A founder built a bus tracking startup from college, bootstrapped it, and sold it to Ford Motor Company. He reflects on the challenges of the acquisition and what happened after, including navigating the pandemic.
So college comes. We want to improve buses and track buses moving around. So I was a student body president of my college and my business partner Ilya and I were like, how can we do this? So we got quotes. They were all crazy prices. So we ended up doing. We got a group of students, we built a terrible V1 and it was like didn't work. We built that better and then we did that full time. I did investment banking, he did consulting. We quit. We did it full time. We built our team and bootstrapped and sold to Ford Motor Company. So then I sold. I had some money. I was the largest shareholder. It went really well. But honestly, I was kind of missing that hustle. I was missing solving problems. Honestly, I was missing my team. Just like these parts that you don't realize. I crossed the finish line and thought everything was great but Covid hit. I started having kids but I really missed that camaraderie so.
The Buyers Who Made the Move: What They Bought, How They Did It, and What Happened Next
