What It Feels Like To "Sell" Your Company
Three Things I Learned In SaaS, Sports, Tech, & Live Events
Three Things I Learned In SaaS, Sports, Tech, & Live Events
What's it like to sell your company?
We "sold" our company to a private equity firm a month ago. (I still own a lot and am staying on, but that doesn't stop people from asking.)
The most common question I get from my friends: What's it like?
It's a fair question. And something I thought about a lot over the past 17+ years.
Everyone's experience is very different. Here are the three things I learned from my experience.
Once you have a company that others want to buy, you won't want to sell it.
A common one-liner I heard for years. It's true.
There's so much pressure to sell a company. It comes from investors, friends, family, and employees. We thought about selling a lot when we started, especially in the hard early years.
That changed as we grew. I loved it more, and more importantly, I saw how we were positioned for the future.
Eventually, I reached a point where I saw so much value in it that I thought it would be crazy to sell it right now.
So why sell it?
For those not in the VC/PE game, that's a great question. Most investors have a timeline. They can hold companies for longer than that timeline, but they don’t want to for several reasons I won't get into here.
Our Series A and B investors held us for longer than intended due to the Covid live events shut down. If they got a good offer, their fund dynamics called for them to take it, even with me saying, "I think selling right now is crazy."
Crazy for me, yes. For them? No.
You won't want to sell once you get to the point where people want to buy you. That's how it works.
The process takes so long, and is so arduous, that there isn't a big celebration
When we closed our Series B in 2015, our banker (and close friend) JP told me, "These things are often anticlimactic by the time they close."
He was right.
A simple timeline:
Others are interested in your business and submit bids
You negotiate those bids
You sign a letter of intent
You spend the next 30 to 60 days in diligence, where:
Everything you've ever done is evaluated with a fine-tooth comb (as it should be)
Lawyers rack up enormous bills negotiating everything, including your future employment. Some things get tense.
You have to hit your numbers to keep the deal moving.
If you agree to what could be a great deal for everyone, then spend the next 30 to 60 days sprinting towards it while running the company as if it won't happen.
By the time it closed, I was already focused on our future plans.
It was just another day.
The unexpected joy is in the small things
I thought it would be a big and roaring celebration. It wasn't.
But there is something better I never considered.
I felt it a lot in the past month:
When my son and I drove by the old office in Woodland Hills
When Spencer and I had dinner across the street from where our first Partner Summit was in NYC
When I met our team in Bryant Park for happy hour and one of our original ten teammates joined us
When one of my first customers pinged me to say hi.
It was the same feeling each time. I didn’t see it coming, and I still don’t when it does. And it's so much better than I imagined. Sometimes I'll even say it out loud:
"It worked. I can't believe it worked."
That's what it feels like. At least for me so far.