:40:07 - 00:27:07:13
Oliver Low
They were a team from the industry who were extremely experienced to and come from usually product backgrounds, so they understood the nuance from one product to another. They were also people that were like deeply networked into the ecosystem and our thesis was that these guys would be better placed to understand the specifics of our business in a way that the more generalist firms could not.
00:27:07:15 - 00:27:15:15
Oliver Low
And we also thought that they would have a better, you know, network for our business than that the generalist M&A firms would have.
00:27:15:15 - 00:27:38:22
Todd Sullivan
If you don't mind me commenting on that, like first, fantastic, right? That you assembled all of these choices went through the interview process, which is really tough. Even ask, what do you even ask an M&A firm about? You can get the high level, but how do you really differentiate between them? I think that's that's super challenging and kudos for for actually trying to do that.
00:27:39:04 - 00:28:10:01
Todd Sullivan
And you come back and you say, wow, we've got five really impressive firms. And what I want to share is that these M&A firms, investment banks, are really, really good at selling. Right. And a lot of our founders end up thinking, well, that's the guy I want. I want that sales guy out there in the market telling everybody about how great our company is, when the reality is you found exactly what was right for your company, that consultancy that really understands the intricacies of your products within a market.
00:28:10:01 - 00:28:31:00
Todd Sullivan
And then they have the relationships to go tug on those relationships and say, I got something really special and I know why It's going to be very special for you specifically when you can find that that is absolutely the best representation that you can get, whether it's a consulting firm or an investment bank. And that's what we do every single day.
00:28:31:00 - 00:28:45:05
Todd Sullivan
And we see the ramifications of that real true industry expertise. So I really appreciate you talking about this. I didn't know you went in this direction, but it makes so much sense. So please, I didn't mean to interrupt. Please, please keep going.
00:28:45:10 - 00:29:10:08
Oliver Low
No, not at all. Yeah, I'm glad we we took that path. I would say that on balance, our thesis was correct in that they absolutely did understand our product better, you know, like it was like going into the minutia of details of, like, why our product was ever so slightly different from the others in the market and why that meant that it was a great fit for X, Y and Z versus not a great fit for others.
00:29:10:08 - 00:29:32:01
Oliver Low
And in the interview process that really shone through. And I think that that really paid dividends. They were able to introduce us to exactly the right people, you know, and they knew everyone in the space. So that was that was kind of perfect. They would tee it up and then we would go in and sell ourselves, which we were pretty capable of.
00:29:32:01 - 00:29:55:16
Oliver Low
By that point. I would say the only downside to that path, you know, the one that we decided to take was that this consultancy, you know, this agency, they weren't perfectly set up to do dealmaking in the way that traditional M&A firms might. So this meant that we had to do a lot of the heavy lifting on that side between us and our lawyers and our accountants and our board.
00:29:55:19 - 00:30:01:12
Oliver Low
Yeah, but yeah, overall, I do think it's worth considering these kind of nonstandard options if you're thinking about selling.
00:30:01:14 - 00:30:24:21
Todd Sullivan
Yeah, absolutely. I am really excited to hear that this is how you went about selling the business. And I can completely understand when it's not an investment bank, the materials that get created in the financial package in this data room, all of the kind of infrastructure around M&A is not going to be exactly what buyers are looking for, and it's going to put a lot of heavy lifting on your hands.
00:30:24:23 - 00:30:32:01
Todd Sullivan
Yeah, we always equate like when you go to sell a business, it's like running another company, right? You have now two full time jobs.
00:30:32:01 - 00:30:32:10
Oliver Low
Yeah.
00:30:32:13 - 00:30:49:16
Todd Sullivan
We believe with investment bankers and when you're bringing in the right M&A attorneys and the right tax accountants and the quality of earnings, when you've got that full team, it is a little bit less effort on you and you have the benefit of what you got those relationships and the true understanding of the value of your company in the market.
00:30:49:16 - 00:31:09:00
Todd Sullivan
I mean, you cannot underestimate when you find that expertise how you have chosen so well. So okay, okay. So you got a lot more work on your hands, right? But you're getting the perfect introductions and people are buying you anyway, right? They see all the numbers, they know the vision, but they want to really buy the people. So.
00:31:09:01 - 00:31:14:00
Todd Sullivan
Okay, so you're in these conversations, were there multiple eventual bidders for the business?
00:31:14:06 - 00:31:43:19
Oliver Low
Yeah. So, you know, as I kind of mentioned, we we had this terrible scenario in that our revenues basically stalled at exactly the wrong moment. Like it's the nightmare scenario for a seller that revenues kind of dry up right before you're about to go into that sale process. So I don't think that that decreased the number of interested acquirers, but it certainly changed the dynamics of the deal, you know, which was extremely painful for us.
00:31:43:21 - 00:32:03:04
Oliver Low
We knew that there wasn't really much we could do about that. You know, like we had a very experienced board, people who had bought and sold many similar businesses over the years. We knew what the deal was. You know, we would have to accept terms which were suboptimal versus what we would have accepted three or four months before that.
00:32:03:06 - 00:32:25:17
Oliver Low
We just had to plow on. There were many interested parties. We probably had an about 7 to 10 that were serious and that we had to engage with. As you say, it is mind blowing how much time this actually takes. It was extremely hard to balance that whilst, you know, rebooting in a way our business because, you know, revenues had stalled.
00:32:25:17 - 00:32:34:23
Oliver Low
We were trying to find alternate customers that maybe were still spending. And so we were trying to do all of this at the same time. And it was, it was really, really hard.
00:32:35:01 - 00:32:55:13
Todd Sullivan
I would say one of our founders that we just sold her business, she will say to us, well, you know, Todd, it wasn't that it was so hard. It's so time consuming, right? We were all smart people getting companies to this point, right? You're not doing that really out of luck. And so you are capable of doing this.
00:32:55:17 - 00:33:22:18
Todd Sullivan
It is just so time consuming and therefore distracting. And the worst thing you want to have happen in an M&A transaction is your business to falter. Right. And unfortunately, that is what happened for you guys, that the whole kind of world came to this this interesting point where the business wasn't able to continue to grow. And you understood your board understood that you're going to face the consequences of that during, you know, during negotiation.
00:33:22:19 - 00:33:49:04
Todd Sullivan
So I think it's fascinating that you had a board that had M&A experience, right. So probably grounded you. Well, I think one of the challenges for us is teaching entrepreneurs these rules. Right? And it's helpful when there are multiple voices at the table advising founders and being consistent around that advice. And that's one of the things we hope to do with this podcast, is bring people that have been through this just like yourselves, sharing these experiences.
00:33:49:08 - 00:34:03:07
Todd Sullivan
So really, really appreciate this. All right. So there's competition. 7 to 10 are interested. You're weeding that down by some method. How do you get to making this decision of who to sell to and the structure that you go with?
00:34:03:09 - 00:34:29:12
Oliver Low
Yeah, it's a good question. I think that probably more than anything, we optimized for the personalities of the people that were doing the deal and I can now see that that was kind of a mistake, to be honest. We were obviously, you know, looking at each potential acquirer in terms of, you know, their strategic fit and, you know, cultural fit and everything else.
00:34:29:13 - 00:34:50:11
Oliver Low
Perhaps because we were in this like really tight predicament, we were like, as I said before, we were burned out. We were already burned out before we went through this process and now going through this process. And now, you know, revenues fall off a cliff. And and and we were just like dead, you know, like we were we were in a desperate kind of situation.
00:34:50:11 - 00:35:13:03
Oliver Low
And so we very much optimize towards the personalities on the buyer side that felt kind of comforting to us. And I can see why we did that. But I can also see now why that was a mistake because, you know, ultimately the people that I'm referring to, they left not long after, you know, they left the buyer eventually.
00:35:13:03 - 00:35:32:08
Oliver Low
And when they did, our main stakeholders were gone. So all of the benefits that were real, you know, those people did help us in the early phases. They were, you know, the people who drove the deal forward and helped to make sure that we were embedded within the buyer. You know, the early phases were all as a result of them being there, but eventually they left.
00:35:32:10 - 00:35:50:04
Oliver Low
And the people who took over managing us within the buying company weren't really involved with the deal and saw that the acquisition was more of an annoyance than an opportunity. So I think that's what we optimized for and I think that was probably a mistake in hindsight.
00:35:50:06 - 00:36:17:04
Todd Sullivan
Well, yeah, I don't know if I've seen that come to fruition in in the acquisitions that we've had. We've certainly gone and helped business owners understand the makeup of the buyer, right, particularly in private equity. What is the playbook? What should you expect when you get to the other side? I think maybe Oliver, that would have been one of the benefits of having an investment bank representing you because they would have likely have sold to companies that before.
00:36:17:10 - 00:36:37:09
Todd Sullivan
And it's really interesting to have the demand to buy your company be driven from the product side. The people that are building as opposed to the corporate developed groups. It's really interesting to have that. But of course people are then going to leave, you know, where is the home for this business? Who's going to drive it forward? You know, those questions are tough ones to answer.
00:36:37:09 - 00:36:50:16
Todd Sullivan
Easy for me to say All that in hindsight, right? How could you have really predicted that? But we lean a lot on the investment bankers knowledge and experience of selling to very specific buyers to know what your life is going to be like.
00:36:50:16 - 00:36:53:22
Oliver Low
Post-Closing Absolutely.
00:36:54:00 - 00:36:57:06
Todd Sullivan
So the company you sold to is Silverbullet, right?
00:36:57:07 - 00:36:57:23
Oliver Low
Right. Yeah.
00:36:58:02 - 00:37:15:14
Todd Sullivan
Yeah. What what I would love to hear, right, is you have this acquisition, right? Everybody agrees took a lot of effort on both sides and you're there for a little while. What was it like life like there? And then how this company decides to go public. Right. And now you're part of that as well.
00:37:15:16 - 00:37:42:05
Oliver Low
Yes, that's right. Yeah. I think the first year was pretty exciting, you know, in that we the stakeholders that I mentioned, were still there. We felt like we closed the page on the last chapter. We got a deal done. It wasn't the deal that we should have done in the revenues stalling impacted a lot of the deal terms, but we had a deal done and we were really excited about the earnout.
00:37:42:07 - 00:38:01:15
Oliver Low
We we were looking forward to being able to like smash through our targets and we're really optimistic about that. So that first phase was was good. I think it was just a relief to have got the deal over the line. And we felt very much at home in the buying company as the first year turned into the second year.
00:38:01:15 - 00:38:27:19
Oliver Low
And the stakeholders that I mentioned left, things started to change and that's when it started to become clear to me certainly that probably the earnout wasn't going to be as successful as it could have been as a result of us not gaining assurances in terms of investment into our product. And we had a phenomenal product. We'd spent millions of dollars on it up to that point, but it was a work in progress.
00:38:27:20 - 00:38:49:21
Oliver Low
It was one quarter of the way through its full potential. We had super high conviction in that potential, as did the stakeholders that did the deal with us, but the people who eventually were looking after us within the business, they didn't see it that way. The business changed. Their strategic direction changed as they were lining up to go public.
00:38:49:23 - 00:39:13:07
Oliver Low
And so as a result of that, a lot of decisions that were made with regards to our product were undone. And that was painful, really painful. You know, we we we put blood, sweat and tears into building that product. It was also challenging in terms of our ability to hit our earnout numbers because they were based on, you know, the product continuously evolving.
00:39:13:07 - 00:39:30:10
Oliver Low
You know, like we were in a highly dynamic space where our competitor’s products were constantly changing. And I think the buyer kind of thought, well, you have a product, you can just continue to sell that. And we were like, That's not how it works. We have to launch new features and even new products and very much keep this going.
00:39:30:15 - 00:39:54:05
Todd Sullivan
Can I interrupt you again? Because I think, you know, this is really it's really valuable when we talk about earnout, right? That is part that is a structure part of a structure of an intimate transaction where you're going to get money in the future if you're achieving certain goals. And and we've all heard the horror stories of, oh, like I'm going to have a big earnout and then the levers make that earnout possible.
00:39:54:08 - 00:40:27:14
Todd Sullivan
When you're on the other side, when you're with the acquirer, those levers are taken away from you. And so it's one thing to have these relationships that you clearly had and you were trusting. But when those relationships are gone, what do you have to lean on to keep those levers in your hand? And a good not only M&A attorney, but your investment banker can negotiate those for you where a certain level of investment has to go into the business or into the product, or you have to have a sales force committed to selling your products at certain margins in order for you to hit these numbers.
00:40:27:16 - 00:40:51:00
Todd Sullivan
And so I would I would just say, again, the having that representation really understands how to structure these deals makes your earnout less risky. It's always going to be risky. Right. But having it properly structured and then documented that if they decide not to do what they've agreed to do, these these earnout become either automatic or they're some other trigger that gets you paid.
00:40:51:02 - 00:41:09:06
Todd Sullivan
So I appreciate you sharing that. Right. That that those are those are painful. And frankly, what we've seen is those are more common than we would ever like them to be. Yes. So yeah. So people should go in kind of eyes wide open knowing there are solutions, but it's always going to be risky, you know, taking our notes.
00:41:09:08 - 00:41:10:19
Oliver Low
Indeed. Yeah.
00:41:10:21 - 00:41:23:09
Todd Sullivan
So. All right. So they're they're going to go public. They have shifted the pieces around the chess board in order to go public. And are you are you helpful in doing that? Is that what did you learn through that process?
00:41:23:11 - 00:41:46:16
Oliver Low
Absolutely. I was I mean, I learned a lot about the process of going public. It's a tricky, complicated, very time consuming thing to go through. It was a very valuable experience to to see that firsthand. I still felt like I was part of you know, this the buying company or so. I think by that point, I'd recognized that I wasn't going to stick around.
00:41:46:18 - 00:42:07:02
Oliver Low
You know, one of my co-founders is still there, you know, So he made a very different decision. Another left before I did. And yeah, you know, I don't know that many people who had a super fun earnout, it's often kind of this way. The culture that we built up was totally different to the culture of the of the buyer.
00:42:07:08 - 00:42:24:21
Oliver Low
We felt like we were pretty much aligned, you know, culturally. But then the reality was it was pretty different. It was very different. That was challenging to us as well, because a lot of our core team kind of left you know, they didn't really enjoyed being part of this hyper different culture, and so they kind of moved on.
00:42:24:23 - 00:42:53:05
Oliver Low
And at that point I was super focused on just hitting the milestones that I could that I could hit and, you know, making sure that I delivered on promises that I'd made to to the new team that were in place within the buyer, learning as much as I could do, you know, being in that different space, being in a business that was gearing up to go public, I was just like a sponge trying to absorb as much as I could and also like, you know, enjoying not having to work stupidly long hours.
00:42:53:07 - 00:43:27:06
Oliver Low
I had become an employee by that point, you know, and I felt like an employee versus a founder. And to be honest, it was probably needed because, you know, the previous ten years were so intense. So again, I took my old board, several of which, you know, have been mentors of mine in the long term, were like, you know, enjoy this opportunity to to not work as hard as you have been, like give your brain a bit of time to recover and learn as much as you can, Take meetings and start thinking about what you want to do next.
00:43:27:07 - 00:43:38:20
Oliver Low
I'd very much already set my sights on on the next chapter, and I'd kind of already started to close the page of that chapter with the acquirer.
00:43:38:22 - 00:43:56:21
Todd Sullivan
Good for you. I really appreciate the story and being just being so open and honest about, you know, the the highs and the lows is there is there kind of one piece of advice that you would give that's around M&A that might maybe it's what is the biggest mistake that you may made that you wouldn't make next time?
00:43:57:02 - 00:44:01:00
Todd Sullivan
You know, anything that you would give to your fellow founders and business owners?
00:44:01:02 - 00:44:21:20
Oliver Low
Yeah, I think a lot I mean, you know, going back to the point that we've already kind of stressed M&A takes up a huge amount of time, you know, for six months it took up most of our time. And because we were still, you know, super day to day oriented in our business, this just meant, you know, it was very challenging for us and we kind of took our eye off the ball of what was going on with the business.
00:44:21:22 - 00:44:45:06
Oliver Low
So just be prepared for that. I think, you know, going back to what we already discussed, we should have had an investment banker on our team, you know, like the firm who did the M&A that did the introductions. But, you know, everything else was kind of down to us and that tripped us up. A lot of the things which I've described that went wrong were as a result of that being the case.
00:44:45:08 - 00:45:05:21
Oliver Low
So I would definitely do that differently next time. I don't think that we also appreciated that time is the enemy of all deals. Like the longer the M&A process drags on, the higher the likelihood the deal won't happen or that the terms that you get will be worse. And we certainly accepted terms that we shouldn't have accepted because we weren't prepared to back out.
00:45:06:02 - 00:45:29:09
Oliver Low
You know, like the buyers kind of dragged the sale process on knowing that this would be more likely from us with time that we would accept things that we probably wouldn't have liked to have accepted. Given our precarious position. With revenues drying up, I would add that the revenues massively picked up again just after we did the deal and as we predicted, they bounced back even more than we predicted.
00:45:29:09 - 00:46:01:06
Oliver Low
So that was at least some good news. Again, like, you know, as I mentioned, we didn't secure guarantees that the right level of investment would be made into our product. And this stifled our ability to to hit some of our earnout milestones, which was somewhat painful. And I would definitely do that differently. What else? I would say that the biggest advice I would give to anyone, you know, who's, you know, looking to create an exit opportunity for themselves, for the company is more than anything be profitable.
00:46:01:12 - 00:46:24:18
Oliver Low
You know, if you have a profitable business over the long term, you will have buyers bending over backwards to do deals with you. If you aren’t, it will be a lot harder and you'll be constantly in a somewhat prepared, precarious position where you're liable to either VC's or some other kind of funding. Funding source profit is just the best buffer that you can have on a personal level.
00:46:24:18 - 00:46:49:18
Oliver Low
I would say to any founders that are going through the M&A process, like be healthy, you know, if you don't have a personal trainer, get one. If you don't have a coach or a therapist, get one. It can be such a grueling process and you'll do much better if you remain healthy and in good spirits and I guess finally, you know, always be willing to walk away to do this means being able to walk away.
00:46:50:00 - 00:47:10:13
Oliver Low
And to do that, you have to have a safety net for your business, like a buffer that allows you to do what you want. And this, again, goes back to being profitable. It was kind of out of fashion for businesses to be profitable for a while, but it's very much back in vogue these days and thank goodness for that, because nothing protects you like profit.
00:47:10:13 - 00:47:29:01
Oliver Low
You know, as a founder, having a healthy bank balance and regular recurring revenue is just an incredible godsend that will allow you the freedom and flexibility to say no, to walk away from deals and, you know, to do the deal on terms that that fit for you all.
00:47:29:06 - 00:47:48:04
Todd Sullivan
I mean, it's such good advice. I almost feel like getting to know you. It's pretty consistent with your personality been very calculated and the decisions that you've made. You work intensely, intensely hard. I would like to comment, right. Obviously, like we know M&A, it takes a lot of effort and a lot of time. Right. It is like running two businesses.
00:47:48:04 - 00:48:07:19
Todd Sullivan
Your business and selling a company are enormous efforts, you know, very much. We appreciate the having an eye banker on your team but really the right one And I would almost, you know, argue that the consulting group that you chose was really perfect except for the few things that we've talked about, but found you the right buyers. And when you talk about timing.
00:48:07:19 - 00:48:31:22
Todd Sullivan
Right, and what we see in M&A transactions is if your investment banker can bring multiple parties to the table and create that sense of competition, it's not just about maximizing your outcome or your structure. It's about keeping on a time schedule. So you really force buyers to know they're not the only one there and they have to behave the way you want them to behave and stay on timeline and not drag it out.
00:48:32:04 - 00:48:50:11
Todd Sullivan
Because that tactic is almost ubiquitous. Every buyer wants to take, I want to see one more month. I want to see one more month. And they know the emotional toll that it is taking on you to get this done. And you will end up agreeing to things that you wouldn't have three or four months ago just because it is wearing you down.
00:48:50:13 - 00:49:14:14
Todd Sullivan
So having a banker run that process is incredibly, incredibly helpful. And I want to touch just on profitability because, you know, take two years ago, October of 2021, where it was just growth rate, growth rate, growth rate. We don't care about profitability. And when we saw that right, it was fun to see these valuations is through the roof based largely on on growth rates and the promise of the future.
00:49:14:14 - 00:49:40:07
Todd Sullivan
And that profitability will come. But we we went and built a valuation calculator that really lets business owners understand the value of profitability of growth rate, all of your EBITA margins, all of these things that really go in to evaluating a business from a buyer's perspective. And what we're trying to do is bring real time evidence and transactions to that.
00:49:40:07 - 00:50:06:12
Todd Sullivan
So when you have you're in a time period where growth rate, it's all about growth rate, you know that. And now we're back to profitability. You're absolutely right. Profitability buys you time. It creates options. And today it really is the cornerstone of of creating great M&A transactions. So really appreciate you doing that. And and you can walk away, right, If you're if you're profitable and you can keep going, you can hire other people to reduce the stress.
00:50:06:14 - 00:50:25:11
Todd Sullivan
You know, I absolutely love all of that. I think that some of the best advice that we've heard. Right. You really kind of knocked down a whole bunch of great, great points. What I love to finish with what you're doing today, Right, because you've taken all of this experience and now you are helping founders exit and then build beyond.
00:50:25:13 - 00:50:36:06
Todd Sullivan
Right? Invest in them, buy them. Can you talk about the company that you're with and how different, frankly, it is? And I think huge benefit to founders. This is an incredible option people need to know about.
00:50:36:07 - 00:51:08:18
Oliver Low
Yeah, absolutely. I'd love to. So for about two years I've been working with Andrew Wilkinson at Tiny. For those who don't know, Tiny is a holding company that was modeled on Berkshire Hathaway. It started with an agency called MetaLab about 18 years ago. They launched about the time that we were launching our agency. So I always knew about MetaLab and we kind of looked up to them as being like the premium prestigious product design studio in the world off the back of the great success that Andrew had with MetaLab, he started to build a holding.
00:51:08:20 - 00:51:34:11
Oliver Low
It's now a company with, I think, 52 different companies, you know, sitting within Tiny's ecosystem. It's very much, you know, the Berkshire Hathaway model. So I, you know, very mature, kind of profitable, steady, mostly Internet oriented as in like software. Some of them are agencies, etc., etc.. I think it's a really interesting model and it's one which I wasn't really aware of at the time.
00:51:34:13 - 00:51:58:15
Oliver Low
And I think it's a good thing for for sellers to be aware of that. You know, there are various buyer profiles out there. I think probably the main ones that people are aware of are the strategic acquirer. So, you know, like I sold to a business that was bigger than ours, that wanted to absorb us for strategic reasons and adopt our products and services theirs.
00:51:58:17 - 00:52:17:21
Oliver Low
People will also be aware of private equity, but I don't think a lot of people who are building businesses would think about holding companies as being a valid option. I think they should consider that for a number of key reasons. I would say that with the strategic acquire, the main risk, the main thing that can go wrong is probably cultural fit.
00:52:17:23 - 00:52:42:03
Oliver Low
I thought that it would be super easy to integrate my company into the buyers, but in reality it was a pretty hard process. Our culture was totally different to theirs and eventually ours was kind of killed off in the process of doing the deal, this wasn't just frustrating, but it was also like part of the reason why our earnout was hard to achieve because you know, a lot of our core team left, as I mentioned, as a result of this cultural fit with PE.
00:52:42:09 - 00:53:00:17
Oliver Low
One of the biggest risks is that the buyer simply doesn't care about the company they are acquiring to them, it's just an asset. They'll be looking for an exit again probably within 4 to 7 years, and they're going to do whatever it takes to make this happen. As a founder, you're probably more likely to lose control of your business in this scenario.
00:53:00:21 - 00:53:21:05
Oliver Low
The firm may also lever you up with debt, meaning that your startup might end up losing a lot of growth capital on interest payments. And with the holding company model, I think incentives are uniquely aligned. The holding company wants to own a business in the long term. You know, like ideally forever. When we buy business at Tiny, we say to them, like, our intention is to hold this forever.
00:53:21:10 - 00:53:46:10
Oliver Low
We're looking at the very, very, very long term. If you look at Berkshire Hathaway, you have the perfect exhibit for this model. Therefore, holding companies don't make short term decisions that other buyers make. They want to invest in the business. They also want to ensure that your company remains independent so your culture is safe. You know, not to blow Tiny's horn, but I think this is an awesome option for those who are looking to sell.
00:53:46:10 - 00:53:48:00
Oliver Low
So.
00:53:48:02 - 00:54:13:10
Todd Sullivan
Yeah, I appreciate you kind of giving us this idea that there there's buyer profiles out there and they feel like they're really expanding. I mean, they're search funds, they're independent sponsors. I think the holding company is maybe more similar to like a family office. But the holding I would say it's like a family office combined with strategic in that they have a real interest in growing the business and using their expertise.
00:54:13:10 - 00:54:31:01
Todd Sullivan
Right. The holding company clearly Tiny has tons of expertise that comes out of each one of the portfolio companies that they can leverage to grow the next business. And on top of that, they want to hold for a long time similar to maybe family offices. Think of these as kind of cash flows. We're going to hold this for a while.
00:54:31:04 - 00:54:48:23
Todd Sullivan
We want our investment dollars working that way. It's super interesting for entrepreneurs today of the options that are out there to create liquidity when you're ready. And I think so many of us think, hey, I just have to go out and raise more money. I have to get bigger and bigger and bigger before somebody is interested in buying me.
00:54:49:03 - 00:55:17:08
Todd Sullivan
This is a perfect example of, Hey, maybe I need to look around and see what liquidity events could be available to me today. And then you maintain your culture and you keep growing, right? It's a it's a fantastic option. I need to learn frankly, more about it myself. You know, I've heard podcasts and I've read a little bit about it, but I think after this I'm going to kind of dive in a little bit more because we want to give them both the best options to offer all of our clients.
00:55:17:10 - 00:55:37:12
Oliver Low
You're right. You know, like a lot of the companies that we acquire within Tiny are companies that were kind of thinking about raising, and we can provide the capital for them to achieve whatever it is they need to achieve next whether it’s growing the team or growing the product or doing both. We have like almost limitless capital resources to do that.
00:55:37:14 - 00:55:55:08
Oliver Low
As you said, it's an option where you kind of get the best of both worlds in that, you know, the founders can come in. I would say in half of the instances, the founders are kind of like I was pretty much done, you know, like they they they served their ten years. They put all their blood, sweat and tears into it.
00:55:55:08 - 00:56:20:06
Oliver Low
They're kind of burned out and they just want to step aside. That's totally fine for us. Like, we absolutely understand that. And so founders want to step aside after the deal is done. That's totally fine. If they also want to stick around, that's absolutely fine. What we recognize is that the profile of the core team that is suitable for building a business from scratch up to, let's say 10 million a year in revenue is one profile.
00:56:20:10 - 00:56:41:21
Oliver Low
The profile of building a business from $10 to $100 million is also totally different. And then the profile of building $100 million to $1,000,000,000 and a billion plus, these are all totally different profiles. And one of the genius things that Andrew did with Tiny was recognizing that and just giving people the right path to get to the point where they say, okay, I'm done aligning incentives with everyone so that they can do that.
00:56:42:01 - 00:56:50:21
Oliver Low
Still see upside in the future, but step aside when the time comes. And I think that's a really good thing for founders, you know, to have those options.
00:56:50:23 - 00:57:09:13
Todd Sullivan
Oliver This has been really enlightening. Thank you for sharing, you know, everything, the full journey, the exit. So much great advice what you're doing today. I know we went a little bit over here, but I think this is so worth it. I really appreciate your time today. Any other any parting words that you'd like to give?
00:57:09:15 - 00:57:24:10
Oliver Low
Yeah, I would say, you know, again, not to make this an episode about Tiny, but if anyone does want to find out more about the holding company option and what Tony looks like, you can visit us at Tiny.com with a bunch of information there. You can also reach out to me if you want to learn about it.
00:57:24:15 - 00:57:47:20
Oliver Low
Yeah, that's all I would say. I hope that what I've shared isn't off putting in that. You know, obviously the exit that I had last time around was not optimal. It was suboptimal in a number of ways, but it was an incredible learning experience and I was still delighted to have gone through that exit. You know, financially, it was still an amazing thing that allowed me to do what I'm doing today.
00:57:47:20 - 00:58:01:20
Oliver Low
So I hope that's not off putting and I hope that it's communicated that there are tons of different options. You know, there's one not one typical path that we all have to follow as founders who are looking to take our business to the next level.
00:58:01:22 - 00:58:04:14
Todd Sullivan
Oliver. This is perfect. Thank you so much. Really appreciate it.
00:58:04:14 - 00:58:07:09
Oliver Low
It. Not at all. Thank you, Todd.
00:58:07:11 - 00:58:29:14
Todd Sullivan
Thanks again for listening to the Cashing Out podcast. For more founder Exit stories, please subscribe to the Cashing Out podcast on Apple, iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. And please remember exercise dot com and the Cashing Out podcast are for entertainment purposes only. This should not be relied upon as the basis for investment decisions.