From Internal LinkedIn Script to a Life-Changing Acquisition

All right, I'm here with Riccardo, the founder of GrowthX. Riccardo, how you doing today?

I'm doing great. How are you?

Doing good. It looks like you're in paradise. We were talking about this before we started recording. Super excited to hear your story, but before we get started, do you want to give a brief introduction of yourself for people that may not know you?

Sure. My name is Riccardo Pisano and I'm co-founder of GrowthX. I'm originally from Italy. I've been doing 4 startups.

Right on. Well, tell me about GrowthX.

What problem did it solve?

Uh, how did How does that work? Let's start there.

So GrowthX, we help companies getting leads. We did in a very creative way. We started 10 years ago when LinkedIn automation was not anything that was used by any company. We found a very great tool to help companies grow with growth hacking tools.

Nice. How did it work? Was it like a LinkedIn messaging tool? Was it like automating certain parts?

Yes, basically we help companies find with automation potential leads on LinkedIn. And will automatically start conversations and integrate with other call to actions. For example, identify through website visitors, connect with personal invitation through LinkedIn, and then continue a sort of messaging through different channels. LinkedIn was one of them, then also email and so on.

Nice. How'd you get the idea for that? How'd you get started?

So thanks for asking that. Basically in 2015, me and my co-founder Roy, we were working on another startup called Proximity. I remember that we were about to finish our first round of investment. We had really like no marketing budget. So we said, how do we find new users? We start sending manual invitations on LinkedIn and people were responding very well. So I said, why don't we build a script? So I built a script, which was really one page of JavaScript that we were injecting on Chrome and that got like thousands of signups for free. Eventually, Proximity, we were looking for a second round of investment. We didn't close the deal and we end up without, with a failing startup. So I remember that after a few years of working on that project, I decided to take a break and I was in the Philippines, I remember. And one time I got this call from Roy and Roy told me, hey Ricky, remember the investors we had the presentation? Well, they really liked the way we were getting users and they want to use that script. And so he told me, we got to pivot. We have an idea. We have a business. So let's just build it. And I remember I was in this beach bar drinking coconut water and I said, Roy, this time I'm not going to write one line of code unless there is money in the bank.

And that's super smart. I love that. And it sounds like you have product market fit immediately. You had 1,000 users right off the bat.

The 1,000 users was for the other app, the other business. But we actually had customers before building the product because at the end I asked Roy to make sure we got the customers. Before writing code. So yeah.

That's incredible. I think that's the smartest thing you can do is have customers lining up to pay for the product before you build it.

Correct. Correct. And in fact, he gave me a goal like after a couple of weeks with a screenshot with the money in the bank. And then I took the flight, come back, start coding. In a month, we had our beta, our first beta release.

Incredible. Love it. How'd you get customers? Did you use your own tool to get customers? Did you use LinkedIn messaging?

Yeah, mostly it was referrals at the beginning, but then we thought, well, we have a product that actually grows other companies. Why don't we use ourselves? And at the same time, we learned how to improve our own product. So yeah, we use our own tool to get new customers and work really well and obviously for free.

That's amazing. What was the business model and who would you predominantly sell to? Was it sales teams or other founders or?

Uh, we were charging like a monthly fee per LinkedIn user. We started really high because at that time it was really not enterprise level of this product. And then we start going a little bit down. It was $500 per user per month, and then it went to $100 in the last years, but mostly was big corporations, but also medium-level companies, or our really product-market fit was for companies that were maybe got just a Series A round, so they were ready to scale. This was our perfect niche.

Dang. So you were probably selling more than one seat at a time to each company, or was it one seat at a time, or was it teams?

No, mostly teams. Mostly teams.

Yeah.

So we would get the VP and then they would bring in all the whole sales reps.

That is amazing. It sounds like you had such a great business model. You were in a great niche. Why did you decide to ultimately sell the business?

That's a great question. I would say the main reason was I think me and my co-founder, we love building. So we got really excited at the beginning in the phase I would call it from $0 to $1 million. Where you have this idea and you wanna prove to the world that it's actually going to work. We started in 2016 and the last year when we actually end up selling, it was about 10 years. We said, I think there are other people that get more excitement about the second phase of scaling. I see myself more as a builder than a manager, but eventually I also love the experience, education I got in the second phase.

I think that makes a ton of sense. I talk to so many founders that look to sell because just like you, they're mostly interested in the building phase of the company. And if you're able to sell the business to another company or an individual that's interested in scaling the business, it's such a win-win. How was the acquisition process? What were your expectations and how did it go?

It was not easy at all, I have to say. So building a company and selling it, I think it's completely two different career worlds. For me, it was a tremendous amount of experience and education, and I'm very grateful of the help I got from Acquire team. But Basically for me, it was having a new full-time job and it took me a long time to learn all the financials, how to prepare a company to get ready for selling, because regardless of how you grow, regardless how good the company is, if you don't have your documents ready, it's impossible to sell. So my experience was, I can say now that for my next venture, I'm ready for doing it smoothly.

100%. Preparation is absolutely critical. We tell founders that all the time is You know, with buyers, they need a certain level of information to move forward at all with the deal. So the more you can prepare, the better. Tell me about the buyer you ultimately sold to. What made you decide to sell to this specific buyer? Was it you two just got along really well? Were they the best offer?

So actually, we took 3 deals. It was not that smooth because we had 3 deals signed and the third deal actually went through and wasn't about the business all the time. It was about documentation that we didn't have ready. The last buyer at the end, I think, came very happy with it because he really took the product. He was looking exactly for a solution to integrate to his own product. So compared with the other two, which maybe economically would have been in some way better, but in terms of satisfaction of seeing the product actually going to the next phase, I'm very happy about it.

Nice. What'd you do to celebrate the acquisition? Did you— is that why you're on a beach in Brazil? Did you go out to dinner?

Well, let's say that we sold the company last year in June and I took a full year of vacation. So I've been around the world doing my favorite sport, which is kitesurfing and vipassana meditation. I can't be more grateful of how I experienced this, really a dream that came true for me.

That's incredible. If you were talking to another founder and they were looking to sell their business, what do you think a couple pieces of advice you'd give them?

So number one, I would say try to structure your company for selling since day one, because the best time for selling is when you're growing. And when you're growing, you have so much work to do that taking a second full-time job, like preparing the company for selling, you're just not gonna have enough time. So start from day one to build the financials, the documentation, the structure to have the company ready. Second, don't give for granted every deal you sign is gonna end up closing. Yeah, get ready for the hard work. Because it's not easy.

I think that's great advice. I think it's completely true. Again, we work with a lot of founders where they think the process might be a week long or something like that, but it can take time. You got to prepare the business, you got to speak with buyers, you have to go through due diligence. But if you stick with it and you're focused on selling, you can absolutely get it done.

Yeah, definitely agree.

Well, tell me what's next for you. What are you doing next, Ricardo?

So I just got back, let's say, a month with energy, and I'm ready to start my new venture. And I realized during this time that while in my previous startups, one of my top priorities to understand which project to work on was how much money would generate. This time I would like to have as a priority the impact they have on people. I realized that for doing that, I need to make sure that I am first financially supported by my previous startups. I was asking myself, do I have enough to looking for a project that will actually not be based on revenue. And I couldn't answer that question. So I ended up building a tool. I don't have the answer yet, but maybe that tool could be also useful for other founders. Seems like a similar experience I had with GrowthX. We built it for ourselves and then we ended up selling to people that need it. And then also I would like to advise other founders, maybe as a builder or also as a Simple advisor for strategy. I think those will be the two main things I would like to focus on.

Right on. I know you're going to crush it, Riccardo. You're an extremely successful entrepreneur. If people want to follow you online, where do you— where can they find you?

My website is riccardobisano.com. Very easy to find.

I'll put it in the show notes. Well, thanks again for coming on the podcast, Riccardo. It was great hearing your story and huge congrats again on the acquisition.

Thank you, Andrew. Have a good day.

You too.