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Are you a founder looking to sell your company, or already in the process of doing so? In The Big Exit Show by Peak and NP-Hard with our hosts Johan van Mil and Anke Huiskes talk to entrepreneurs about scaling their companies and the route to making a successful exit. They bring you real stories, valuable insights, and expert advice from entrepreneurs who have successfully exited their business. Learn what to expect, avoid common pitfalls, and get inspired to achieve your own big exit! 🔥 Subscribe now to stay ahead in your journey and get actionable tips from those who’ve been there before.
Anke:
We just came off the phone with Robin who told us his story about jobspotting, a company that he started with three other co founders 10 plus years ago, recruiting AI, something that in today's market is pretty obvious. But then during that time really narrative, the whole VC landscape definitely looked differently. He said maybe 10 VCs were around in Berlin around that. And what I like about this interview is that now that he's wearing his investor kapan, he definitely has a broad perspective of what he did and in hindsight what also could have been different. If they made different. Yeah. If they went on for a different direction. Yeah.
Anke:
Really enjoyed this as well. What are your one or two key takeaways?
Johan:
Yeah, I think a few things because it is his background. He also after that he became a growth investor also and he was a plug and play when he started his company also. So from an investment perspective he has a lot of learnings to share. What I found really compelling is this was also the deal, how the deal was structured because this was also, let's say there was a lot of shares involved. So how do you do due diligence on that end on that company and how do you structure the deal from that perspective? Also from evaluation because you swap shares to other shares. Right. That's I think really interesting especially these days also for founders to learn and also how we handle the investment sort of process of raising, sorry, selling its company because he did a reach out to investors but also he gave a lot of people access also to all the information and to his staff, et cetera. Right.
Johan:
Also in that learning he showed a different, let's say trajectory that you normally see. So I think really must listen. So let's dive in.
Anke:
Enjoy the show.
Johan:
Enjoy.
Robin Haak:
Starting a company is easy, growing a company is harder. But selling your company, that's a whole different story. In the big exit show, we lift the curtain of secrecy around selling businesses by learning from ambitious and successful founders who have been on this rollercoaster. Our hosts, venture capital investors. Johan Van Mill, the founding and manager partner of Peak and Anke Hauskes, the founding and managing partner of NP Hart, will help you on this exciting journey.
Johan:
Today we speak with Robin Haack of the company Jobspotting that he founded. Robin's Journey contains co founding Plug and Play in Germany together with Axel Springer and making at that time also the first and 26th investment after he co founded in 2014 Jobspotting, which is an AI pioneer and job mention. He successfully exited the company to Smart recruiters in 2020 where he worked for a while also as a SVP of global operations. After this he became the GP of Rivia, which invested in companies like Fontify, Air Coal, but also Algodia and many more. And after that he has a big career, as you already know. He started his own single GP fund called Robin Capital. Welcome to the show, Robin.
Robin Haak:
Thank you so much for having me. It's my pleasure to be here.
Johan:
Welcome, welcome. And let's first off this great story, let's first focus on jobspotting, the AI pioneer at that time in job matching. So Robin, how did you come up with the idea of starting jobspotting at that time?
Robin Haak:
The start?
Robin Haak:
Yeah, I have three co founders for jobspotting, three technical co founders. The three of them accumulated have been working for Google for 20 years. They were in the first hundred employees of Google in Europe, in Ireland and this is how they met. And one of them, Hassam, he's from Sweden, from Lund and he went there to technical university. But his parents are immigrants from Persia, from Iran and he moved to Ireland and then he fell in love. How often is with a German wife? With a German and moved to German to Berlin. And I think he had a often, you know, when you start a company it comes out of personal problem and you want to find the solution to your personal problem. And he was looking to apply for jobs in Berlin and all the jobs were in Germany.
Robin Haak:
So he had an idea of starting something called berlinstartupjobs.com it's very big until today I think even let me lie. But it's hundreds of thousands of visits a month. And it's a WordPress site and it grew with the market and basically people coming to Berlin. And so it became very successful, like incredibly successful. But it's a one man show where his wife would send out the invoices once a month like tens of thousands for people buying packages today, which is great. And then he thought it would be fantastic if we would make this A bigger like the whole world. But B it should be personalized like Netflix or Spotify. Personalized job search.
Robin Haak:
And for you it's not obvious, but back then that was a thing. It was actually kind of innovative because everything there was was indeed or Stepstone and the first generation was like Stepstone where you would open one tab and then the next thing what you would have indeed with so you would avoid having more tabs because it was already gathering different options. And then he said what if we put an AI layer to it and we make it personal and it becomes like Spotify Or Netflix and it would learn. And so he teamed up with his two former partners from Google. One being the technical head Manuel, and the other one, Jan being our chief data officer. So it was very technical again. And then they were like, okay, we have a problem. We need a GDM guy.
Robin Haak:
We need someone who does, you know, finance, fundraise, hr, I don't know, sales, customer success. I don't know. I like to talk. So we met over the accelerator actually, because the 50% shareholder you mentioned, Access, bring up Plug and Play, the owner of Plug and Play is Persian Saeed. And he met Hassan somewhere. And whatever reason they, they met and this is how the connection came. And then when they were a little bit further, they were asking me if I want to join as a fourth co founder, which I did. And then it took another six months before we even launched in January.
Robin Haak:
I remember this. So I was like a non technical co founder having six months of preparation what to do when I have finally something to sell.
Anke:
And this is all back in 2017.
Robin Haak:
No, that was 2013, I believe. And then as mentioned in 2014 officially it got started, I think because in 2010 I was in mergers and acquisitions. Then I think 11, no, 2.11 and then 12 13, something I did the accelerator Axis Springer, Plug and Play. And then I believe 1314 job spotting started. And basically the product itself would be personalized job search. And we were in 12 countries, four languages and we had three million users with the active and passive Seekers, I remember with a very high retention for B2C. Like we had almost above 40% active users month over month. And it was very engaging and it looked a little bit like ChatGPT today, which made it very hard to explain back then investors, because they thought just because it looked with a simple mask, it looked so simple that they thought it can't be good.
Robin Haak:
So they were like, okay, hit me very hard, tell me all the technical specs. And they were like, yeah, okay, we canonicalizing and this is how we do the, you know, the data graph. And then they were like, okay, okay, no, I don't know. But so for them it was like a magic black box. And it was hard to explain to someone why this is AI, but.
Johan:
And you joined, if I understand correctly, Robert, as a late founder.
Robin Haak:
Right.
Johan:
So not directly. The three guys already started. How do you deal in this case? Also with shares. Because as always, as we all know, we're all investors right now. Always. Or did you join at the same time?
Robin Haak:
No, no. Three months in between. They found each Other evaluating starting the company between. So it was still the real co. Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. We started. They started three months ahead on evaluating gathering one by one, Hassan had to convince Manuel had to convince Jan, then they convinced me. And then from there another six months before we even launched.
Robin Haak:
So not. Not. Yeah. And then Hassan and me in Germany, it's a thing. We were the two managing directors Gushaftuh of the Gemb half the entity.
Anke:
And the question for you as being the sales guy, the go to market guy, the one who likes to talk, as you just mentioned, how did you go about scaling internationally? Because you just mentioned 13 countries, 3 million profiles. How did you do it being in Europe, going from like one country to one country, one vertical to one vertical. Like very curious how again like 10 years ago how that played out.
Robin Haak:
Yeah, you always need somewhat to find a recipe. And in what we did was kind of complex because to some extent it's a Marketplace. You're selling B2C, you're selling affiliate, which is partnerships. And then on top of it you would sell. Once you have enough B2C users and you have enough product or like jobs to show, then you could build up. Meaning one, the first thing you need to sell is how you. How do you get the jobs on your platform? So one is you can scrape them, right? So you scrape like thousands of mini design jobs, mechanical jobs. So you go to all these niche websites and you start scraping them.
Robin Haak:
And this is kind of. You don't make money from it, but you want the inventory. So you have ten thousands of jobs from there and you made it with scrapers and so on and you build it automated and once you have this, you want to. So now you have the website and you have a product and it's working and you can showcase this. Then you go to the job boards and you say, look, we actually we can bring you traffic. And they have been already doing this for 10 years in the market. And then you come in this whole traffic affiliate partnership game where you go to Stepstone in Meets Monster, LinkedIn and many others and you made a proper affiliate deal. So they would rather give you like an API or something.
Robin Haak:
You connect it and then they ship you the jobs and you would bring them traffic and then you get paid per clicks. So then once a month you have a certain amount of clicks that you brought and you had 20 cents per click or whatever you have negotiated. And then you get money from these affiliate deals and then you need to have as much jobs as possible. The thing is that from it's all very Google SEO driven business because ultimately they are also the source of truth. Right. From a link juice perspective. Sorry, I haven't talked about these kind of things for ages because now I only do B2B stuff. But this, this is the first step and then your inventory grows and then you have millions of jobs and then when with this you can start creating data and then you need to find an angle on how to bring people there.
Robin Haak:
Because the biggest problem is you can't scale fast. Because if you want to put on certain jobs like let's say Google Ads or whatever kind of ads performance marketing you want to, you cannot compete against the stepstone or indeed because they will overpay anyway. And so you would always lose. So you need to find like an organic way on how to do this. And this you can do over journalism and block writing and content which we did on very early today. I even do this with the fund Robin Capital but we have always done this. So we had even a John two journalists writing things and then we had newsletters to nurture people and yeah it's. And then we created automated SEO landing pages which would tell you on.
Robin Haak:
On how for example Mac economic growth would work and you had statistics and pie charts on the city, the vertical, everything. It was actually very funny because at some point Ham and I were sending each other upon and pornhub links because they are the best in SEO links, you know. And we're evaluating on en slash the name, the domain.com, the you know, the country versus the language versus the domain. We had to find the perfect setup. And then from there you, you start bringing all the the people in. And once you have now the inventory and you have the people, the million then you do what indeed did after they took all the jobs from third party. You go directly to the customer. That's the third part of the beautyness.
Robin Haak:
And then you say look, whatever, get your guide or some to stay with like a Berlin example here. But you can do this in London or wherever. And you say we have this amount on these jobs. We're really good at this. We would like to bring you customers. And then they would log into. They have like automated dashboard so they can log into jobspotting and then they can pay for premium. So they would basically pay that they are UP or the UC of Visibility.
Robin Haak:
So nothing else than LinkedIn today basically. And then, then you make money on affiliate and you make money on the B2B SaaS from recurring business. And then on top of the SaaS you get another Bucket would be when they want to have something extra.
Anke:
When did you know? When you knew, like we're really onto something. Like this thing is working and I don't have to put that much effort in it anymore to get like a marginal growth.
Robin Haak:
That was never the case.
Anke:
I don't know.
Robin Haak:
No, I understand where you're coming from. It's this idea when you have this B2B SaaS company now that I often work with or I have this with smart recruiters later where you have it, it's clear now we define the ICP and we have a certain ACV we want to go after and we have like cracked this product market fit and now we're going only into hyperscale. The problem here is that you're limited on this growth because you can't get more growth over more. You cannot. This is the problem. What I mentioned earlier, you cannot spend more money on growing faster. So you have to grow organically because of the marketplace, because of this SEO game on content. So you find yourself ultimately then to name some, it's like Adzuna or in UK or in France, it's welcome to the jungle.
Robin Haak:
They became very big. They now make maybe 40, 50, 60 million in recurring or revenues. But it took them over 10 years to get to that point because they had to grow in there organically and the path with jobspotting would have been the same. We had the best product in the world. You could argue like what you see at LinkedIn is as good as what we had 10 years ago. But we didn't find a recipe to scale faster. And this was for three years ongoing. So we had a very good product, a very good team.
Robin Haak:
This thing worked. But we couldn't explain a vc. We raised precedent seat, but we couldn't raise it. We couldn't explain a VC. If I give you 20 million tomorrow, what do you do? So basically bringing the horsepower on the street, that was not possible. And that ultimately because it's called big exit here. So this is also why we went into an exit that was more like a structured. It was not a.
Robin Haak:
Not for a reason of a fire sale or an equi hire or something. But it was also not because it was going so well. It was more like we had a reasonable, growing, profitable company that at some point, three years later we figured out we can rather do this the next 15 years with the uncertain outcome or we find an opportunity. And that makes sense for everyone.
Johan:
How did you deal with that, Robin? Because you had a few investors in, right? The Horizon Venture, Axel Springer Plug and Play was the investor. Right. Accelerator where you worked with before also right. As you mentioned also probably also some angels also joined the ship. Right. Knowing you a little bit already, what was the moment, let's say the pivotal moment when you decided guys, we should, let's say not go for any funding. Because if I understand you correctly, you try to raise funding with let's say series A funds after what. What was the feedback that you got and what was, let's say that difficult moment would say.
Robin Haak:
I mean one of the feedbacks was clearly that like a class helmets from nextar. Who is he himself is old. So he has been doing this already 10 years ago for another 20 years before. So he just. He literally wrote me once even in precede I don't do classifieds, period. So it was already a vertical that was in in comparison hard. And by the way, for the first time now in 2024, I'm seeing it's kind of becoming hot because CH gives you the opportunity to create something amazing for the first time. But it has been not touched for the last 15 years.
Robin Haak:
And the only companies that I see are successful are those who took longer. And when I spoke to, I mean we had cool investors. We had like Stefan Grosselbeck, he was the global BCG Ventures CEO and a couple of these were the angels. So very professionalized. Axis Springer, Plug and Play, likewise very professionalized. And Horizon Ventures, I mean they are invested in, I don't know, Facebook, Slack, Waze. And the CTO is Gilat Novik. He later was a partner at Nexta, but he was a partner at with a $8 billion fund with the single GP LP which is Lika Ching and his wife Selena Chow would run it.
Robin Haak:
They later also invested in N26 but also very professionalized. And then they, I think they all were professional. So they saw where this is going. And when we made an exit, we had different opportunities from different players for different reasonings. And two of them were earnouts. And the third opportunity was a merge bartering of the shares. And they were all offered to that they can convert. They can rather take the price or B they can convert the shares into the new company and then they could decide what they want to do.
Robin Haak:
So this is how we solved it.
Johan:
Before we dive into let's say the real exit, let's say the step before Robin. Because you, you, you raised with these investors and then you went out to race and then they said well, we don't invest in classified. Right? That's what if I understand you Correctly what happened. And then at a certain moment you realize let's not go for the 15 years uncertain outcome, but let's take, let's say the money now. Right?
Robin Haak:
Let's.
Johan:
Let's go, go to an exit.
Robin Haak:
Can you tell me first a bit.
Johan:
And also for founders through that process when you decided to sell the company. Because that's the process, especially these days, right. Where a lot of founders are in because they don't they start the company funded, cannot raise now anymore or are not growing anymore. Right. Probably related to each other. They are now in that process. Can you help to change the faults there?
Robin Haak:
Yeah, it was similar to what I see today. The only difference is that today it takes longer or it's not as good. Maybe because it's easier to raise money. Back then you need to imagine there was no Speed Mist, even though Speed Mist was not there. It was a time where in Germany there was maybe early bird, there was Holzprink, which is now HV Capital. And that's it. I couldn't even name you more than 10 VCs that now come to my mind that were available back then. It's ridiculous.
Robin Haak:
If I look now, I have a list, I just reviewed the list because I make a knowledge base for my startups and I have 300 VCs in there who can give you seat money in comparison to like 10 back then. And so also if you alliterate on who you would like to make a series A, it goes pretty fast. And I tried everything I could to bring it to the next level. And I think also if we would have raised over time, maybe we would have find a better recipe on how to scale faster. But people were not necessarily. Yeah, they wouldn't. You know, it's a little bit fomo herd driven VC game. But I think they talked to each other, right? And then they were all deciding we, we are uncertain here and we don't want to do it.
Robin Haak:
And then we, we raised the money, but I saw we don't, we're not making the progress here. So what we did was before we even went into the exit, we had to adjust the company. Right. So instead of rather growing and hiring more, we stopped this and we rather went for a profitable business that we can sustain once. And this is to everyone listening who is a founder who wants to go into an exit process. Yes, you can make 100 million-ARR hypergrowth and then you sell. Okay, fine, that's the story. That's amazing.
Robin Haak:
Good for you. But if you're at a point where you make a couple of million ARR, which you did, and you have these revenues, then I would rather recommend you that with your 20 FTE or 40 FTE or whatever you may have, that you bring it into profitability first and then out of there you go into an exit process. Because also you will be not. I also before this I started my career with acquiring companies. I did exits from an investor perspective at Axelspringer and I have bought companies at smart recruiters later. And when as a founder you want to be in a position where you are not with the back at the wall. So the first thing I can recommend is bring the net burn as low as possible and try to create a business first, even if you're smart. And today, even if you say you 4 million AR or whatever it is, then yeah, you go with your 35 FTE and that's fine.
Robin Haak:
And then you take it from there. You will not make more growth. So exceptionally that your exit AR multiple is so much better that it's worth taking the risk. That's at least what I think.
Johan:
And how did you at that time. Oh, sorry, sorry.
Robin Haak:
Go ahead, depend.
Johan:
When did you, let's say, inform your investor about this new strategy? Right? So not to pursue. Pursue with the investor, go for profitability, as you mentioned already, right. And start a mix of process. How did you deal at that time with. With these investors? Right? Because investors want to make a return on their exit, right? That's the main goal for them to step in in average, right. 10 times the exit price should be, let's say the money that they invested. Right? That's what everybody aims for at least. How did you deal at that time also with your investors, right? To convince them to exit and probably also then at a lower price.
Robin Haak:
I at a lower price of 100x. Fairly honest. Because if you're an investor and you go into precede seed, you want to have 100x outlier. And it doesn't matter if five of the companies make 5x or 5 of them go bust, because the one that makes 100x will return everything else. But it's important to understand the dynamics because nobody expect from you to create 10x. Everybody is like, you rather bring me if I get my money back cool. If I get 5 to 10x, cool too. But you rather make 100 or you make 0.
Robin Haak:
It's something in between. So if you see this is not proceeding that much and you're a professional investor and your founders tell you we are going this path because this is what it is then I think it's fine. We have different reactions depending if it was an angel or professional. I think the professionals were very professional and they were fine. And we had one angel that was basically you should sell everything you own yourself put everything into the company and then we see some should sell Berlin startup jobs to be had. We had an offer, a very big offer for I don't know, millions for like he had this and then, and then you should invest this money into the company and that was this. But, but ultimately we were close to everyone. We were reporting on a monthly basis and on a, on a quarterly basis.
Robin Haak:
I was close with all the investors anyway and during the exit process I was with everyone who's interested on a, on a 24 hour whatever WhatsApp, you know, handling them. So I think not everyone does this, but we have always been very good on being close to the investors and reporting and see them as a value and advantage to work with and that they potentially also support you, which they did. And that's the right way.
Anke:
To the point you mentioned I think you had three parties being interested. You went with one obviously. But did the investors help you in that process? Did you go back to your former colleagues in your MA world? Did you consult a banker? How do you make sure that you explored all the options out there?
Robin Haak:
Yeah, I have also later, you know, I've been an agent for somewhat. I did pre IPO SPVs 10 million plus in America. But I also have helped companies doing exits and when the a thingies, you know, from Goldman to Armor Partners and JP Bulland. I think it makes sense when you have a very specialized vertical like you do mobility or industry manufacturing or something like this. And then you need a particular buyer somewhere in the Amazon that you have never thought of. And these guys have lists of hundreds of people who they can sell it to. And then I think an AI advisor makes a lot of sense working with the boutique or having someone, in our case it was too small and it was not specialized enough. And then I think you should rather do it yourself as the founder and the one who fundraises can also do the exit on that thing.
Robin Haak:
And what we did was. And then on your question on the others, there was the certain experience on how to do it from the other perspective as the buyer, but never as a seller. And as a seller, ideally you are in a position where someone wants to buy you, you know, so they come forward to you. If that's not the case, then it becomes strategic, meaning you have to make a list with A hundred potential buyers from merge from the partners. The strategic you work with or like private equity and whatsoever. And in our case the guys that we would do affiliate with made sense right then B, someone who really understands the technology. So maybe someone would be willing to pay 100 million for the technology. So we talk closely to LinkedIn or we talk closely to someone like Ratstand because this is rather technology game or like affiliate millions of people game and databases and we can give you all the profiles that you want to hire.
Robin Haak:
And C application tracking system, tenant acquisition suite, which is smart recruiters. This was the most beautiful because there they don't have a problem of applicants. Our biggest problem, we have the technology, we have the best product, we have the best team. We have a problem having more applicants. Everybody would pay thousands of euros. We could bring them more applicants. But ATS doesn't have the problem because they go, they sell B2B SaaS to whatever. In our case, Ikea, Bosch, Visa Square, you name it.
Robin Haak:
And all of them. They have millions of applicants. So I think until today we had a hundred million applicants and they automatically come and they create a profile and then you can nurture them with the technology and you can use the affiliate and you can do partnerships and you can. You can basically say hey, do you want to stay active with smart recruiters on top of thank you for your application to Adidas? I don't know. Would you like to create an active profile and receive more jobs? Yes, I like. So then you have 100 million people saying I would like this. And then you add job spotting technology on top of it and immediately you have like a CRM. So everything that Avature started with which is multibillion dollar company, this technology for it you basically buying into.
Robin Haak:
And it was a natural way for them too. Because to stay with this example, Avature was a CRM that became an application tracking system. And smart recruiters started as an application tracking system and added a CRM. So they all became huge. And you and like Salesforce when they grew that they would acquire. And so for us it was the, the natural progression and we create had like a good win win situation. And then I remember that with the board we had, we had to write a very actual plan on much more than only the. Of course we have the team and we have the technology.
Robin Haak:
We can build the CRM. We can. We created an AI today there is an AI called Winston. So from ChatGPT, more style LLMs, prompts and so on. But we had an AI very early that would automatically screen your CVs and so on and parsing. And then we would give you all the affiliates and all the links so you could. You have more profiles. And then we could create a marketplace on where we would recycle.
Robin Haak:
So basically programmatic advertisement that you offer your own. So we had like four different things that we built over time that are worth out of smart Recruiter's current valuation. I would say what jobspotting bring into the game is worth 2,300 million out of it.
Johan:
Okay, and how did you find at.
Robin Haak:
That time spot estimation on the technology that.
Johan:
Yeah, I get it. Hey, and how did you at that time. Because you mentioned. Right. You first of course approached, let's say affiliate partners, right. Where you worked with, which is logical, right, because you know them. But you mentioned also that you, I think approached. Did you approach 100 buyers or did you use that just as an example? And also how did you get that?
Robin Haak:
Actually I had 300 bios. So in my life I talked to 700 VC investors or like angel investors, VC investors. 700 I raised in my life as a founder, I raised in my life as a founder, 200 million. And out of these 700, 675 has invest have not invested. So I'm just every founder listening this, listening to this. I've reached out to 700 people. I actually talked to them, 25 gave me money, 600, whatever, did not. It's just important that I want to give everyone the courage to proceed who's listening to this.
Robin Haak:
So it's often a numbers game and can be the number 100. And Airbnb founder story is the same and they're all the same. You just need to be persistent. And on the exit was similar. The way I did it was kind of not so smart because I made it too much pumpkin and the exit is more sniper. So that's a good learning. So it was too much. But I did 300 potential buyers in every sense.
Robin Haak:
It's funny because years later I became an advisory board member of Stepstone, the company I mentioned earlier. This like 4000 FTE a billion dollar in revenue. They also bought like a chatbot MIA later and then now they have and then bought affiliate programmatic advertisement. In America, that makes a couple of hundred million. So the whole trend went. Sooner or later it would have been a fit, but we went another way. So I'm just saying very important. When you marry, when you found a company or when you sell something, timing is an issue always.
Johan:
So you found 2, 300 companies, right, to reach out. Did you Reach out yourself then. Can you tell me a little bit? Because it ended up with the three term sheets on the. But how was that process leading to this free term shift?
Robin Haak:
Yeah, yeah. I mean I reached out to. I reached out to Stepstone back then and then what was his name? He changed the bus. And let's not the CEO but before it was Ralph Baumann who I knew from Axis Springer. And we. We were partners, affiliate partners. And then we were also sending traffic to smart recruiters but we were also sending traffic to Greenhouse. So I called Greenhouse in New York.
Robin Haak:
I believe they don't make 200 million ARR or something like a year ago. This is a number I got from somewhere but. But they would have been a partner. So and to some was more technical. It was depending on what they wanted. But they went then a couple of them Maybe I think 6, 7 I would say went into due diligence and then we proceeded the due diligence. And this came with final meetings with more meetings with executive C level meetings. This came with VPs of different departments and directors and maybe founders that they had acquired before that want to talk to us on the post merger acquisition thingy? So you prepared this post merger on how bring value the first day and you make these management cases and business plans on how post merger you would integrate and who would go where and then who's a general manager and it's a different setup and you they want to get the most efficient thing out of it.
Robin Haak:
And then at some point they would lie down a term sheet which would be a merge or part merge or it could be earnout or there could be goals and targets you can together achieve and so on.
Anke:
When you got the, when you got the term chase, how long was that process? And also what did you keep within the founding team versus what did you share with the broader team during that time?
Robin Haak:
Yeah, I would say three months. But before it was already a hassle because for many for like a year already on like on liquidity and becoming into this profitability we had to make adjustments and we had very open and transparent conversations with the people we were working with. And we were small so I mean I think it was clear to everyone that this was a necessity. We had to make certain moves. And then when we were acquired also the acquirer didn't want to have everyone on the team. For example, I mentioned the journalists they didn't have. They wanted all technology and everything on sales and everything that's there. But the things on content that we have was not needed by the way, about years later, two years later, they wanted a content team that I built up.
Robin Haak:
But at the time being they thought it's not a good idea.
Anke:
You were very early with the vision, I guess.
Johan:
Hey, and one step back, Robyn, on the process, because you mentioned that you had different parties and also different parties in the due diligence. Did you, let's say, speak to everybody, let everybody talk to Your staff also etc. Did you select a few partners beforehand and get the terms in place also during the process? Because our roughly in process would. We see a lot with the companies, right? Often it's.
Robin Haak:
I think that's. Yeah, that's the same. That's the same like. That's the same like we see. So most of this stuff is done before the term sheet meaning that if they want to talk to customers or they want to have references from your employees or all of these things you do before, that's the same here. So most of the stuff is done before and when the term sheet actually lies down, it's more about legal and drafting and then. And a lot of things is taxation fairly honest when it comes to an exit.
Johan:
Okay, that's funny because normally you see different two approaches on that end, right? You see indeed let the term sheet beforehand on the table with all the terms and they go exclusive with one party and he or she does the party does all the, let's say talk with staff and etc. And you see let's say very open. And I think the tendency, the trend is now that it's more exclusive process right now. Right. Where indeed earlier in the market it was more an open process.
Robin Haak:
It I see also different ways. I totally agree. I. I have just seen one with a very traditional bank and then there was a term sheet and I was like deal is done. But then I realized and then I asked like four weeks later, where's the shareholder agreement? It wasn't there. And then yeah, next week they have a board meeting and I'm like, what have you been doing? The last thing, the last since the term sheet they have, they. It was still about are we doing this or not? So they were post term sheet doing the due diligence and then they would do the board meeting and then they would start drafting. So very different this can be.
Robin Haak:
But I think the more trad legacy or more traditional the player, the more it's like this, the more modern, the more Americanized the player. Most of the stuff is done pre.
Anke:
Term G and with all the knowledge that you have right now also and we'll tap into that a little bit later. Having been a gp investing in companies now with your own fund and seeing other companies going through a similar process, what would have been the advice? What you know now that you would have loved to give back to your team when you sold.
Robin Haak:
I mean I now being a gp, not at Revia or Robin Capital, I haven't or even with N26 they haven't called me this long time. We don't have not lose contact. But on the others it's too early that they would have asked me on exit process. I think the good thing is that my ambition with Robin Capital is to have the opportunity Now I'm building this pre seed seed fund and then there's another precede seed fund. But then over time I would love to bring them from here to IPO to to exit to raising Sirius bcde. The beautyness would be that they could call me anytime. But unfortunately it's too early in so I haven't had the opportunity to consult them on their exit process. What I can say is that when you work with me things are often very structured very early on.
Robin Haak:
So. And it's not, I tell them it's not because of me. I don't care for your reporting or for your product roadmap or for your weighted pipe or it's fine. But I'm telling you on sanity and hygiene and in the future it will make your life easier if things are under control. And I want you to know your cash, where it's burning, in which direction net burn and what's happening here. So I think if you work with me and you want it, I will give you all the blueprints very early on that that your company is structured in a way that you can make an exit always within three months. It doesn't matter if you're at Seat or if you're at series seat. The way I will support you is you have everything at hand.
Robin Haak:
You need that. It's in a way that someone could acquire you anytime.
Johan:
Hey Robin, one question about the final offer on the table at that time with Smart Recruiter because we dive into that. Right. Can you tell us a little bit, let's say how that deal look like and also how you handle that on your end. Right. As also representative of the board. Right.
Robin Haak:
Yeah. First of all, I mean Jerome who owns Smart Recruiters, he's a single founder. He had two companies before each 10 years smart recruiters now 13 years or something. So he has been a founder for, for almost 40 years. I think seven, ten, ten smart recruiters. Thirteen, something like this. So he's a very experienced person. And we started liking each other very much.
Robin Haak:
And we had talks and we had calls and we had due diligence. And it's about. In the end, everything in life is also about the human. Ultimately it turns down to you and another being in a room. And it's about trust and agreements that you will do that the other person is doing what they were saying they want to do. And it's funny because, like post the acquisition, we met in Krakow, where the R D is in Poland. And we like, we went into the mountains and we weren't drinking or whatsoever. And then he came, he hugged everyone.
Robin Haak:
He was like, you know what, what you see is what you get. And he was so happy that because people are selling, they are selling, you know, selling something. And then he was so happy that what he bought was really good idea and it actually worked out right. This is one because he. That was about the team, because he couldn't, he couldn't grasp team so well before. And then on me, we had so many, so many touch points. But ultimately I was so excited and it was about everything. And I flew to Par is because he's.
Robin Haak:
He's French and he lives in San Francisco, the headquarters in San Francisco. But I remember we would meet at hotel cost and I was such a scrappy founder, you know, such a scrappy. We were, we were looking after every Euro. I know, every doc said 9.99amonth. In my mind where this money is going to. I would call Amazon myself and ask for more credits on aws, whatever. And then, and then he wants to meet at hotel cost. And I'm coming in there and I'm ordering.
Robin Haak:
I have to wait. So I'm ordering. I'm paying myself the first thing for waiting. And it's like back then it was a lot. It would still be a lot. But today it's probably twice. But I ordered a beer because it was the cheapest on the menu. It was €8.
Robin Haak:
It was like, I paid the flight, I had to come here. I'm staying in Paris in the first. And now I have to pay 8 Euro for a beer. Believable. And then I had the beer and then we were sitting there and he's like, oh, yeah, you want the. So the song is very good, you know. And I'm looking 99.99. I got.
Robin Haak:
And then he was so funny and so cool and he. I remembered this. I remember this all my life. You were Talking about a safari with his brother or something that they were in in Africa and they were lying in the tent and the elephant went by and they were rubbing his ass on the tent. This massive elephant is rubbing the ass on the tent. I remember the conversation. But what I'm trying to tell you is this was the final meeting about are we doing this or are we not doing this? And this final meeting is not about more numbers because you already have. Have 200 pages of numbers of tech due diligence of everything you can imagine.
Robin Haak:
So this meeting is about are we doing this? And it drills down to being very human. And then we said we're doing this. And then I went home, everything was good. And then I had to fly to slash. So I'm going to slash and I'm walking home to my. I also will never remember this. And he calls me and he said, look, we have a problem. All the board members are in, but one board member has a problem so we need to make him another revenue stream until tomorrow.
Robin Haak:
So I went home and I was working from 3, from 11pm until the next morning to create another revenue stream that makes us another million first year post acquisition on top of what we had already modeled. Then we send it within 24 hours and then they were like okay. And then present again to the board and the board was like okay. But then this was also again, it was not about just the board member wanted to see are they hustling enough for the shit, will they work through the night or do they want it so much or do they just want to make money. It was not about another million. Whatever thing it was about, it was not also not coming from German, it was from board member being very far away. So what I'm trying here to say is so many stakeholders and you really, you really need to want this, you know.
Robin Haak:
The valuation.
Robin Haak:
Was chatgpt. Unbelievable, no? Unbelievable. No, no. Yeah. So basically at the time, now you can estimate your own. So it was a merge and we bartered almost 100% of our shares into Smart Recruiter shares. And the estimation range you were in is. Is not too far off.
Robin Haak:
And then we. And then Smart recruiters at a time had a series C, right? And then I joined and we were making maybe 4 to 5 million ar. And now you maybe have an idea series C with Inside Partners. US Valley based company has raised serious C. So that was the. We were bartering at. So our price, bartering into their price. And then I joined the company and I moved to San Francisco and we built it Together today it makes 100 million ARR is 550 people.
Robin Haak:
So we went from when I joined 4 million to 100 million ARR. We went from when I joined from 100 people to 500 FTE 2, 3, 3 years ago like series D 50 million I did while I was there full time. That was 50 million with inside partners again and then Silver Lake. I consulted Jerome while I was there and got the term sheets and this was with Shauna News. Silver Lake was 110 million and this is announced. So here we have public information on TechCrunches and article. It was 110 million on 1.5 billion valuation. And this is what the shares grew since then.
Robin Haak:
So 15, 14.3x or something in value creation since then.
Anke:
That's a nice value add that we didn't mention.
Robin Haak:
But I think also when we talk about that. Sorry because when we talk about the exit price it's like ultimately here. So I don't know because ultimately I don't know. We need to. When Smart recruiters is maybe I don't know if there's ever an exit we will see in two years from now or something, then we will need to re evaluate on what will be the exit price then and then we will know where we're ending up.
Anke:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Cool. Thanks for sharing.
Johan:
Robin, One last question on that because you mentioned, right, it was a barter. So it was a swap, your shares against their shares. How did you on your end did the DD on their end, right, because you mentioned it's a personal thing, right? So you met this guy over beer at the hotel Costest, right, With expensive beer. So you did let's say personal because it was a big personal fit. But how did you. Or did you. How did you do any DD of their company?
Robin Haak:
So it's basically to evaluate if the share price you're bartering into makes sense. Then the next question is what kind of share and which category do you get? Is it common or is it. Is it something else? Do I have a liquor on this or is it founder shares or these kind of things? Do we have a taxation issue and is this to be discounted and all of these things. So that's. And then you want to evaluate if the price is right. So I think the number one thing is you need to trust to some point the last investor three months. So Inside Partners, which is a growth investor and in the board of Smart recruiters is Jeff Lieberman, who's one of the best, top 10 best investors likely in the world. Right.
Robin Haak:
One of the managing partners of Inside Partners and Matt Ghetto, who's also a managing partner. So they're both managing partner and Inside Partners. And Jeff is really well respected. And so they. They made you have to trust them to a certain extent. I think there's one and then two. Of course during the process we talk to all the directors and VPs and you in the due diligence process. You, when you create these papers that you are working on, you outsource this to your different employees.
Robin Haak:
Meaning it's already many, many workshops where people are providing information on how to work in the future on which things. And only I remember also only, only three months later or in February, March or something, we have a conference with 1,500 people in San Francisco called Hiring Success. And there we already had visuals and the product and mock ups and everything ready. So we put it on the screen in front of a. This is what you can buy now. So the acquisition. So I'm. And that said this was only possible because these workshops were there and to your question, one is the trust of the former investor.
Robin Haak:
But two is was valuation and checking and chairs and is it worth it? And so on and bringing everyone on board. And then C3 is really these workshops doing the due diligence with all these different players. If they give you comfort or not. It's also a little bit behavior right when they. There's 10 lawyers in the room and four of them are taxationists and so on. And then how will Jerome how's the principal reacting? Are we doing this or not? Because they sent me bull terriers from Frankfurt. This was private equity. This was not a venture lawyers.
Robin Haak:
This was hardcore. Probably recommended from Inside, I don't know. But it was hardcore. I remember private equity dudes, they had three people, you know, data protection. They had three people working only on data protection. They came with 20 people in. And I remember at the notary, which took 12 hours or something in Berlin, on the 23rd of Christmas, one day before Christmas to make a change. And this took ages to print everything again.
Robin Haak:
And at the very end the lawyer came and he shaked my hand and he said Robin, I need to ask you one thing. Hassan tried to start examples. Are you. So you basically asked me are you a lawyer? And do you have a set? Like are you full in? Are you full up attorney and lawyer? I said no, no. And. But he. Because we had. We had one lawyer and one taxation person against 20 and we had to do everything ourselves.
Robin Haak:
And that guy. And I became, I became really Good at it over time because I just, it was just me working on it. So with Hessam together, so we were 4 and they were 20. And then at the end he asked me if I'm a lawyer and I.
Anke:
Said no compliments again.
Robin Haak:
Yeah, it was a good compliment but it was just very scrappy hands on work. We were tiny.
Johan:
Very cool. Hey Robin, thanks for sharing the story. Is there anything what we should have asked you what you want to share also on this, on this episode. Right. Especially on the acquisition.
Robin Haak:
What I can truly say, I mean an exit is more than everything that comes before it. There's a lot of things that come post merger acquisition and what I can truly say, I'm happy with the decision that we made. Manuel and Jan also having been at Google and having so many shirts, they are well off. Hessam with Bernie Sab well off. He also is now a founder again of climatic and raised 10 million with singular and Cherry and our front end designer Isis is now the co founder of Hesam. So they all proceeded into having very prestigious or things that went on. I think the learnings that we had, we were moving to San Francisco and we were working. I mean it's very different to work with the leadership team when there were 17 people in leadership and 50 people in the management team.
Robin Haak:
Later when we grew and you raise again series D and you have all these earnings and you go to San Francisco, there's so much knowledge that it's worth of millions on top of it. All the knowledge I have learned during, during that time, I would say there's all these podcasts, you know, until you're 30, whatever. And then from 30 to 40 you learn what you want to do and then when you're 40 then you make money until you're 55 or something like this. But if you see it from that perspective, I'm very grateful. And it and it turned out actually well because if you see many others who have Barter shares in 2021, I know a couple who have bought a shares with NASDAQ or FTSE or whatsoever or S and P and the price was very high and then the price was going down. But they have a strike price in there. So they basically have zero, right? Because they would only make money on the profits that would exceed the number where they entered the share price. And then intel or whatsoever now is going down.
Robin Haak:
So now they have zero money. So I'm actually very grateful that we came to a certain point and it was the right decision at the time plus all the learning. So I think again it's superhuman. And when you make this kind of decision, just have a look at whom you're working with and if it's the right partner for you. Which it was for me. Yeah. Yeah.
Anke:
So much for sharing the story. We always ask our guests if founders want to have to ask any follow up questions, where can they find you? And specifically for you because you decided to set up your own fund, there's like founders like I want this guy on my cap table. Can you tell us like a 2 second pitch about Robin Capital and what types of companies are you're now currently looking for?
Robin Haak:
Yeah, I mean Robin Capital is preced seed, it's B2B SaaS. It's very much the playbook later that we had with smart recruiters because this 100 million ARR is high, higher ASP average salesforce very high. And we would sell to mid market enterprise. So this is something I feel very comfortable with and this is something where we invest. But this is Robin Capital the solo GP journey I'm now on. And if founders listening in that particular space going mid market enterprise vertical agnostic in Dachen Europe, please feel free to reach out. And I think where we come from here is the founders and growth DNA. Later I had the growth fund Levaya.
Robin Haak:
So if I review a deal you will get two perspectives, you will get one perspective which is the founder. I want to support you and serve you because I want to be the person I needed most in my darkest time times at jobspotting and B when it comes to exits and board and so on and acquisitions and so on. With Revaya I very much try to visualize where a company goes with serious CD and so on. And this is how we want to bring you from here end to end to ipo. What I'm not so much doing is vc. I'm a VC investor without being a vc. There's no signaling driven. There's no we are trying to be high conviction on consensus.
Robin Haak:
I don't care who else is investing in so on.
Johan:
Where can people reach you?
Robin Haak:
Robin, sorry Robin Capital is the name of the firm because Robin liked the bird. It's this red chest bird and it's Robin Cap.com and there is an email on the website that you can use.
Johan:
Cool.
Anke:
Thank you Robin.
Johan:
Thank you.
Robin Haak:
Thank you Al.
Johan:
Thanks for joining us on the show. All the best.
Robin Haak:
Thank you so much.
Robin Haak:
Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the big exit show. We hope you enjoyed enjoyed today. If so please subscribe to our show on Spotify or your favorite podcast platform. If you have feedback or suggestions for guests that you want to see on the show, please send us a message to Podcast at Peak Capital. Thanks again for listening and hope you join us for the next episode.