I’ve always believed you build a business to sell — but it took 12 years to grow and sell my first business and just 14 months for the second.
A quick explainer of my journey so far…
At just 21 years of age on April 6th 2007, I founded DataKom — a cloud focused & innovative telecom company that focused on providing brilliant support to companies across the UK.
Fast forward 12 years to 2019 and we’d won lots of awards and was achieving £1.5m a year profits with 25% revenue growth year on year — but it was time to sell.. and so we were acquired in March 2019 by a private equity owned & well established telecom company by the name of SCL.
(one day I should get around to writing about why I sold and my experience..)
After staying on for 12 months to deliver my ‘earn out’ for the new owners — I was ready to get a taste of a different industry and so — Springo was created on April 6th 2020 (13 years on exactly!).
I’d always loved the idea of creating something that could be developed from the ground up that people use every day — so my mission was to find a real business problem that needed fixing, a market that could be disrupted — along with something that could be scaled quickly through a team of sales people or resellers.
Springo — a hospitality sector focused guest WiFi marketing platform
I spotted a gap and found the mission — but my plan was to turn this from a start-up to exit (sale) within 5 years by creating our very own code and software that would scale quickly as a zero touch product.
Zero touch — meaning a customer or reseller could sign up without any interaction from anyone at Springo.
1st July 2021 (14 months on..)
We announced a sale to Stampede AI Limited.
Wow, what a change of plan! — in just 6 weeks we had gone from a discussion to a sale completion and I’d sold Springo to our friends at Stampede, the UK market leader in Guest WiFi Marketing with an identical customer mission.
We had built beautiful software, disrupted a market, adding over £1000 new MRR each month to our base & created a fantastic loyal reseller network — so why sell when it’s all going so well?
We had a fantastic offer on the table from the team at Stampede and I felt we needed the financial muscle they could bring, expertise they’d learnt from the last six years & it accelerated our roadmap rapidly for our customers & resellers which meant our Springo team would continue the mission we set out to achieve but allow me to step back and provide more strategy rather than day-to-day.
I’ve never been afraid to change direction or my plans — if it meant we get there quicker. So after just 14 months my second business sale was sold & completed — I’d seen a brilliant return on my investment and and an excellent home for my customers.
The best bit? — I’ve been appointed as a non exec on the Stampede board to guide the brilliant founder and CEO, Patrick to the next part of his journey — I also hold personal shares which will see huge returns in the next few years.
The lessons I’ve learnt..
- Too many people start a business with no end goal in mind.
For anyone who has or had their own business, we all know its tough emotionally and physically from the stress to the strain it puts on your family — so why do it all if you don’t have an exit plan?
Don’t be afraid to look at other options such as joining a competitor or someone with more fire power if it means your value could be multiplied by their end value.
Sell when you’re on the up or you’ve created disruption — and always know the value you want.
2. Be prepared
I knew what would be needed second time around so I always ensured everything was ready to go pre packaged, so when the time was right I simply handed over the keys to a data room full of contracts, employee information, financial reports & more — meaning we could complete within record time and without the stress I’d experienced first time around.
3. Niche your sector
In todays market to survive & strive, you can’t be a generalist anymore.
We focused solely on small to medium hospitality venues, everyone uses guest WiFi but our key niche focus was hospitality venues with 1–5 medium sized sites — we wanted to be the ‘go-to-experts’ for the sector and really drill down into a speciality by getting to know our customer profile.
I spent huge amounts of research time before launch meeting owners, understanding what they thought of the idea, how they felt, looked like & most importantly the pains they experienced from WiFi & marketing, after all — if you don’t know your ideal customer how can you appeal to them?
From my research the higher multiples and values were driven by this, just look at Gym Shark as one of many examples in understanding your customer.
So what’s next?
That’s a great question — obviously I need to wait for April 6th 2022 to continue a theme surely?
I’m excited to be part of the board at Stampede, working closely with Patrick & team — along with looking forward to delivering our shared mission of helping the hospitality sector bounce back and become even stronger through digital marketing tools.
Business number three — awaits… but what I’ve learnt from software, inbound sales & niche sectoring will be some super valuable lessons that I believe will add so much value to the next goal.
