Career Growth & Advice, Exit, Exit Strategy, Leadership, Q&AMuch better the first time than the second. The first time we sold, I had far exceeded any expectations I had as a founder. First, I barely believed I could…
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Goodness. Congratulations on the IPO! But what and how to sell is really a tough one. If you’d sold shares in almost any SaaS/Cloud IPO in the past 7 years,…
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I was just with a founder who owns 40% of his startup. He just turned down an offer for $500,000,000 to sell his startup to a public company. He is…
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Career Growth & Advice, Exit, Exit Strategy, Leadership, Q&AAt least for me, it felt great for about a day. Big bottles of champagne, recognition “we did it”, etc. IPO’ing truly is one of the most iconic Silicon Valley…
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It seems like a pretty good deal for Recruit Holdings, and market correct. If Glassdoor was at about ~$100m ARR growing 30% a year (suggested by press, but I have…
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Exit, Leadership, Q&A, Tech NewsSo far, Salesforce has a strong record with its larger acquisitions — ExactTarget and Demandware. Their record with mid-sized ones seems more mixed, but that’s what you’d expect. Mid-sized M&A…
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Career Growth & Advice, Exit, Exit Strategy, Leadership, Q&AYou’ll know. First, and more importantly, bear in mind good acquisition offers are rare. Most start-ups never get a decent one. So the idea you can wake up one day…
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No, but it is moving a bit in that direction. Google paid $380,000,000 to buy Bebop in large part just to get Diane Green to kickstart their enterprise play. She’s…
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Exit, Leadership, Q&A, Tech NewsBoth make sense, but are expensive. Google has made a huge push into more enterprise cloud under Diane Greene. Salesforce would bring it all together. Google has bought a number…
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Exit, Leadership, Q&A, Tech NewsBecause it is at a $1,500,000,000 revenue run-rate, growing quickly, and generating significant free cash flow. It is a very, very, very good business. Irrespective of who and what the…
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Career Growth & Advice, Exit, Exit Strategy, Leadership, Q&AAlways hire a banker if you can. Yes, it will seem expensive, especially on a smaller deal. And yes, they almost never will bring a great second offer in with…
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Exit, Leadership, Q&A, Tech NewsNot yet. Spotify’s direct listing took advantage of 3 factors: They did not need or want the money an IPO brings in. An IPO brings in money, often hundreds of…
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Box is an amazing company. It is at $600m-ish ARR and $800m annualized bookings, and cash-flow positive. Amazing. Truly. https://www.boxinvestorrelations… But Dropbox is >2x larger by revenue, at ~$1.3b in…
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About the strongest in the history of Forever. Between Dropbox’s huge debut, Mulesoft’s $6b+ acquisition right after its IPO, Okta’s impressive IPO, and the recent filings for Zuora, Docusign, Pluralsight,…
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Exactly what you’d expect — the round size, price, or both are cut. It is a bummer. But — it has happened to some very good companies. Like Google: An…
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