Built to Sell Radio

Data analytics provider Zodiac was preparing to raise an A investment round for its customer lifetime value software when NIKE decided they wanted to buy the company.

From a service no one wanted anymore to a growing business and a strategic buyer, find out how AMI was rebuilt to sell.

Angela Mader started selling her fitbook through retail giants like CVS, Target and Walgreens. Little did she know, Mader was also attracting the attention of one of the world largest acquirers.

When a health scare sent Jim Remsik looking for a buyer for his company, he had to decide whether to sacrifice a high-multiple exit for his personal priorities.

Mergers can be painful. But when Mitchell Feldman was approached by Microsoft about merging with another company, the result was a match not even HP could resist.

David Hauser's Grasshopper is a masterclass in building a business to sell. With no venture funding and fewer than 40 staff, Grasshopper was acquired 12 years after its founding for $165 million in cash and $8.6 in Citrix stock.

A service-based company can be a tough sell, so Eric Enge found a buyer while his best asset was still on the table: himself.

Sophie Howard built and sold a 7 figure Amazon e-Commerce business in less than two years. Here's how she did it.

Stephen Heese buys fallen iconic brands and brings them back to life. Find out how he turns big personal risk into great rewards.

Nathaniel Broughton grew Spread Effect to a $4 million company in only four years -- so why would he sell for a rock bottom multiple?

Ross Hoek built Impres Engineering into a $2.5 million company and got a fair acquisition offer. Little did he know, it was too good to be true.

It can be tempting to expand your niche to grow your business, but the broader the market you serve, the less valuable you may be to an acquirer.

Despite having distribution at Whole Foods, Kroger, and Safeway, salsa-maker Julie Nirvelli found herself on the brink of bankruptcy. She sent a last-ditch email to four potential acquirers – and you won't believe what happened next.

With celebrity endorsements like Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon, Viviscal hit €50 million in revenue…so, why would the CEO want to sell it?

Chemco Industries' customers included Walmart, eBay, and Amazon, which is one reason they were so irresistible to an acquirer.

Ross Organic was a family business so when Stephanie Leshney took over from her father, she knew she had to make some changes if it was going to grow into a more valuable company.

Tom Hannon's publishing company grew rapidly, and he received 4 offers. So why does he wish he handled his exit differently?

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.

Etienne Borgeat co-founded PCO innovation, an IT consulting firm, in 2000. By 2016, the firm had 600 full-time employees and offices around the world, which is when Accenture knocked on their door.

Tom Franceski and his two partners built DocStar up to 45 employees when they decided to shop the business to some private equity (PE) investors. The PE guys offered four to six times Earnings Before Interest Taxes Depreciation and Amortization (EBITDA), which Franceski deemed low for a fast-growing software company.

Susan Hrib started an oil and gas industry consulting firm called Signum back in 1994. Recently Hrib received a call from an industry contact who said they would be interested in buying Signum. After more than 20 years in the same company, Hrib decided she was ready to move on.

In 2014, Hank Goddard got an offer of one times revenue to buy his software company, Mainspring Healthcare Solutions. Goddard said, "No, thank you". A year later, the acquirer came back and doubled their offer to two times revenue. Again, Goddard declined.

Sohail Khan built J.V. Global Consulting into a $3 million consulting business, offering training boot camps and consulting on how to set up joint venture partnerships. Khan was approached by one of his clients wanting to buy his business. Khan rejected their initial offer, but when they came back with a deal worth in excess of eight figures, Khan couldn't refuse.

Jay Steinfeld started selling blinds online in 1993. The e-commerce pioneer went on to build Blinds.com into a $100 million category killer before Home Depot decided enough was enough and made Steinfeld an offer he couldn't refuse.

Dan Martell started Spheric Technologies to help Fortune 500 companies build website portals, an emerging business back in 2004. Within four years, Martell had scaled the business to 30 employees when he received an acquisition offer that would change his life.

Terry Lammers took over the family oil wholesaling business in 1991. By 2010, Tri-County Petroleum was selling $42 million worth of gas and oil, when Lammers decided it was time to cash in.