The Exit Podcast

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 partnership, but they quickly turned into a potential acquirer.

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 their university fees. With such a winning model, it’s no surprise that the university they were studying at wanted to acquire the business… Listen to find out how their exit went down. 

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, a travel company valued at $5B, during a pandemic? Listen to find out.

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.

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.

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 a bidding war. Listen to find out why he believes the bidding war led to a successful exit for them. 

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 […]

This week on The Exit: Cecilia Zywicki is a seasoned EdTech entrepreneur, 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.

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 the biggest investment management companies.

This week on The Exit: 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. 

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.

This week on The Exit: Fintech guru, Daniel Bessmert, shares his experience of working in big financial institutions like Citibank, Visa, and Paypal for 10 years, to deciding to go out on his own, founding, raising ~$200K, scaling, and exiting 3 companies, one of which was Zash. Listen to find out what he’s learnt from his long career, why he always tests to verify, and how to structure deals.

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.

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.

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 endeavour. 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.