Aydin Mirzaee: Selling to the Enemy - The Exit Podcast

I was so intertwined with the company that the company was me. It was my identity. I didn't exist outside the company. You know, I suddenly woke up and I'm like, where's that thing that. Where's that goal that I'm chasing towards? And it just wasn't there.

This is the exit with Adrian Solomonovich, brought to you by the Exit group and Morgan Stanley.

My brother and I, probably when we were, I don't know, when I was like, 13 and he was 9, started building, you know, like these. These small ventures or these small sorts of companies, started building websites for people, that kind of thing. And so, yeah, I've been doing this for a long time. I grew up in New York City and I moved to Canada, I think, in 2002 to go to school, and then, you know, worked at Nortel for a little while, started to live here. And my first real, I would say, startup was. Was this company that ended up, you know, pivoting a few times. And it was called fluidware. We had this product called Fluid Surveys. We sold it to SurveyMonkeys. So that was my first. I would call it, like, you know, major success. And then since then, my co founders and I, we all left, and then we're doing a new startup called Fellow.

You kind of went over like, no big deal. We just built this company. Go to the exit. Because this show is about exits. And I saw you build Fluid, pivot it, figure out, get market fit, and then let's talk about how you sold Fluid to who you sold it for. And maybe if we get lucky, you'll tell us a little bit about how much you sold it for or whatever you can hint to us for. Because we want to learn about the exit. Let's talk about Fluid.

How did that happen?

How did the exit happen?

Yeah, so we had this product called Fluid Surveys, and it was. This was actually a really big learning for me. I think one of my biggest learnings was that when we were building Fluid Surveys, it was an online survey product. And the survey market is so crowded. I mean, it's crazy, crazy crowded today. It was crazy, crazy crowded before, too. When we started the company, I mean, we were naive entrepreneurs. So we didn't so much as search online for online survey software. Because if I had done that Google Search before we decided to start that company, we wouldn't have started, right? I would have said, holy moly. There's like 25 pages of results, and there's no differentiation between any of these products. So anyway, we didn't do that we just, we just kind of started this company and the, the thing that happened was at some point in time we, we learned that in order for us to, for us to win in this space, we can't out survey monkey. SurveyMonkey. This was, this was a. We kind of realized. It was that every time that we would meet with someone and told them what we did, they would say, oh, you mean like Survey Monkey. How are you guys different? So, so we heard that a lot. And the moment where we, we realized and you know, maybe it's a, it's a longer story and could be interesting to hear, but basically we had, I would say, three stages in the company's history. So the first stage was we realized that, you know, through some random chance and some very helpful people in Ottawa, we, we got introduced to some folks at the federal government Canada and they had this requirement that, that pages on federal government websites had to be. Had to be accessible, had to have accessibility requirements and had to be accessible. And there was no survey software at the time that produced accessible surveys. So, so that was our first big thing. So we built software that produced surveys that were accessible. And so we start, you know, the company started to work because we were selling survey software to the federal government. Doesn't sound super exciting, but, you know, that's where we started.

But you found a problem and a solution for a very specific niche, right? You kind of went right to the paint.

And you would have never invested in this because, you know, you would ask me, what is the total market? And I would said, I don't know, maybe like a quarter million bucks, maybe half a million at best.

Cause you started a small 10 super.

Small, you know, survey software for the federal government of Canada. And that was it. And then this other thing happened where at the, in the US at the time there was this Patriot act. And so there was this fear that the, you know, the U.S. government could in theory view Canadian citizen data on U.S. servers. And so data sovereignty became an issue. And so what we did was we happened to have our servers in Canada. And, and so the next thing we did is let's go to every publicly funded institution, colleges, universities, provincial governments, anybody that had any sort of public data or, you know, publicly funded in any way. And we just went and said, hey, you know that you're using these other products and they host their data in the US you need to host them in Canada. And so we went on and that was our second phase. So we, we started to grow and we became, we went from like a Federal government survey tool to a all Canada survey.

So when you reached out to the. I have to find this out. When you were emailing them, were you almost warning them like you could be.

Yeah, we were on a campaign, so.

It looked like they were. That's a great hack.

But I mean, you know, it worked. Like we would email people and we'd say, did you know that you are violating, you know, these set of rules? And we're doing a, you know, we're doing a webinar where we're teaching people how to conduct research online and we're going to run this. And it worked. And people would attend because there's this kind of like fear and there's no better business than you have to do something.

Yes.

And you have to have a solution.

Agree. We call those aspirin businesses. Right. You've had a headache. Here's the aspirin. I always talk about that.

But again like, it's not like when, when we started this company, we knew any of these things. The federal government thing was a. We figured it out. Then the Canadian, you know, angle was we figured it out and we were bootstrapped. So we were, we were not necessarily winning software contracts at that time because we had the best software ever. We were just, you know, there was these technicalities we figured out and we kept growing it. But as we got more revenue then what happened is that we started, you know, using that revenue to keep building better software. We had a great team, great engineers, great product builders. And so eventually the product was just really, really good. And so we would start winning against other players and people were starting to use our product. But we never thought that the survey market was that big. We were naive and we were like, we're just gonna do this survey thing just long enough so we can make enough money to like build another product that'll actually make all the real money. And one day what I, what we realized is that, wow, survey. I think there was like a TechCrunch article and it was something crazy. And I don't remember the exact numbers, but SurveyMonkey makes like 40 million in revenue and they're like 15 people or something crazy like this. And you know, I remember looking to my co founders and saying, holy shit, I think there's a lot of money in this business. And so we, we decided to change things up and you know, say, hey, the surveys, like this could be a real thing, there could be a real business here. And then that's where we share. We built like a self serve offering where People could sign up to. And. But the problem is we ran into this issue of, again, every time we'd want to sell to someone, they'd say, well, what about survey My? How are you different from this one or that one? And it was just so crowded. And. But, but the thing that Happened was the 800 number of the company was. And back then you would put your phone number on, you know, your homepage, Grasshopper, or whatever else. And so, yeah, that was my. My cell phone number. So someone called me and said, like, hey, we want to use your software, but we want it to be white labeled. So we want it to say, like, mydomain.com survey and we don't want it to say fluid surveys. Can you guys do that? And I said, well, like, no, but for $2,000 we could do it. And again, that was a lot of money at that time. And we were selling the software for like $19 a month, so it would have been a big deal. So we said yes. And then the second thing we did was I put up a webpage that said white label surveys, and nobody else was ranking for that term. And so we started to get a lot of people that were searching for that. And when I talked to those people, I learned about something that I never knew about, which was they were asking me about all these questions like, do you support this advanced branching? Do you do piping? Do you do looping? I'm like, I don't even know what these words are. What? Like, where are you even coming up with this stuff? And they're like, oh, well, of course, you know, before the web and before all this stuff, we used to run our surveys, but we use enterprise survey software and, and we install it on our servers. And I was like, wow, what does that cost? And I don't know, $150,000. It depends how many licenses you want. And I was like, wow, people paid that much money for surveys? This is crazy. And so we kind of clued in that maybe there's a world where we build all this advanced features and we put it on the web because nobody else is doing it. And at first, this was really, really hard. And the reason was that, you know, we were kind of making this decision that maybe we should become rather than an everybody tool that everybody could use, maybe we build the advanced functionality that only some people will use, but the people that will use it could potentially pay us more. And it was crazy. So we, you know, we went from $19 a month to be coming, $2,000 per. Per seat, per Year. And the people who would buy that kind of Software wouldn't buy one license, it'd buy like 10. And they would pay us all the money on day, day one, which was insane. Like, imagine getting $10,000 on day one for a bootstrap startup that was selling at $19 a month. This is like the most game changing thing ever. So we kind of went in these three phases, right? Like there was phase one, federal government, then Canada and then we figured out enterprise. And, and when we got to enterprise, that was when the company really started to take off.

So for other startup founders, before we get into the exit part, do you think focusing on Canada was because it's a small market? Right. All California is pretty much all there is. Canada. Right. Was that an advantage at that point or do you think it hindered your growth? And looking back, if you were to look back, do you.

I don't know that we would have succeeded otherwise. Right. Because we were bootstrapped. We didn't have the resources to build, you know, something more powerful than the hundreds, if not thousands of other solutions that there were out there. And we were just trying to survive. Like I don't think there was this grand strategy at the time. It was like we were just following the cookie crumbs and you know, oh, this will allow us to survive for a little bit longer so that we could then figure out what to do next. And it was just like a survival thing. But the reality is that, you know, unknowingly we were just doing this, you know, this niche strategy. We started here and then we found the next one which was a little bit bigger and then the next one which was a little bit bigger. I think I, I've drawn, drawn a lot of lessons from that in general that you know, I apply to, you know, fellow today. But yeah, it, it sounds smarter in, in hindsight, but we were just trying to do the next logical thing at the time. And for the first time ever, we, you know, learned again, like at some point the reason why this was a hard decision was that I knew that if we went and became this boring enterprise y version of the software, I don't know, there was a part of me that thought a little bit of the sexiness wears off. Right? You're not the, you're never going to become like the brand that SurveyMonkey is that everybody knows that everybody uses, but you're going to say, oh no, I'm going to take this other approach. And that was really hard to make that decision. And I think ultimately what it Was is, you know, Ellie, who's one of my co founders. And I was like, but it's less sexy, you know, to do this other thing. And he said, you know what's sexy? Making a lot of money is sexy. So we should do the enterprise approach.

And it was nice to have some gray hair at the time in the business. Right? You guys were all super young and sometimes so did you. Let's talk about that. Was it an advantage to have not an advisor, but an actual co founder? It's like 20 years past older than you, so way more than 20.

Probably 30. Yeah, let's tell the story. So, so basically, so Elifati, who's my co founder at FoodW, he was like, he's basically my dad's age, 33 years older than I am. And I met him at a University of Ottawa graduation breakfast. It was like one of those, you know, graduation breakfasts. You go out and network with the alumni. I happened to meet Ellie. He gave me a business card and you know, years later, when, when I was starting my first company, which we didn't talk about here, but it that ended up failing, I reached out to Ellie, he became an advisor. We worked really well together. And then I asked him, hey, do you want to be a co founder this next company? And it was great. I mean, I think that is the biggest hack in the world and it's crazy how powerful it is. Like again, imagine you get to work with somebody who has a ton of experience as a co founder. I mean, the amount of stuff that you, you can learn, I think it's the, the biggest life hack ever. Everybody should do that if, if they have the opportunity.

I love that it's a secret weapon in your back pocket that helps accelerate your company. You guys brought the, the youth, the energy and the night. You were naive and that naive. This is what allowed the company to innovate so quickly and listen to their customers. But they had the gray hair to kind of guide you in the right direction, which was a super combination, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was huge. So I would, yeah, definitely recommend, like, if we're looking for hacks and tricks. Yes, we are. You know, if there's an opportunity, you know, you're a younger founder and you see someone in the community who's been there, done that, and is looking for their next thing. I think it's such a perfect combo. Get the, you know, the experience and then obviously, you know, you bring something to the table as well. Right. Like, you know, you're going to grind pretty hard. You're going to, you know, be more in the know of, like, what, what. What's going on in the market and, you know, what technology stack there is and you know how to put it all together. But it's a perfect combo, you know, to. To go to the. How did the exit happen? Yeah. So we. So now we're this enterprise survey company, and, you know, things are really growing. Like, we triple, we double, and we're continuously doubling and we're bootstrapped. Like, life is great. It was really, really hard in the beginning if you always warned me not to go tell too many of the stories.

Yeah, because you'll scare off founders. Talk about sleeping on dirty mattresses. And we won't get into it because we don't want to scare founders.

You don't want us here. Founders. Yeah. Being an entrepreneur is great, and it's only glamorous. It's easy. Only easy. So. But yeah, so we're at this enterprise survey company, and again, this is like 2013, 2014. So we are everything. We're all in on this company. Right? Like, none of us make much money. It took me, I think, for two years or three years, like two years. I didn't make any salary. I think in year three, I made like $24,000 a year. And, like, it's hard, right? And so I think it took me five or six years to. To get back to whatever I was making at Nortel. Right. So it's not like we're. We're getting rich off of this. But, you know, we have. We're getting close to a hundred people in staff, and at some point we're like, what if this thing fails? Like, we've all been working so hard. It's not like we're paying ourselves anything meaningful. And if this all goes to zero, we're going to be screwed. And that would really be really suck. And this is something we're thinking about. And at the same time, we learn about this concept, which was, again, novel to us at the time, when we heard there's this thing called a secondary. And sometimes investors invest and they don't. You don't even need to put the money in the business, but they'll buy a piece of your business and you can have a partial exit so that then you can keep building and, you know, and not be worried anymore. Right. So that, like, if this all goes to zero, you don't have anything left to your name. And so this is what we were thinking about, and we said, okay, well, let's go out and try and raise money. So we were bootstrapped up until that point. So we go to the Bay Area, we start to meet with investors. We're like, yeah, we're this company. This is what we're trying to do. We're the more enterprise y solution. And, you know, we're approaching 10 million in ARR. And, you know, probably no VCs ever talk to others, but maybe we met the one VC that did talk. Who knows? And somehow SurveyMonkey found out about us, and they heard that, hey, there's this company, it's Canadian. They're bootstrapped, they're rummaging in your territory, and they are talking about raising money. And this enterprise thing. This seems pretty cool. Are you guys doing this? And so I think that's how they found out about us. And then they reached out initially, just wanting to chat, just to say, like, hey, you know, should we meet? And. And so on and so forth, and. And we started the discussion there. At first, like, we're kind of scared, right? Because in the. I mean, they are the enemy.

Yeah. You're just thinking about them the whole time and being compared to them and the enemy.

Like, we would rally the troops against them. We're like, we're gonna kill Survey Mongee. Right? Like that. That was our rallying cry. Like, we would make fun of the name. We're like, do you really want to trust or Empty Code Survey Monkey? Or do you want to. Like, are you serious about running market research? Or is this. And, you know, we had a bunch of. Again, going back to the enterprise thing. Like, we went. Enterprise strategy was working so well. We went from, like, barely, you know, convincing people to. We, like. We got Procter and Gamble as a customer, you know, 5,000 seats, right? From Gillette to CoverGirl. All of their brands were running on fluid surveys. Like, we were, like, it was really working. And, you know, everything was going well. We meet SurveyMonkey, and we don't know what to think. So they invite us to come to their office. And I remember it was the first time that I went to Silicon Valley. I'd never been, right? So we go there, and it's so cool. As someone who's just, like, you know, read about Silicon Valley, but never actually been there. You go and you see all the famous, like, Facebook and the Salesforce and, like, all these companies, and we get to the SurveyMonkey office and, like, we don't know what to think. Like, what do they want to talk about?

Is it a trap?

Yeah. Are they going to, like, Kill us, you know, as anything is possible. So it was really, like, it was really interesting because we didn't know what, why we were talking and so on and so forth. At first I just wanted to learn more information and. And it was a little bit. Yeah, it was a little bit. We were. We just weren't sure what their intentions were.

And who were the titles of the people? Were these business development people, partnership people, VPs. Like who.

Yeah.

Level this when you first came in.

Yeah, I think I forget what his title was, but he was the head of corporate development or business development or he had a title like this. But when we went to meet them, and this might have, like, all of this might have played out over, over a few, few months, but basically when we went to meet with them, we did meet with the, with the CEO, the, the late Dave Goldberg, who was married to Sheryl Sandberg of Facebook fame. And so, yeah, we went in and it was just like a very friendly thing. We were basically talking about, this is our strategy. We're going to do this enterprise thing. It's working really well. And we told them, listen, we don't really compete with you guys. You guys do this, we do that. And then they kind of told us, well, actually, we're going to build. We're building our own enterprise solution. And like, you know, in my head, I'm like, oh, my God, they're building their own enterprise solution. That. That sucks. Like, I thought we had a thing. It's finally working. Did you really have to go and build your own? So anyway, so we walk out and, like, didn't think very much of it, to be honest. And I think, you know, some time passes and they launch their enterprise solution. And we're like, we're looking at this and we're like, what's enterprise about this? You have user management. That's not enterprise. Like, none of our customers would ever use this. Um, and I, I think the other thing that was happening at the same time was there's this company called Qualtrics, and Qualtrics was just, you know, killing it. Like, they were just growing super fast, charging a lot more for their software. And I think SurveyMonkey kind of saw that and said, we want a piece of this action. And they launched their enterprise solution. And maybe it wasn't going that well. And they thought, okay, well, we can accelerate the whole thing if we just teamed up with the Fluid Surveys people and, you know, brought these things together. So that's what they were thinking. But that's not the game that we played like, this is the really interesting stuff. I don't think I've ever actually told this story, which is interesting. So we had two products, you know, for different podcasts. You shouldn't have ever have two products. But we did, and one of them was called Fluid Review at the time, and it was a grant management solution type thing, not related to surveys. But the fascinating thing was, like, the way that they were talking to us, like, when it became interesting, where they floated the idea of would you. You be interested in something deeper, like maybe like a partnership or who knows, maybe it could lead to an acquisition.

They use the word acquisition.

Yeah, they. They did use it, but it was kind of like, we'll see if it can get deeper and so on, so forth. And we said, oh, that's interesting. You know, why. Why would you guys be interested in that? And they said, well, you know, the truth is, like, we have our own enterprise solution. It's going super well. And. And we're not really interested in Fluid Surveys. And we're like, oh, man, fluid surveys is 80% of our business. It's like 85. Like, it's. It is the business. Yeah, we're interested in this little thing you're doing called Fluid Review. And we were like, oh, that's interesting. Why is that? And they said, well, it's very creative, what you've done with it. You've taken surveys and you've turned it into an application process. Because application process is when you, you know, for admission or for a scholarship, you fill out a form. Right, right. We kind of turned that into its own business. And they're like, we think that's super smart. And this is one use case for surveys that we're not tackling. You guys did this, and, you know, if you can do that, maybe if, you know, we. We join forces, that we can turn that into a business and we can turn another thing to a business. And it's very interesting. We were. Ellie and I did this thing. We would talk, like 10 hours. Like, we just talk so much and go through every different scenario. We're like, why would they ever say that? Why? What? And then we kind of clued in on, oh, well, of course, if they basically say the thing that makes 85% of the money that's growing like crazy, that's super cool, has all these great customers. If you're valuing that at almost nothing, but, like, the part of the business that is the smallest and the least valuable, you're like, we want that. You're basically trying to Pre negotiate so you can potentially acquire a company for, like, a lower price. Which was super clever. Yeah, I will give it to them. That was super clever way to approach it. Thankfully, we didn't fall for it, though.

I mean, at the end of the day, you had a $10 million ARR. Company that was bootstrapped, Right?

Yeah.

I mean, you were. That they. That they don't see that every day coming in. In that space. And you guys are probably so humble about it. Like, oh, yeah, we just built this thing. They were probably salivating just on. I know that SurveyMonkey's revenue is extremely high, but they saw the product, they saw the innovation. And so what happened? Well, they made an offer.

Yeah, I mean, no, they didn't make an offer. Like, they didn't make an offer. It's crazy. So there was a time where it got serious, and I think you came to my wedding. So you remember this? I remember the wedding was coming up and weddings cost a lot of money. Right. And so I'm like, well, do I want an open bar or not? I want, like. Imagine if this acquisition happened. Be open bar for the whole city. Let's go. But, you know, it was, you know, we were kind of wondering, and then they just went quiet. Like, they just didn't talk to us. And we're like, oh, okay. Well, that was fun while it lasted. So some months passed by and they, you know, they come back. I think what it was was they needed to see that their own enterprise thing would not work. And that just took a bunch of time. And so they came back and they said, hey, we're. We're really interested. And they became like, a little bit more serious. And we said, okay, well, if you're interested, just show us a. I mean, we're not selling, like, things are going great, but if you show us a number, we'll think about it. Right? That's. That's. That's kind of the. The approach. But they said, but we can't show you a number. Why not? Well, if for us to show you a number, you have to give us a lot of information. Um, okay, what kind of information do you want? Well, first of all, you have to give us access to your software. We're like, okay, that seems like, you know, because back then you could hide a bunch of your advanced features behind if you were on the highest level plan and you couldn't just access this sort of thing. Right. And so. And then, and then they said, by the way, like, we can access the software. We have mutual customers and we can just get them to show us what's inside your tool. But we're paying you the courtesy of letting you show us the access. I'm like, that's pretty aggressive. Like, that's. That's pretty aggressive. I. I'm still not convinced that you guys are trying to screw us or what. What's happening? And then we were like, what else do you want to know? And then I said, well, you know, we want to know all the employees that work at your company. Like, give us the name, tell us who they are, what they do.

And this is. This is like, just in the courting stage.

Yeah. Like, there's no. There's no. Like, we don't even. There's no L. A. There's nothing. There's no number. Like. Like, what. What are you guys doing? They're.

Just.

Give us this information so we can decide if there's anything that we want to do and to figure out if, like, it's a business development relationship or whatever else. And. Okay, we said, fine, we'll give you our employee list, but you have to agree not to poach them. Right? It makes sense. Okay. We built this enterprise product. Like, what if they come in and steal all of our best employees, double their salaries, and everything's, you know, over? And they say, oh, we can't do that. We can't agree not to poach them. Why? Well, because, you know, if we did that, we would have to tell more people, like our recruiting team and our HR team, and we'd make it this big thing. And it's not this big thing. So you just have to trust. Trust us. Right? So this is how this conversation is going. And as you can imagine, this is taking a bunch of time, right? We go to our lawyers, they send us a document. We're like, okay. And back and forth, and it's just really taxing because we're, you know, on the one hand, we're like this bigger company that is our enemy is trying to come in and get all this information. We don't know what they're doing. And it's just like this. This crazy thing, which just takes an immense amount of time. Eventually, we convinced them that if you want to do this, you have to give us some sort of a range of, like, what you would buy the company for. And if you give us that, then we'll. We'll decide whether or not we're going to give you this information high.

You want to use the loyal.

Just give us a range. So they come back with this massive Range, like, the range was in, like, tens of millions of dollars of difference. Just at the range, I can't say, but, like, just the bottom and the top were, like, tens of millions of dollars different.

And I go, I can imagine. So they just went wide. They shotgun Jews.

Yeah.

It could be a million. It could be under whatever it was.

Yeah, exactly.

It was like.

It was a big range. We're like, this is ridiculous, guys. Like, are we doing this or are you wasting our time? What's happening? And so, you know, at some point, this is something smart that we did, which is we realized that this process is starting to become, like, potentially aggressive. And then, you know, Ali had this idea which, you know, again, foresight, a lot of wisdom. He's like, aiden, if we negotiate like this with these guys, we're gonna hate each other. And, like, if it ever happens, like, the other side of it is gonna look really bad. We need to hire, you know, somebody else to do this negotiation so we can do the good cop, bad cop thing. Have an intermediary. Best advice, best advice. So we. We started working with Deloitte. You know, shout out to them for. For helping with this. And so we. We had a middle person who did a lot of the. The negotiation.

Now, this wasn't, to be clear, they didn't bring in Deloitte, obviously, as an investment banker, more as a man in the middle.

Advisor in the middle. Yeah. So we did not. So there was no. I mean, this. This worked out well. There was no commission paid as a percentage of anything.

Got it. Interesting. Because you brought in as a consultant.

As a consultant, yeah. So. So, yeah, I mean, that's what happened. And this was a. So at some point, they narrow the range and we get closer, and we're like, okay, this is a thing that we can do. And then we start the diligence process, but everything is taking so long because they're competitive to us. So I remember when negotiating the documents, one of the things that we argued a lot about was what the word knowledge meant. And the reason is they wanted to say that you have no knowledge of anything that, for example, violates ip. Right? And the reason we argued was because they wanted a definition which was like, if you talk to every single employee at the company and they did super big due diligence that they would guarantee that there's no knowledge. And we wanted it to say, no, if the executives don't know about it, we have no knowledge. And we just argued about everything. Everything. And so that. That was interesting. And I will tell one More story, which is just a fun one. We had our lawyers From Shane from LaBarge, Weinstein who represented us. And one of the things that happened was we were this enterprise bootstrap company. And so a lot of our customers would, you know, we'd have to sign custom contracts with them. Okay. And we did. We didn't know any better. So basically every time, you know, someone wanted to buy our software, they would send us their paper and we would basically just sign it without really the.

Client sending you, like, can you just send us a contract? So. Oh, wow. So you must have had a lot of different paperwork.

Oh, everyone was different. We had like hundreds of enterprise customers. Each one had different. And so at some point they had to diligence all of these contracts. And so the lawyers had to read hundreds of content, each one different.

One was off. It could.

Oh. And it was, it was. It was worse than that. So what happened was they. We realized that in a lot of those contracts, like, we didn't pay attention to them. So we gave rights of first refusal to a whole bunch of companies. Like, I remember we had to go get permission from, I think from Procter and Gamble to say that we're allowed to, you know, sell. Sell our company because. Which. Which made no sense. But we had all of these things which kind of delayed the process a bunch more. Wow. And then as we got closer, what was the other? Create, by the way? Don't do custom contracts. I learned that process.

I'm writing that down. Do not do. Stick to like normal clean procedures because some one bad contract can stall a huge acquisition. Right?

Yeah.

So don't do custom contracts.

Don't do custom contracts. Yeah. And then as we got closer, the other tricky thing. This was so scary, by the way. Like, this obviously is very exciting and the outcome and blah, blah, blah. But it is so stressful because then we got to the point where it was getting close to the end and we're talking about closing. Like, how are we going to do this thing? And by the way, the. The process where they were doing their diligence was super fun too. Like, I remember them coming to Ottawa in the dead of winter. And we, we had dinner, I remember, at the Shore Club here in this, like, secret room. And we were just like, make sure nobody recognizes their faces. And we're doing all this like, covert stuff, which was pretty fun. But when we were going to sign the deal, there is a closing condition. So they wanted to just like a house, right? Like when you buy a house, there's closing conditions. And so one of their closing conditions was that 90% of your employees have to agree and sign new employment contracts to join the new company. And so, you know, we're super nervous. Like, we think everybody's going to sign, but nobody knows about it. And so they were saying that if 89%, for example, sign, we could walk away from the deal and that would be a disaster. Like, imagine going in front of your company telling your employees, hey, by the way, we're marrying the enemy. Right? And you'll have to sign new contracts. And you're just thinking that in the off chance that not everybody does, where you don't hit that 90% threshold, the whole thing is over.

Could have been a walk away, right?

It could have been a walk away.

So how did you bring it up? How did you, you know, it's Christmas time, you do a bunch of Christmas bonuses and position as guys with the best Christmas present ever, you're gonna be bought. Like, how did you bring it?

I mean, we did a bunch of things to sweeten the offer for people. Like, you know, we, I mean, SurveyMonkey was actually really, really good at this. And the, you know, Damon, who was the head. Head of Corp Dev at the time, uh, he had done this a bunch of times at Yahoo. So all the, all the employees did get, like, significant shares and, and the new company. And like, there was a lot of incentive also associated with it. Yeah, but it was exciting, to be honest. I mean, despite all the stressful stuff, you know, we were this bootstrap company and we admired SurveyMonkey in a lot of. And, you know, we competed with them, but it was this great brand. They had really, you know, great employees. They'd done a bunch of things. And we, you know, we always wanted to know what it would be like to team up with, you know, Silicon Valley Ace company. And I think the thing that all of us were excited about was all the stuff that we would learn. So I think there was a lot of that. But, yeah, the way that we told the story was we woke up and we emailed everybody and we said, cancel all your meetings. We have a big surprise. And nobody knew what it was. And so we took them. We had this room in the West End. We went in, we were like, there's gonna be a surprise. And like, we had a big speech about, like, all the stuff we'd accomplished. And I remember there's this line that I had which was like, you know, we all know we're the greatest survey company in the world, but there's Also, another greatest survey company in the world, and you just can't have two greatest survey companies. So we've decided that we're gonna join forces with Survey Monkeys. Everybody's like, what? And like, we. Anyway, so they were sitting in the. So imagine everybody's the front row.

Yeah.

And all the Serbia Monkey execs come into the meeting. They're sitting in the back row, and they all stand up, and everyone's like, oh, my God, I can't believe. Is this a joke? Is this serious? And so, yeah, I mean, it was a very surreal kind of moment. And what a high. Like, I mean, it was a high for everybody. On that first day, you're like, wow, this actually happened. I remember looking at our. You know, when we announced it, when you would log into the fluidsurveys website, you would see, like, fluidservice now teamed up with SurveyMonkey. And, like, I remember taking a picture of that. I'm like, I can't believe that their logo is inside of our product. Like, it was just a crazy, crazy thing.

Well, it's a lesson that we keep hearing on previous podcasts. Like, sometimes as founders, we are trained ourselves to look at our competitors as the enemy. Right. Dartboard behind the door. Like, they're the enemy. And very often they end up becoming partners or acquisition targets. I always tell founders, get to know your competitors. I mean, this is not war. It's an industry. Collaborate. Don't give away all your secrets, but get to know your. Do you agree with that? To kind of.

Oh, do you believe in that? I agree with it now. I didn't know that back then, and I think it's. Yeah, it's very smart. I mean, it happens all the time. It's very interesting. Like, even at fellow. We've had people that we've competed with and, you know, later on, you know, some of those companies maybe, you know, didn't some of our competitors maybe, like, shut down? Like, we've bought assets from competitors in the past and. And. And shared knowledge afterwards. And, yeah, it. It doesn't make sense to be. You never know, like, who's an enemy, who's a friend. I. I think it's just worthwhile to be friendly with everybody and just focus on your customer and build the best product you can for them.

That's incredible advice. That is really incredible advice. As far as the exit timeline, because a lot of you want to understand, like, from the moment that the sort of the inbound. Hey, let's talk about partnership type call maybe for the first visit that you went down to San Francisco. Can you give us an idea of the timeline? Like how many months went by?

It was like a year. It was like a year. It probably didn't even become. I mean again this, this stuff is you know, 10 years ago now. Yeah, but the, it probably like we weren't sure that like we didn't know if they were friends or foes probably for like eight and a half or ten months of it or something like. And then when we were sure and we signed an loi, you know, then it became serious and. And so when an LOI is signed, the other party just wants to get the deal done and they just want to get it done. So at that point it's just like plow ahead, do things very quickly and just, you know, bring things to completion.

And so the LOI came in about 12 month mark, or would you say came in at the eight month mark to a 12, like was a total from courting period was about a year, right?

Yeah, about a year. Maybe a little over a year.

And the LOI was it, was it sort of like a 30 day or a 60 day, 90 day? Do you remember roughly from the moment the letter of intent came, how long did you have to sort of.

To be honest, I don't, don't fully remember, but I remember renegotiating it. So it was a, you know, what they would want is infinite period of time, right?

Yeah.

Whereas like we want a shorter period because it's distracting too. Right? It's distracting. But also during that time there's obligations you have, you know, you can't talk to any other suitors. Oh, and this was the super funny part. Right. So during the, during the process we had another company also reach out to us, which would have been another acquirer who would have also been a good acquirer. I'm like, damn it, like we already signed this thing, we can't talk to you. And I was trying to not like be rude to the person. And I was like, yeah, like I do want to talk to you but you know, can't do it right now.

If you know what I mean?

You know what I mean?

And do they get it or what?

Yeah, they did get it. Just. And, and yeah, they're like, oh, you know, we're def super interested and like let's chat if we, I mean it's.

A no shop clause and non disclosure tied into it. Yeah, they do try to tie you in. And the trick is to not allow them to extend it forever because it's not fair Right.

Oh, by the way, like, just, just so you know, like this, who was.

The other acquiring company?

I mean, I can say, sure, yeah. At the time it was vision critical.

Oh, yeah.

So another cool company.

Yeah, very cool company. But SurveyMonkey ended up being a great fit, right?

Oh, amazing fit, yeah. So it was super interesting. Like when we did the deal, you know, we had the option of like, you know, it was partially cash, partially equity and SurveyMonkey, and even that part's really hard to negotiate because you have this notion of like, well, what is a private company worth? Right, right. And then, you know, they're going to tell you a number, like you're going to take it or not. You can assume what, what it's worth and you don't know that those shares are ever going to be worth anything. Right. We got lucky and Survey Monkey did go public. Yes, but there's no guarantee at the time, I think when, when they bought our company again, I, I, I forget the exact numbers, but I, it was probably maybe like 150 million in ARR. That they had at the time. I think when they, when they, you know, I mean, when they, they went public and then went private again. Yeah. And I, I would imagine they're at, you know, I don't know, more than 500 million ARR, for sure, easy. So, but yeah, at the time there was no guarantees that this would have gone, gone public.

One thing probably a lot of people that are listening is like, how did you know when you got the number, when they slipped the number over to you, the acquirer? How did you know if it was a good number? Like, how did you validate that number and know that they were, it was too high, too low. How'd you do that?

Yeah, I mean, it's a good question because you don't know. You know, it's very interesting. Like, even after you have an exit and you know, whatever you, you take away, you don't actually really. Again, if you've come from basically having nothing.

Right.

You don't even know like, practically what a number of means, you know. So, yeah, it was, it was really hard. I think we just all, Yeah, I don't, I don't know. Like, I think, I mean, the way we looked at it right now was like, if you would pay us this much, like, you know, you're kind of crazy. So we'll take.

Did you do, did you. Because I think they were saying we can't give you a number.

Right.

They're like, you got to come to us with a Number.

And you said, well, we told you so. Made sure they gave the first offer. Trip Simcha. This is a fun story. So I always wondered about this, which was, you know, I wonder how high we could have gone. Rise process, right? And so I remember, you know, the company, you know, we sold the company. And then two years later, I do my earn out, I go back and I meet Damon, who's a VC now, and I asked him, I'm like, I'm going to ask you a question. I've been wanting to ask you this question for two years. So what was the. I thought we did a pretty good job of negotiating, but how high would you guys have gone?

I don't know if I want to know the answer. So what, what are you telling me?

He says, he's like, I'll tell you the answer, but you got to tell me how low you got. And so it was, it was a super fascinating thing.

So did you guys write it down on a piece of paper and slip it over to each other at the same time or.

No, no, we didn't. But you know what the crazy thing is? Like, they would have gone up another 20%. Like. No, but that's. That's a lot, Adrian.

It is a lot. That's your jet right there, right? That's a. That's a jet.

Oh, actually I do have a crazy important piece, Piece of advice and learning that I should also share about this. But the. But, yeah, and then he asked us and we said we take 20% less too. So I think there was like a minimum number that we had which was like, if we can get this, then we. We are good. And, and the other thing we factored into it, which was like, there's a cash and equity part, right? The equity may be worth zero, right? So you also have to think about that, like, if the equity is worth zero and like, if this is, you have to have a walk away number. Because if you don't, you know, what, what happens? I mean, we didn't. It didn't happen in our process, but you know, they could do due diligence and say, well, actually, based on what we've learned, we're changing our number. So you just have to know a walk away number. I do remember doing something very silly though, which could have been silly. Like, it could have been good, it could have been bad. It turned out to be bad in this particular case. Yeah. So we sell the company and at the time, you know, we got paid in USD and I think like, the US dollar was like a dollar and like call it 8 cents Canadian. 8 or 9 cents Canadian. Yes. And so the thing that we do is we, we convert everything into Canadian dollars.

Oh boy.

And then in the subsequent weeks like the US dollar goes to like a dollar 30 and then maybe a dollar 40 and we were like, oh my God, we could have made an extra 35 had we not done that. Yeah. So you know, for, for anybody who has to think about currencies during transaction, like I would say the US dollar is king whole assets in USD 100% and spend in other currencies. But the other thing is if you are going to convert 50, 50 is the best way to go because you don't know which direction something's going to go. We want the all in strategy. There was reasons why we did it, but in hindsight it didn't turn out to be good. However, like all things, if you learn something from it, it can be huge. I mean you and I know this. Like I became so upset about that situation that then I kind of like made it a thing to become almost like a currency trader. Yeah.

Because yeah, you have forex. You become like a forex trader.

You become like a forex trader. And then. Yeah. And then as a result, let's just say I did things to make up for that fact later. But like it's, but, but I, I became obsessed about currency. Yes. And like how do currencies work? Why is one more valuable than the other? And how can you know and like, yeah, it's no longer a $4 difference. Yeah. If this to me I'm gonna make it a valuable experience. And the only way it's gonna be valuable is if I like come back and I like and get your money back. Every time I dealt with any of like my financial advisors or wherever, they're like, why are you so obsessed about this? I'm like, no, you don't understand. I have to make that event like, you know, I have to make up for it and I have to make it turn into a valuable experience. So. But yeah, it was a great fit. To be honest. Like we learn an insane amount. It was, it was probably one of the best experiences. I wouldn't trade it for anything. And you know the interesting part was I remember when we sold you and a lot of my friends were all like, okay, Aiden, so the clocks how much I know you had to have an earnout. I know it's coming. It's how many day, you know, how many years is it? What, what is your requirement and what are you starting Next. And, and to be honest, at the time I, you know, you, you like, you're doing this thing, it's super exhausting. You're, you're very focused on it. And at that time I was like, no, I actually want to be part of this company and see what we can do and what we can build and like be on the journey to IPO with them. And I was actually very excited. I think all of us were just very excited.

I was surprised, I was surprised that I thought you were going to pull the chute as asap. And you, how long did you go for it? I remember a couple years at least.

Right? Yeah. I think the. Yeah. What I would say is there is well just over two years. So two years was their earn out and then I saved for two months after that. Two years and two months and. Yeah, and we can talk about this part too. It's always very interesting. Like as you're coming close to the end of that earn out, what I would say is like, you start to think about what would I do next. Right. As a, as an option. And it's very hard to figure out what to do next. This is probably one of the things that I struggled with the most.

Yeah, let's talk about that. Because a lot of people are going to be related.

Oh, totally. This is actually one of the hardest things. So when we were starting fluid surveys. Yeah, I just told a story. We didn't even Google search to see if there were any competitors and how many there were. Like, this is how naive we were. And then, you know, now we're like more experienced. We know things, we have battle scars, We've kind of built this business. We're a little bit more knowledgeable. The problem with that is like, you know, all the reasons why you shouldn't start something which was lost. And you've met my co founder and brother Amin. He's like the world's greatest critic.

Yeah. Devil's advocate.

He finds like even more than I would like all the reasons why you shouldn't do anything or do a specific thing. And so it was really, really hard because I, you know, in my dreamland, I'm going to be a survey monkey and the magical idea is going to come to me. And then like on two years and one day I'm just going to go to the new thing. But like there was just nothing, like we couldn't come up with anything. Right. So at some point I realized that the only way that this is going to happen is I have to go full time to Figure out what the next idea is. Yeah. So it was only after that time and then I started looking at ideas. And so it's funny because you stay at home and you know my wife Amanda, and she's like, you're at home. Like you're, you're just, why don't you come? Let's go. Hey, let's go. I'm like, no, I'm working. I'm trying to find the next idea. Like, you're working. You finding the next idea is working? I don't understand. You're like full time doing this. But I would do that. I would go into the morning, you know, do my 10 hour days or whatever, just trying to find the next thing, and I would come up with an idea, show it to my co founders, and they'd be like, no, it's not a good idea for these reasons. And it was just, we felt paralyzed because it was like we can't find anything to do. And at some point I met, you know, Mike McDermott from FreshBooks. Right. So I met him at a dinner and I was just telling him about my dilemma, you know, like, I just can't find the next thing. And every time I find something, I find a reason not to do it, or I look it up and I'm like, this is a great idea. And then I find someone else is doing it. And he said, listen, your problem is you're doing too much research. You should stop researching.

You're overthinking, right?

You're overthinking.

Just get started. So what is the advice? Just get started, start solving something and then pivot as much as needed until you finish.

Yeah. Then I realized I'm like, like thinking to myself, aidan, when you started the last company, you pivoted like six times. That's true. So you like, remember the story, like federal government surveys to an enterprise survey software solution. Like, it's just. And by the way, there's three pivots before that we didn't talk about. So you can't really predict. You kind of need to get started. And once you really try to solve a problem, then you're going to figure out like what the real problem is and what the real solution is. And so now I just go into things thinking that, well, I'm going to pivot, I'm always going to pivot.

You're always going to pivot.

I mean, we talk about fellow, we're onto, you know, another pivot, you know, into the company's history now. So that, that's just like a Way of build. Building in, in my view. So, so that was the hardest thing. So the way we did it was we just said, look, we're gonna explore a bunch of ideas and we're giving ourselves six months. At the end of six months, we're gonna choose the least bad idea because it doesn't really even matter.

Bad idea.

Yeah. And we're, we're, we're gonna pivot from whatever we start. Yep. So we should just get started. And so that, that's how we thought about it.

Yeah. And I, I really like that approach. Right. One of the things that you're absolutely incredibly listening, especially to customers. Something I've always seen with you is like one of your, you have many superpowers, but your biggest superpower, just your ability to humbly observe through data, but also through conversations. I noticed that. And you're willing to pivot and adjust your product until you have that market fit. And then you're a hacker as far as using growth hacking techniques. I've watched you kind of study the best rip off and duplicate, but also innovate. This is just observations and my pattern recognition of you, which so many people listening to this podcast could learn from. And so what did you launch next? Like, you know, the idea, let's get into Fellow.

Like, I mean, you know, the other thing I would say just, you know, before we wrap up on the last company, it's the. Yeah. I mean, you can't do this stuff alone, obviously. Like, there's a lot of people that help along the way and a lot of things that, you know, I go back and I think about, you know, the person that introduced us to the federal government. Right. Algonquin College was a big part of that. They let us, you know, use their classrooms for free. And then there was Professor Martin Toller there who introduced us to, you know, the federal government. And that became a thing or the work we did with, like, Carleton University, and they gave us their. Our first contract, you know, for doing the work around our Fluid Review products. Tony Belletti there and Luke Lalonde there. Like, there's so many people that kind of helped along the way.

Yes.

I always want to give a shout out to them because a lot of this stuff just wouldn't have happened. And a lot of the early employees at fluidware as well, I want to call out Nate Beacham and Alexander Sunderland. And Alexander, for example, works at Fellow today. And that's another thing which is really cool, is that sometimes when you meet really great people, you can just keep working with them. Throughout time, we're seeing that trend too.

Where repeat founders are like, why are we messing with the formula? Why am I going to get a new team? I'm just build this again with the same team. Right. How does that change? You get the same team, and I know quite a few people, most of your team came back and built it with you again. What's that dynamic, like, the second time around?

Is it like, oh, it's actually very interesting. So you would think that it's fully the same. But one of the things which was interesting is because we were four co founders and we each knew what each one of us did. Right. Ellie knew his things, Sam knew his thing, Amin knew his thing, and we all had our areas. And then when we came into Fellow, it was a different dynamic because Ellie was doing Mindbridge, we were doing fellow, and all of a sudden we had to relearn what our roles were. Right. Like, you know, when you. When you have four legs on a stool and all of a sudden one leg is removed, you have to kind of, like, rebalance. Yes. And so that was interesting. Like, it actually took us a little while. I would say the. The first year or two, we were trying to just figure out, like, what is the dynamic? And, you know, how does this work? And one of the things, for example, was I knew that with Amin and Sam, I would always talk about product things, and with Ellie, I would talk about, like, the business things. But then when all of a sudden Ellie wasn't there, I realized that, like, I don't have, like, a partner to talk about the business things, like, who do I do that? And we're missing out on that. And I learned that. And so. And then I hired a chief of staff who's great, Dave Kramer, who's now our head of revenue. And so I kind of, you know, he became the person that I could, you know, chat with all the time, and I could just call and, you know, riff on ideas with.

Yeah.

So, yeah, you do have to relearn the dynamics when. When you slightly change the group. But, yeah, one of the biggest learnings for me is that if you find people that are great to work with, you should just work with them for as long as. As possible. I love that, like, so many companies don't work because the founders, you know, break up. And, like, this is. This is a constant thing. So VCs actually look for this. They look for repeat teams, but they also think about, how did you guys meet? Oh, you just met, like, two weeks ago, and you don't really Know how to work together. You met at some founder dating event. Yeah. So, you know, the chances of a breakup are very real in a situation like that. So, yeah, I think that's one of the great things. Working with Amin and Sam again in this company is huge.

Yeah. I mean, Fellow is an incredible success. Raised what, over $20 million. Right. From some incredible venture capitalists. You're getting incredible growth, incredible product. You're always, you're repeating the same greatness, which is repeat listening, pivoting constantly. Your company's never stopped innovating. You've learned a lot and applied it to Fellow. What lessons do you think if we're talking to some founders maybe about to exit or thinking about exiting, if we could take the time machine back a little bit. What are some of the things you wish you knew or some, I guess some value bombs that we can throw at the audience about the process of thinking of selling your business or how to be prepared to sell your business?

Yeah, I mean, this is interesting. I mean, we. I would say that, you know, value. I mean, this is very interesting. I will say that venture backed businesses are different than bootstrap ones. Right. Like bootstrap ones are. You know, you can make a lot of the decisions for yourself. You know, it's hard to say. What I will say is like the biggest learning probably for me. And I don't know that I would have changed anything about it. I actually thought about this one a lot. So when we sold the company, it was one day of euphoria. Right. It was like the most incredible feeling ever. You feel like you built this thing and you know, there's another part of you values it a lot and, and, and it's a great success. Yeah. Day two, you're like, wow, what have I done? Because again, like, I was so, and I was so, you know, intertwined with the company that the company was me. It was my identity. I didn't exist outside the company. It was like day in, day out, you know, from morning all the way, seven days a week. That's all I did or that's all I ever thought about. Everything was in service of the company. So, you know, I suddenly woke up and I'm like, where's that thing that. Where's that goal that I'm chasing towards? And it just wasn't there. And I remember I got a coach at that time and I'm like, you know, I used to wake up at, you know, super early in the morning and I was ready to go and I had a thing that I was working to. And all of a sudden I'm like, why do I need to wake up so early? Yeah, people don't wake up at 9:30 and you know that's not you. Yeah. And it's not me. And it was killing me inside. And I just didn't have that. My identity was gone. I didn't have the thing. And you know, you're not in control of the new company anymore. You're not making all the decisions. I learned a lot actually. It's just management lessons. Yeah. For the first time ever, I didn't know why everything was happening in the company. Like some decisions would get made at SurveyMonkey and people would ask me about it. I'm like, to be honest, I agree with you. I have no idea. We did that. Wow.

Big, big company problems started up here.

Oh but, but huge. I mean I, but you know what? Like I took something huge from that which was wow. It, you know, I, I took for granted that I always knew why decisions were made because you know, a lot of them were, were made by my, my exec team. And so now at Fellow, for example, I go out of my way to give people context. I give so much context. I, we have a weekly town hall. I send a weekly email every single week to the company just talking about context. Like, like here's how I'm thinking, here's why I'm thinking we made this decision. I just want you to know why we made it so that there's never a question about like context. Because once everybody knows context then they can act like you do because they have the same source of context. You know, one of the Fellow was born.

I mean in a way you took these big company problems, you're like, there's gotta be a better way. And that really was the beginning of the idea for Fellow.

Yeah.

At the time it was about one on one meetings. Right. And one on ones. And that you. We took learnings from the previous company and applied it to the new one. Right?

Yeah, yeah. I mean there's a lot of learnings that we reapplied to Fellows. So for example, one of the ones was don't build anything until people want to use it. And so I remember again in the early days all we did is we just create some screenshots and we showed it to people, we showed it to some friends at Shopify and we said, hey, if we build this thing, will you agree to at least try it? And, and then like until we got something that was compelling enough for them to say like yeah, if you build that, we'll try it. That was kind of like the moment of, okay, we may have something here. There's no guarantees, but at least we have someone who's willing to try this thing and we would show it to people. So before we built anything, we would always, always do that. Always just build screenshots and things. So that's another lesson. I love that, that, that we applied.

And going back to sort of exiting. Is there any. Like, if, if you were to exit again, would you go to an I banker first and just hire them to do the typical analyst report and run a process? Because. Sounds like with Survey Monkey, it was a. I mean, you had the last minute kind of inbound come in. But that was, that wasn't on purpose. That was almost a coincidence, right?

Yeah, it was a coincidence. We were not looking to sell you.

So I guess the first question is, do you recommend, even though you didn't do it with the last big acquisition, would you recommend running a process and talking to an I banker, or did you find this.

It's tough to say. I can't say for sure whether it's a good thing or bad. Again, it's one of those it depends situations. It's always good to have an external advisor. I think Deloitte was very helpful to us during that time. I Bankers definitely have. Have their advantages. They can shop around a deal, they can help you think through problems, and they definitely offer a bunch of value. I would say having an external advisor in general is a good idea.

Yes.

But, you know, do you have to use an I banker? Not necessarily. I've heard a lot of, like, you know, clever stories about, you know, founders who start companies and they, you know, from the moment that they started, they know who the potential acquirers could be. They make friends with them, they make sure that they're in front of them. They're like, kind of building those relationships. You know, I didn't do those sorts of things at Fluid Work, but, you know, I, I think that that's a, that's a thing that people can do. And I, I know a lot of friends that do things like that and, and think ahead. Um, so. So yeah, maybe that, that's a thing to, to think about. Uh, but yeah, I, I don't think hiring an I banker is good or bad. I think it just depends on the situation. And sometimes when your company's a lot bigger, it makes sense because it is a super distracting process. You kind of have to make the business keep working and keep growing because if it doesn't grow the way that, you know, you said it was growing. And sometimes an acquisition process, like we said, can dry up for a full year. I mean, imagine being very distracted for a full year. You know, your business could fall apart. So sometimes it does make sense to have that third party again. In this case, we did have Deloitte. They just, you know, we're in an advisory capacity, but they did do a lot of work for us and helped us.

Yep. No, it makes sense. Kind of a nice hybrid. You're not giving them a commission on the sale. It's not a performance based.

There's one thing that we did do that I think was, was really good that I would recommend. So we had, you know, we had representation in Canada and, you know, LaBarge Weinstein did a lot and, and helped us a lot. But we did also find a lawyer, you know, legal company that we work with in the US at the same time. And the reason. And we went out and we found, like, the most expensive, you know, person who'd done so many acquisitions was super tough, like, crazy hard negotiator. And, you know, when we met her, we were like, we don't want to be on the opposite side of this person ever. And so we hired that person to help us. And that was huge. Right. Like, she definitely, you know, did a lot of. Did a lot on our behalf in terms of, like, negotiating very hard with, with the other party.

So it's good to have somebody with obviously negotiation skills, sort of a bad cop, if you will, or a lawyer who has good experience, also having a consultant or advisor and then sort of direct, in your case, directly dealing with the, with the acquirer and keeping it somewhat friendly and keeping the lines of communication open. It just. Well, it worked out for you. It was an amazing exit, right?

Yeah, yeah, there was. Yeah, Always. Always good. I. I think, yeah. I mean, all in all, very, very good.

Life changing. Life changing. And speaking of life changing, because one of the things I always like to talk about is like, okay, you, you. We got the exit. How did your life change immediately after? Like, what was sort of the first thing you did as soon as you sold Take us back to that moment, you're like, okay, we're gonna do X that you wouldn't have done while you were still building the company?

Yeah, I mean, the first thing, to be honest, was. I mean, I do remember it was. It's very interesting. So we, we go to Deloitte's office or our lawyer's office, Lavarge's office.

Yeah.

And we. I mean, they gave us a check. And, you know, and you're holding this check.

This was a physical check.

Like, it was a physical check. So, yeah, you're taking this check and you're going out, like. And I put it in my. In my pocket, and I'm like, oh, my God, what if I get mugged right now? Like, this check and other people deposit it? Like, what's going to happen? Like, all the last seven years comes down to this piece of paper in my pocket. Like, how does it work? What if I lose it? What happens? And then I literally go to my bank and, oh, this was. Come on.

You went to the teller?

I literally went to the teller. Isn't this crazy? So I actually remember this, so. And I'm like, yeah, I want to deposit this check. So kind of like slide it over. And the person on the other side looks at it and a lot of zeros, and they're like, okay, I need to go speak to my manager. And so, like, gets a manager. The manager comes down and they look at it, and then she goes away and makes a phone call. And then they take me to the.

Back room holding her for the police.

Like, this big thing. And I was like. And in my head, I'm thinking, holy shit. I know that this is only part one. Part two is coming, like, next week or something. It was the craziest thing. And, like, people were perplexed. They're like, you know, you live in Ottawa. Where do you live? Like, asking all these questions and, like, I just want to deposit a check. Can I do that and, like, leave? But, yeah, that was. That.

That's a cool start.

That was fun.

I gotta be honest. Like, most of the stories are wire transfers and people, like, kind of sitting at home.

Refresh, physical check. You had this thing where they were like, okay, but, you know, what do you want to do with it immediately, like, we can buy this GIC we're gonna give you. And then I'm.

Yeah, because the percentage.

Oh, my God, the percentage. And, you know, probably on the minute. Like, every minute that it's not a GIC is like. It's like, real, real money.

It's a meal. No, recently, I'm still getting checks for one of my exits. It's like the. The interest from when we held the. The payment on the second tranche or just came in. And you get these surprise checks. Yeah. Sometimes they're like $25,000, and there's $125,000. But it is kind of like finding you Know when you used to find, like, a $5 bill in your pocket and be like, nice. That has happened a couple of times, right?

Yeah.

Yeah. It's kind of. It's kind of fun. But.

But, you know, the biggest thing for me was, like, I just. It's. It's very interesting because I'm going to go back to this. This idea of, like, the company being your identity. You know, some people might say, like, I think some people, some founders come in and say, like, don't let the company become your identity, because one day if you sell it, then, you know, you'll be lost and you'll go into this deep. And then. That's true. It happened for me. Like, I think I was probably, like, pretty depressed for six months, which is kind of crazy.

Yeah.

One day euphoria. Six months, like, being depressed and you.

Have more money than ever. And yet.

Yeah, but it's just like, it just kills you psychologically because again, you kind of lose your. Your. Your main drive and purpose. And, you know, at some point with Fellow, I started thinking about that too. And then I realized that, no, the reason that the last company worked is because I made it my identity. So I wouldn't have done the things I did and worked as hard as I did unless I were to, like, take this vow and, like, make the company and me the same. Yes. I remember there was this. This point in. In Fellow's journey where I said, no, I'm like, I'm. I'm doing the same thing. Like, I'm married to this company and I'm going all in.

Yeah.

And I'm going to do the crazy things that I wouldn't otherwise do. I remember, like, you know, doing a thing at some point where, you know, it's a weekend and, you know, I'm writing this email to the company, and I'm thinking, like, I'm writing this email. I'm spending two hours writing this. This email to people. Are people even gonna read it? And then I kind of remember that moment at fluidware where I was like, I made it my identity. And I thought, no, like, if this improves the chances of our success, because our employees are gonna read it. They're gonna get a little bit more context, get a little bit motivation, and anything I can do to interrupt the chances of our success is worth it, because I'm all in on this company. And I think, like, that just mentality of being all in is what got the first company to succeed. I know some people say, don't do that. Don't make it your identity. But what I've come to realize is that unless it's your identity, unless you're doing everything that everything in your power to make it succeed, then you know your chances are lower and like, that's not what you want. So I give the opposite advice, which is make it your identity. You are your company. Everybody says you are not your company. I think taking the view that you are your company is the right view to take. I know it's controversial, I love it. But yeah, that's what I believe.

I love that advice, actually. I mean, it's such a deeply personal thing doing a startup. This isn't a asset that you just build on the side to flip. Right. That becomes part of our identity, part of our DNA, part of our personality. And that's, I think, why some of us feel so much like almost that feeling of depression after selling your company, because it's almost like you're selling your child.

Yeah.

At the same time, I understand when people say, don't make it too much of your identity because the flip side is it can be pretty traumatic to lose your business.

It ultimately, I guess it comes down to, I'll tell, tell you one other thing that I, I, I, I changed. So I, you know, I grew up in the U.S. grew up in New York, lived in Canada since 2002. Canada's amazing. Love this place. One of the things that you do in Canada to make winters pass is you have to do a winter sport, Right. You've got a ski or snowboard or do something. I never learned how to ski. Like, it was not a thing that I ever did. And the reason is, when would I learn how to do it? I'd probably do it on weekends, but I was working every weekend. And I remember one of the people asked, the first time I learned how to ski was after we sold the company because I'm like, oh, I can now take weekends off. Yeah, like, and that was the first time that I was like, I, I can take a weekend off. And I only say that because, you know, it's, Yeah. I was talking to another friend who's, you know, built this big business. Mutual friend of ours works really, really hard. And he was telling me, yeah, I wake up at 5:30am, I work out, I, I do my company stuff all the way until I go to bed and I repeat that seven days a week. And it's just that, that's just the reality of, you know, what it takes to make sure that something is successful. Like it's not a hard thing. Though none of us ever think of it as, like, oh, my God, it's this crazy hard thing. We just think of it as like, oh, this is fun, and we're doing this to build this thing. But, yeah, that's kind of what it takes. But, yeah, I learned. One of the things I did is I learned how to ski, had to buy a car, did some stuff, bought a new house, you know, did definitely buy some things.

Yeah.

And.

And I. I like that you did definitely treat yourself, but you're always so humble in the way that you do everything. You're not a. A flashy guy. I think we're probably a little.

I did a side hour for free.

Yeah. You didn't buy a Ferrari? Didn't know I asked. You're like, you buy a Ferrari? Yeah, please buy a Ferrari. But no, but you're a Tesla guy, and you. Your house is gorgeous. I mean, your garage is the size of most people's houses. And. And what's really cool is you built the most. Most thoughtful and cool office above your garage.

Office is the most important part of the house.

Yeah. It's so cool.

And.

And you do. And, you know, I love that you. That you guys took wellness so seriously, but basically a miniature spa, so you can invite your friends and have your family enjoying your. Your swimming pool. Your compound is just a beautiful, magical place that you share with your friends and with your family. And. And when I look at that place, I'm. It kind of makes me emotional a little bit because I'm like, I know what built this and how much you enjoy and how much you share it with people, and it's pretty awesome, you know, and that gives me great joy to see my friends who put so much risk, put it all on the line, like I said, working basically 24 hours a day, get those prizes, get those physical things and make their dreams come true. And then in your case, you also help a lot of other founders. We could talk a little bit about how all your knowledge and stuff. What do you. What do you like to do for other founders? Like, how do you help other founders? I know you've got the podcast where you share information, but what are the things that you're doing on sort of the. The helping other founders or charities? Is there anything like that that you're involved with?

Yeah, you know, this is another thing that changes after. After you sell your company. It's so funny. Like, it's. It's this event. Like, we had a. I mean, the company was just as successful the day before the Acquisition and the day after. Right. But we celebrate this acquisition thing in such a great way. I always say like before we sold the company, nobody cared my opinion or my advice on anything. But all of a sudden we had an acquisition, same company. But now everybody wants to know and, and that kind of thing. So what I learned about that, what I actually took from that is like a very interesting view. Which is I like, I find that like I learn a lot from you know, founders who are doing things who are earlier stage than me because a lot of them are like doing super innovative things and super cool things and I know that they will be successful. I almost look and say, okay, yeah, this, this person's at this stage. But you know, fast forward 20 years, this person's gonna do amazing things like yes, I will. You know, they may want to learn from me, but really I want to also learn from them.

Yes.

So I, I never see it as like a, a one way street. I'm just, there's things that, you know, that, that I of, you know, all of us have had different experiences, but I think all of us can learn from each other. I, I don't know. Like, I have a lot of founder friends. I mean our circles are all. It feels like everybody has a company because you know, you hang out with a lot of founders.

Yes.

But yeah, fresh founders was a big part. We started this group. I mean you and I are both, both part of that. Yeah, it's just, you know, sharing stories, offering advice. I've done a bunch of angel. I think I invested in like 30 something companies.

A lot of angel. Yeah. Quitting, investing in a couple companies that I'm invol with and our friends are involved, which is super generous that way.

Yeah, it's, I mean that's another thing that I learned. It's very interesting when I, when we were starting fellow, I mean I thought about it, I'm like, should I just self fund this, this whole thing? But there's something really cool about raising money from your friends because it's great to have. It's like a, it's a bonding thing almost. It's like, you know, they're vested in your success, you're vested in their success. It just brings you together and then it's this amazing thing where you just want all of your friends to be successful. Like I told you, I'm like, I want you to be like the most successful person ever when you buy your private jet. I'm totally coming on board and vice versa.

Right. So he's kind of yeah, yeah.

So it's. Yeah, I mean, it's a great thing. So I think we just invest in each other's companies. We help each other out. It's a long game like this that, you know, we'll all be part of many different companies. You know, I'll work in this company or work in that company. We'll work in the same company or work at your company. Like, yeah, it's all this, you know, so you never know what happens. So it's all about, like, just helping everybody in the community and always supporting your friends and doing what you can to make them super successful. You know, one of our mutual friends, you know, Harley, who's president of Shopify, is. I always learned this from him, which was like. Like, do everything to help make your friends successful. And so, I mean, he obviously does. And I learned that from him. And I always try and replicate all of my friends. People in my circle, my founders just do stuff to help them be successful. Yeah. I think that's just the attitude.

Yeah. Shout out to Harley Finkelstein. He is something he lives by. And that's actually a beautiful thing to kind of, you know, the high tides rise, all boats or whatever the saying is. But it's true. Right. When you help your friends out and your vested interest in just helping each other out, it kind of helps everyone out in the network. It's a beautiful way to do business. And I think that's the idea behind what we want to do with this thing we're calling the Exit Group, is to create a community of exiting founders where we do support each other through the exit and post Exit, because it is, as you said, it could be a very challenging, lonely thing where you may not have. Not everybody has the network of people to rely on. And I think founders are a special kind of people. We put a lot into our thing, and we need support, too. Right. Saw the power of community, and I really, really loved hearing about this. Aiden, even though we've known each other forever, it's so cool to get into the details of what you went through in your thought process. You're an amazing guy. Is there anything that. Anything to close up that you wanted to share? Do we cover everything that you think founders should know about the process of exiting and your journey?

Yeah, I mean, I think. Yeah, it's a part of the journey. It's a part of the journey, and it is not the destination. It's a thing that you constantly think about. Like, sometimes I think about the early days of fluidware, and I think about wow. Like, if I met myself back at that time and I kind of looked around, I would tell myself, you know, I might tell myself, hey, like I don't think this thing's going anywhere. Like this product doesn't look that great. This market's too small. So in the moment, you know, sometimes you can, like, after having gone through the whole cycle, you can kind of realize that you can't like evaluate everything, you know, today or compare yourself with a much larger company that's been there for a long time. You know, there compounding is a magical thing. Yes. But if you kind of keep at it and you know, sometimes the way that I think about it is just wake up every day and all you have to do is slightly move the needle in the right direction. Like just point the needle in the right direction. If you can just like point that needle and you do that day over day, you know, it'll compound and eventually it'll become something impressive. But yeah, don't over evaluate. Just, you know, heads down, grind. And eventually you'll get there.

Fantastic advice from a guy who's been there and done it and we'll do it many more times. Aiden, man, it's such a pleasure just spending the last hour with you, man. I love you. I love what you've done. And I'm looking forward again to the next one after the next huge exit, which I'm sure is coming.

We want to buy some companies first.

Yeah, let's buy a few.

And then, I mean, we sold the company. Maybe this time we buy some.

Yeah, we buy some. I love that idea, man. It's the never ending game. I always call this the never ending game. And you're in it to win it every time. You're going to keep doing this. And I think it's in all our blood to keep building companies. It's not the exit. It's just the beginning of a new venture for us. Right. So it's cool, man.

Yeah. Thanks so much for having me and great concepts.