This week on The Exit: Adam sits down with us to share his journey of exiting when the offer was too good to refuse. After a varied career from volleyball coach to starting an MBA, Adam eventually ended up in Major Gifts Fundraising, where he came up with the business Gavyty, an artificial intelligence company developing productivity and data security for fundraisers. Adam quickly realized users weren’t engaging with his product as he expected, but with a small nuanced shift to focus on email us...
Mar 27, 2023•27 min
This week on The Exit: From a young age Marty Fahncke had an entrepreneurial drive, as a kid he started a bike refurbishment business. And this entrepreneurial spirit never left Marty, who now looks at businesses to acquire every day. Before he got into M&A Advisory, he was involved in a number of exits, and the knowledge he has gained from those exits is invaluable. Marty’s first exit was entirely unplanned and if he could do it again he might not have taken the first cash offer. The next b...
Mar 20, 2023•30 min
This week on The Exit: Lee Blaylock is a third generation entrepreneur: both his grandfather and father were real estate entrepreneurs, so Lee was bound to become one. He just needed to find a compelling idea at the right time. When his father sadly passed away, Lee found himself focusing on his studies, and he discovered his love for software and tech. This led him to work for Dell for a very long time, before he finally got recruited to work on his true passion — software — at Oracle. Two year...
Mar 13, 2023•27 min
This week on The Exit: Bob remembers the very first time he logged into AOL and thinking “I’ve got to be a part of this internet thing”. After Bob cut his professional teeth at Procter & Gamble, one of the world’s largest consumer goods companies, he jumped head first into the startup space. He joined a digital marketing agency and after 6 years, experienced his first exit. The agreement was a five year earn out with 10% of the purchase price up front, something he would not recommend. When ...
Mar 06, 2023•30 min
This week on The Exit: Adam started AdLibertas as a mobile advertising business, but after a few years, it was clear that scaling the business was hard, unless it pivoted. That’s when the company shifted focus from advertising to analyzing data to solve business problems for their clients. When it came to exiting the business, it was surprisingly easy to find a buyer. Branch, a Silicon Valley unicorn which is currently preparing for an IPO, had come to AdLibertas looking for a content partnershi...
Feb 27, 2023•31 min
This week on The Exit: In freshman year, Yuxin wanted to improve his grades with new classes, but he soon realized finding the right ones through his uni’s system was a painful process. That’s when he and a friend decided to build a better class search system. It wasn’t easy, but once they finalized the system, the website took off. After 2 years they were generating over 1M sessions annually, so they monetized the site and watched profit coming in. The site was so successful, it was covering th...
Feb 20, 2023•28 min
This week on The Exit: How do you exit a travel business during a global lockdown? When Cyrus Ghazanfar co-founded Pilota, a machine learning product to predict the risk of flight disruptions, he never imagined that every flight in the world would be grounded in just a few months. The travel market completely disappeared as flights were halted, and while the business could sustain themselves for a few months, it turned out COVID would last much longer. So how did they negotiate an Exit to Hopper...
Feb 13, 2023•23 min
This week on The Exit: Jon Nordmark was working at Samsonite in the 90s, for eight years Jon learnt about the bag business from the ground up and managed 21 different marketing and distribution channels. When the internet popped up, he was excited to talk to the CEO about this new distribution channel. But the CEO didn’t see the potential of selling bags online, so Jon quit to start eBags. Early on, eBags were focused on conversion, going from $13 to acquire $1 in revenue, to a low of 12c to acq...
Feb 06, 2023•27 min
This week on The Exit: Sara didn’t know that answering an ad on Craigslist for a cannabis agency would result in her buying, building and eventually selling that same company. The business grew to become one of the first cannabis consulting businesses in the USA, working to get licensing across the country. When Illinois legalized cannabis, the industry boomed and Sara found herself with a very valuable asset. Everyone wanted in, and Sara’s company was in hot demand. So how did an exit happen wh...
Jan 30, 2023•28 min
This week on The Exit: Zeynep Ilgaz migrated from Turkey 25 years ago with two suitcases and $5K to her name and made the American dream a reality. Not coming from a biotech background, Zeynep never thought she would start a medical device company but she saw an opportunity in the home testing diagnostic market and jumped on it. Starting as an internet company from their garage, the business began to grow. They went after private equity financing and then the exit conversations started to happen...
Jan 23, 2023•26 min
This week on The Exit: When Jason co-founded gaming start-up PopCap, never in his wildest dreams did he imagine exiting to EA for $650MM. The business started out as three guys creating games to sell back to the big gaming companies, but they quickly had to rethink that business model. The collapse of web games, combined with the dawn of Ecommerce in 2000, forced PopCap into selling their games online and business boomed. After 11 years, they decided to exit and found themselves at the center of...
Jan 16, 2023•27 min
This week on The Exit: Scared by unceremoniously losing her job when the newspaper she was working at shut down, Kim vowed to start her own business so she would never need to rely on anyone else again. The result was a 16 year journey of building an Australia-wide event company. Always knowing she would exit, Kim set the business up in a way that would be attractive to any buyer. Listen for all her tips on preparing for not just a successful exit, but a smooth exit. Kim McGuinness is a business...
Jan 09, 2023•24 min
Cecilia Zywicki is a seasoned EdTech entrepreneur who is fascinated by innovation around learning. Cecilia’s first business, Ranku, was planned out on the back of a napkin over martinis in San Francisco with a friend. Ranku was a two-sided marketplace for state university systems to increase student enrollment, and after finding their niche the business started to grow. How did A round financing conversations turn into an acquisition by John Wiley & Sons? Listen to find out. Cecilia Retelle ...
Jan 02, 2023•26 min
This week on The Exit: The minute Dru left college he was on the hunt for an opportunity. His desperation took him to a dusty barn in Dallas with an old printing press and a contact written on a napkin for 49% of a business that at the time wasn’t operational. This was the beginning of Popular Ink, which grew to the number one print packaging business in the US, and was acquired by Morgan Stanley for a record multiple. Listen to learn how Dru built the business from nothing and exited to one of ...
Dec 26, 2022•32 min
Touraj wrote the book on successfully exiting a business. Quickly realizing his passion for creating products, after working at a VC firm which he describes as an on-the-job MBA, Touraj left to start his entrepreneur journey. Starting and selling multiple businesses, Touraj has experienced it all, from fire sale to successful exits, including selling Webs to Vistaprint for $117.5M. Listen to learn from Touraj’s challenges and successes. Personal &/or Company Bio: Touraj is a strategic and en...
Dec 19, 2022•23 min
This week on The Exit: Scott had the elusive unicorn exit when he sold Workfront to Adobe for $1.5 billion. From teaching seminary, his career took a dramatic turn when he fell into marketing, before teaching himself to code in the very early days of the internet. He soon found himself frustrated with the administration of marketing, so Scott created Workfront, a project management software. Listen to find out how the business grew, eventually being acquired by Adobe in a 3 week negotiation. Sco...
Dec 12, 2022•30 min
This week on The Exit: Fintech guru, Daniel Bessmert, shares his experience founding and scaling 3 companies all in the finance and payment space, and then exiting. Some successfully and some less though. Listen to find out what he’s learnt from his long career and why he always tests to verify, and how to structure deals. Daniel is the current CEO of Great Week, which is a banking, payments, and accounting platform for business owners. Their platform is thoughtfully designed with businesses in ...
Dec 05, 2022•29 min
This week on The Exit: Denise Hammel Isaacson shares what dedication and a desire for change can achieve, and how to scale intellectual property through technology. Denise built an organizational culture consulting company, scaling it to 65 countries before successfully exiting to Earnst & Young. Listen to learn how valuing and selling consulting companies is different to technology companies, and the importance of demonstrating scalability in what you’ve created. As well as being the CEO of...
Nov 28, 2022•25 min
This Week on The Exit: Farhad accidentally got into the startup ecosystem and now has 14 years of entrepreneurial experience under his belt. He co-founded his first business and built it with the small investment of $30K, ultimately growing to $6M in annual revenue. When he exited that business the founders weren’t necessarily looking to sell. But then their biggest client made them an offer that was too good to say no to. Listen to find out what Farhad did next. As the Founder and CEO of Mamaze...
Nov 21, 2022•25 min
This week on The Exit: Natalie is a serial business builder and exiter having co-founded 6 businesses. Having recently completed her latest exit, Natalie took a well earned break, which she believes is key to recharging and having the energy to take on the next entrepreneurial endeavor. Natalie shares why an exit can be an emotional rollercoaster, and how she navigated continuing growth and keeping staff engaged while going through the sale process. Listen to find out more. Hatch is an investmen...
Nov 14, 2022•27 min
This week on The Exit: In Meagan’s perspective, the future of acquisition is in communities, and this is exactly why her first business, an electronic music company was acquired. This was Meagan’s first exit, the business was a non-traditional, cash-heavy operation, nothing like what her second exit would be. Her second exit was as the COO for a corporate business in the astroid mining industry. What exactly does that mean? Listen to find out more. Meagan is one of the leading female voices in t...
Nov 07, 2022•25 min
This week on The Exit: Brett Martin is changing the world of virtual office space and events but he wasn’t always so focused on solving real problems. His first big venture involved building a proximity based social media app. The hype before launch was huge, but when users got their hands on the app they weren’t impressed. The business lost a lot of money fast, and Brett was forced into an exit. Listen to learn what he's learnt and why he jumps on trends when the opportunity comes along. Kumosp...
Oct 31, 2022•24 min
This week on The Exit: With 5 startups under his belt, Arie Trouw knows how to build a business to sell. He started developing software when he was in the third grade, so it was no surprise that he went into entrepreneurship. After exiting his company when it was making $65MM in annual revenue, Arie knows how important it is to not just find the right buyer, but to also exit at the right time. How do you know when it’s the right time to exit? Listen to find out. XYO is a technology protocol desi...
Oct 24, 2022•28 min
On The Exit this week: Sian Sutherland shares her one-of-a-kind entrepreneurial journey, from running restaurants in London to creating a pregnancy skin care brand that was acquired by a billion dollar ecommerce retailer. How did she attract this huge buyer, and why did her team leave within 3 months of the acquisition? Listen to find out. LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/sian-sutherland-33485b10/ Website - https://aplasticplanet.com/ Her Future Event - https://flippa.com/events/her-future...
Oct 17, 2022•34 min
On The Exit this week: How does a young girl who grew up in communist Bulgaria end up starting a leading food delivery business? When Ana returned to her job after maternity leave to find she'd been demoted, she had the all the motivation she needed to launch her first business. After 10 years the company was more than a business, it felt more like one of her children. So why did Ana decide to exit? Listen to find out. DGLegacy is a service which ensures that in a case of unforeseen event you, y...
Oct 10, 2022•32 min
This week on The Exit: Amy Yin has a passion for working in starts at the early stages which led to her working at Facebook, Hire.com and CoinBase. But as those businesses grew, Amy found she missed the early fast-paced environment of start-ups. So she started her own business tapping into the growing working-from-home trend. After 2 years of growth, VC funding dried up and Amy’s hunt for investors turned into a search for acquirers. Find out how she ended up selling to a competitor and why she ...
Oct 03, 2022•26 min
This week on The Exit: Growing up, Satish Bala was told he wasn’t a good student, instead of squashing his ambition, this belief pushed him towards entrepreneurship out of fear of not getting a job. Now Satish has started and exited three businesses, the first of which happened before he finished college. With every business and every exit Satish learnt something different along the way. Find out what he learnt and how a supposed terrible student became a successful entrepreneur. Schoolio is an ...
Sep 26, 2022•30 min
This week our host Steve McGarry is joined by Richard Manders, Co-Founder of Freescale Coaching. Steve and Richard start the show talking about what got Richard into business and entrepreneurship. Starting his career as an electrical engineer Richard had to give a presentation for the board of a company he worked for, and ended up being appointed the head of training for the Fortune 500 company. They talk about how you always have to be selling as an entrepreneur, and some of the metrics they we...
Sep 19, 2022•31 min
This week our host Steve McGarry is joined by Richard Patey, the Director of The Investor Community at Flippa. To start the show Steve and Richard talk about Richard’s start with a newsletter community he grew on Substack about buying websites, and how that led him down a path to eventually joining Flippa. Richard talks about a new community within Flippa called “Alts by Flippa” that he is currently building that is focused on alternative assets, and Steve manages to get out some of Richards’ th...
Sep 12, 2022•26 min
This week our host Steve McGarry is joined by Patrice Barber, Current CEO and Founder of Career CNX. To start the show Patrice talks about how at an early age she had to constantly adapt to new cultures after living in 7 countries throughout her childhood, and how that led her to being able to adapt in the world of business. As someone who has exited multiple businesses she dives into some of the details of the exits, and some of the lessons she learned throughout them. Steve asks about her feel...
Sep 06, 2022•32 min
