Built to Sell Radio

Pete Borum practically invented the term "influencer marketing." So how did Borum raise $15 million dollars and attract multiple acquisition offers in an industry that didn't exist before he showed up?

Digital marketing agency Blast Radius went from 10 people to more than 400 in less that 10 years, ultimately attracting the attention of WPP who acquired them in 2007. Here's how they did it. 

Gorny built his first business- and lost it. He was determined not to let that happen again.

What started as a part-time job to get through college turned into over 100 franchises.

Teetering on the brink of liquidation, a key hire at Dimple led to a dramatic turnaround that resulted in a $13.4M exit.

Embanet broke just about every rule there is for running a company and still sold for $200M.

Oribe sold in early 2018 for $441M, but in 2008 they were just a few sketches of shampoo bottles on a piece of paper. Tev Finger shares the surprising tactics they used to drive revenue.

Impact LABS had no hard assets and little intellectual property, so why would ContextLabs want to acquire them for millions?

Finding an acquirer for your business feels a lot like searching for an investor, but as Moritz Plassnig found out, there is one crucial difference.

Harpaul Sambhi's company was 8 days away from bankruptcy. So why would LinkedIn want to buy it for millions?

While Michael Pedone survived off of food stamps as a kid, he dreamed of living a lifestyle where money wasn't scarce. Fast-forward a few decades, and Pedone sold his first company for $1.2MM.

Scott Miller knew that telling his employees he wanted to sell his $3M company, Miller Restoration, could get messy. But he wasn't prepared for what actually happened. 

Back when mobile phones had green screens with black dots on them, Andy Nulman founded Airborne Mobile. In one year, the company went from $2M in revenue to $20M, driven by the explosion in the adoption of mobile devices. Leveraging his client list, Nulman sold 85% of Airborne Mobile for over $100M and retained 15% of the company—a position he would later expand in a strange twist of fate.

Richard Manders co-founded iAutomation and built it up to $12M before deciding it was time to recapitalize. Manders sold 75% of his company for almost 8 times EBITDA to a Private Equity (PE) and held 25% interest in the company after the sale.

After a motorcycle accident shattered Jon Read's collar bone into 6 pieces, he wasn't able to follow-through on his post-surgical rehabilitation appointments because of his busy travel schedule. Knowing he needed to do something to augment the home program the therapist gave him, Jon used his technical skills to hack together what would become the first prototype for Keet Health.

Four years ago Nexalogy CEO Claude Théoret was counting the employees he had to lay off. His company had burned through their $600,000 seed round of investment and he was running out of cash. An ugly split with a former co-founder had divided his team, and Théoret had to turn to his wife for a $40,000 loan.

Courtney Reum left Goldman Sachs in 2007 to start a Vodka business. He built VEEV up to more than $10 million in annual sales before he sold the company for more than seven times revenue.

The market for digital assistants is booming. Apple has Siri, Amazon has Alexa and Google has Google Assistant. Now, thanks to Charles Jolley, Facebook has Ozlo, a digital assistant designed to outsmart Siri and Alexa at their own game.

David Fairley estimates he has sold more than 20 online properties but admits it was the sale of Hammocks.com—one of his first exits—that taught him the most.

Drew Goodmanson started Monk Development as a custom website development shop and evolved it into a product enabling churches to establish an online presence. With more than 300,000 churches in the United States, Goodmanson's company took off and he grew it to more than $3 million in recurring revenue per year, leveraging the Software as a Service (SaaS) business model

Cindy Whitehead started Sprout Pharmaceuticals and created the drug ADDYI, which has become known as the "female Viagra".

Anthony Lacavera has started 12 businesses, six of which he has exited. His exits have ranged in value from the $6 million he got for one of his recent start-ups to the $1.3 billion that Wind Mobile sold for.

Back in 2013, Dave Ripley became fascinated with Bitcoin. The cryptocurrency market was gaining notoriety and Ripley and a friend decided to start Glidera, a company focused on creating tools to help developers integrate cryptocurrency.

Chris Muench started C-Labs in 2008 to go after the burgeoning opportunities presented by the Internet-of-Things (IOT). He began by writing custom software applications that allowed one machine to talk to another. In 2014, he got the industrial giant TRUMPF International (no, not Trump) to acquire 30% of C-Labs, which gave him the cash to transform his service offering into a product.

Jim McManaman started his accounting firm in a small town of 3,000, so when he decided to sell, he had to figure out how to do it without tipping off his employees. McManaman is well known in town, so he relied on secret, out-of-town meetings with buyers and Sunday sessions in his board room to keep things quiet.