From Design Agency To $419 Million Holding Company In 8 Years

All right. I've been chasing this guest today for 6 months, begging him to come on the podcast because I heard him on a podcast last year. And as much as this breaks my heart to say it, that was my favorite business podcast of the year. And it wasn't even our own, but he was so good that I asked him to come on. His name is Jeremy Giffon. He is, um, he was the first employee at Tiny, which if you've ever listened to the podcast, we've had Andrew Wilkinson on many, many times. They basically turned $5 million of starting money into about $500 million of equity just by buying businesses that cash flow. So they bought, you know, small businesses that cash flowed, kept recycling, recycling, recycling over 10 years, turned into $500 million. So I wanted to ask him, uh, what was it like in the early days? What were those first deals like? He was there before they even had a name, before they were even called Tiny. So we asked him about his best deals, his worst deals, the weirdest deals he's ever done, negotiating tactics he learned. This episode is amazing. It's a 10 out of 10 for me. Enjoy this episode with Jeremy. What's up, Jeremy? Welcome to the show. We figure we've, we've had your mentor on enough times now, Andrew. He's probably the most popular guest on the show. Enough of Andrew, we got to go to his protégé. We got to go to the young gun who was there from the beginning and have you on. Welcome to the show, man.

Thanks for having me, guys.

Let's put Tiny into context because I think maybe somebody listening to this doesn't, doesn't actually appreciate what we're talking about with Tiny. The simple story of Tiny is they had a services business, an agency, and then they had excess profits. And I think you can correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the numbers are something like they took $5 or $6 million of initial, initial equity and they put that into Tiny and were like, okay, we're going to go try to buy a business with this. And they've ended up turning $5 or $6 million of initial startup capital into roughly a $500, $600 million public company where they own, you know, Tiny owns maybe a portfolio of 30 businesses or something like that over, over roughly 10-ish years. Yeah, 8-year period. So kind of amazing. In 8 years, turn $5 million to $500 million. Like, okay, I'm doing round math here, fuzzy, fuzzy numbers. But first of all, is that the, is that the right math? Is that roughly the right story? And then, you know, walk us through the beginning days of that, because you were there at the very beginning at 19, 20 years old, employee kind of number one there. Walk us through that.

Yeah, so I knew Andrew because when he was starting Meta Lab and I was working on another startup, we shared the same studio apartment. Our office was in a studio apartment and he was in like the bedroom area and we were in the kitchen and we would keep a keep a blow-up mattress in case the fire guy came around. And we would just say, oh, you know, Andrew lives here, but I just have a lot of friends over, uh, you know, working on stuff. Um, and yeah, I mean, effectively, like, Meta Lab, the store, the short version is Meta Lab, you know, was throwing off a fair amount of free cash flow. I think it was in that range of, you know, low millions a year. And the idea was just to go use that free cash flow to buy, buy a business. And, you know, um, that's the thing with agencies, right? Like, there's not a lot of reinvestment, so you got to do something with the cash. And if you're not going to put in the S&P, like, that's too boring or whatever, then you got to figure out something to do with it. And so that's kind of what we did. It's funny, like people, a lot of people hold codes and stuff are really popular now. And people, you know, a lot of people ask, how do I build Tiny effectively? And the first step is like, well, you know, bootstrap a business that makes millions of dollars of free cash flow and then like get back to me. The rest is like pretty easy. And that's the first start.

And you said it took 8 years. In reality, I think Meta Lab, the agency that was already 8 years older. I don't, I don't know what it was, but yeah, that's right.

MetaLab is probably 15, 16 years old now. So it was a long, a long slog. I mean, Andrew just started really young. It was also one thing that's really helpful is Andrew and Chris and myself, I mean, we were all big users and fans of Dribbble. Um, and, uh, and we, Andrew really had that company in mind for a long time, which I think is another really nice thing to have. Like, it's very good to start with a deal even when like even when you're fundraising or whatever, to actually have a concrete thing that you want to go do and use that as the jumping off point for, you know, building whatever it is. I think it's always so much better to have that than to kind of be like abstractly, oh, I'm going to start a fund, or I'm going to start a holding company or whatever. Um, and so it was like, Dribbble's really cool. Uh, we would love to, we would be the right owners for that. Uh, Andrew knew the co-founders there and maybe we could buy that and that would be a starting off point. And it's all very like real and concrete versus the, We're going to build a holding company of technology businesses or something like that.

Now you're 3 guys who've never bought a business before. Take me back to— you're sitting in the kitchen or whatever of your apartment slash office slash hangout lounge. Uh, are you guys like, hey, can we like buy like— buying businesses for dummies? Like, how did you even figure out how to do it? And also if this was a good idea, because it's a big risk, right? I think, you know, probably $4 or $5 million of equity went into that deal. That's like kind of like that's a big deal. That's not like a couple hundred grand at that stage. So like, what were those conversations like at the beginning, as best as you can remember?

Yeah, I mean, it was, you know, like anything, there's generally one way that you can categorize sellers. It's people who care about what happens to the business after they sell it and people who don't. And certainly for people who care, it's a lot about— it's this huge trust exercise of, you know, are you going to screw up my baby? Like, In their case, they've been working on it for a really long time. Their names are very attached to it. There was a big community. Community businesses are really difficult. You know, the community can really turn on you fast. And so yeah, there's that whole piece. And then mechanically, yeah, it was literally like, I don't think we even had a book. We just looked it up online. Like I would literally go on Legal Depot and like get an LOI off there and edit it. And you know, for the first few deals, like, you know, I was, 19, 20, and Andrew would be like, can you go get an LOI for this? And I didn't know what that was. We just go download one and write it up. And it's interesting because one thing that we didn't— like, this is an example of just the benefit of not having a lot of experience. Typically when you do an LOI, it's pretty far along in the process. And we would just fire them out because we read them. And in an LOI, the only thing that's binding usually is the exclusivity and nothing else. Not the price or anything else. And so we thought, okay, like this is a totally non-binding thing. So let's just like chuck it out there. It's nice to have something on a piece of paper. It's kind of like a term sheet. Um, although even term sheets, like, um, socially are more binding. And we didn't realize that, oh, in private equity, an LOI is like a pretty sturdy commitment or whatever. And, you know, that was for better and for worse. Uh, on one hand, it let us move really fast. On the other hand, we learned quite quickly that, okay, you're not supposed to go back on like what you changed in an LOI and that kind of stuff. And we're— and so there's all those little things where just not being familiar with the process really kind of let us move fast, it let us be friendlier. And that was the whole point. Like we had both had these kind of bad experiences with buyers. And we thought, you know, there's got to be like a better service to be done there, basically.

I had a handyman come over yesterday, and he comes to my front door and he's like, show me what you need done, whatever. And I said, great, that's what I need done. And he goes, here, before we start, I need you to do something. And he pulls out a notebook and he wrote He writes, my rate is $50 per 1 hour. And he hands it to me, he goes, sign this for me. And I just, I go, okay, cool. I'm aware that that's pretty much—

he's like, that way, spits in his hand, shakes it. He's like, this is now official.

And I was like, I appreciate, I appreciate your style. And that's, that, that was like the tiny LOI.

Hey, real quick, you know, one of the cool parts about what we're doing is that people have reached out and told me that they've built actual million-dollar businesses, made their first million off an idea they heard on the show. That is crazy. That's wild. That's why we wanna do the show and we wanna see more of that. One of the questions we get asked over and over again is, is there some kind of idea database or spreadsheet where we list out all the different business ideas that we've talked about? Well, the answer is finally yes. The fine folks at HubSpot have dug through the archive and pulled out 50+ business ideas and put them into a business idea database. It's totally free. You can click the link in the description below and get the database for you. All right, now back to the show. So at the time, was Dribbble like an obviously good business? Because it turned out to be an amazing investment, probably like a, I don't know, what is it like a 50x on your money there, right?

Like, yeah, more than that.

More than a 50x. Amazing. What did you guys like try to underwrite the deal? Were you like in Excel, like dragging some like, you know, 10% growth, like dragging it over 20 columns? Like, how did you guys, what did the deal look like? And what did you expect?

Again, it was, it was pretty obvious that it was a great business. And I think Andrew's told this story before, but there was some immediate day one levers around like a big part of the business was advertising and we could find better advertising providers and things like that. So there was levers you could pull on day one that were gonna improve the business. But yeah, it just felt like this big opportunity. It was a top 1,000 website. It had millions of active users. It was very important. You know, when it launched, like I think I bought my Dribbble invite on eBay or something like that. It was really hot for a while. And it was just this kind of like cool thing that didn't really exist. You know, there's not a lot of independent social networks that have millions of users. And we negotiated a pretty fair deal, I think. The other Buffett line is, "Price is my due diligence," and that helps a lot. But no, we never thought any of the deals could be 50+Xs. We're always just like, "Can we make 20% or 30% cash per year from this business?" And that would be great. And anything after that is just kind of upside. I think, and yeah, regarding models, Andrew used to make me do discounted cash flows because it was kind of like the thing that you felt investors ought to do. And then at some point I was like, here's your spreadsheet, but I'm just making up all the assumptions in the spreadsheet. And I think it was like, so many of these things are just like comfort blankets or whatever. You just like, it makes you, it's a big, this big scary thing that you're doing and it makes you feel better that you have it so you can look at it and be like, yeah, like We've modeled this out, you know, but it's like, it's bullshit. You're just, you're just making it up.

You also had a great quote. You were like, you said something to me, you go, the more quantitative analysis, so the more numbers, number, numerical analysis you're doing about a business, the more you're commoditized in your analysis. What does that mean? Unpack that one.

Yeah, my favorite anecdote here is in the Facebook IPO, Barclays put out this research report where, you know, they say what they think the business is going to be worth. And The way they do that is through discounted cash flow. And a part of that calculation is like, what is the terminal growth? What is this thing going to grow at forever? And they put it at 3%, which is what most companies are. And so that got them to a $200 billion valuation. Now the next 10 years, it grew 30% a year and it's a $2 trillion company. And it's just an example of like, you know, you do all this modeling and this research report and you're just so off. Like you're an order of magnitude off. And so like, what was the point of doing any of that? It would've been better to think really hard about how actually, how much can Facebook grow? Like just kind of this first principle stuff, right? Of what percentage of the planet could use this? Like a lot more basic. And yeah, that's a lot of the quantitative stuff. Also a lot of the quantum stuff is totally commodified, right? So people like know how to do this. You can learn how to do this in school and therefore maybe it's like a useful table stakes thing. But you're not going to get any edge that way because everyone can do it. And where the edge is in quantitative stuff is, you know, in the Two Sigmas and Jane Streets and the MIT PhDs, and you're not going to be doing that either. And so you're not going to like do a better model on a company than the next guy and somehow get some edge there.

So then when you're looking at a deal, when you're trying to— for like a small bootstrap business, a business doing anywhere from $1 million to $30 million in revenue, what are you looking at to spot the opportunity? If it's not the— if it, I mean, are you— how much do the financials and the cash flow statements actually even factor into that? Or are you just thinking, I can make this bigger? I mean, what part of the numbers actually matter to you?

Yeah, it's pretty basic, right? It's like, okay, let's, you know, let's make up numbers. It's doing $5 million a year of revenue, $1 million of earnings. And you think, okay, on day one, I could, you know, raise the prices by 30%. I could, I could reduce headcount, I could launch this new product, whatever. Would you pay, you know, would you pay $1 million for that? Yeah, of course. Would you pay $3 million? Yeah, probably. And then you can just kind of go, and I think where modeling gets important is when you're like at the very edge of that, you're like, would you pay $10 million for that? And then it's like, well, a lot of things would have to go right, maybe, or whatever. But there's some number there where it's like, yeah, you know, I'd pay $3 million for a business making $1 million. And so then the trick becomes, okay, can you get the business for $3 million? And that's where it's like, you know, Tiny was in a lot of bids with other folks, and I don't think we were ever the highest actual price, but we often won deals because we could offer other things. So that comes back to like, why you on the deal? You know, it's because like the very common thing that would happen is we'd get pretty far with the seller and then they'd say, hey, you know, we like you guys, but we've got this offer for 25% more, so we're going to go take it. And, you know, very often be like, great, like go explore that and then It turns out that offer was not as real as you thought, or it was 6 months of whatever. There's more debt, or they didn't have the financing. And then you actually figure out that, oh, there is like other things in the deal that are important, like the ability to get it done, the ability to be honest, to be trustworthy, to do things fast, like all those other soft things. And so it's more like, are you able to get a price that's really a no-brainer? At least that's how I look at it versus I really think I'm smarter than everyone else and I can pay slightly more. I mean, that works for people. People do do that, but it's just like a totally different game.

I'm always fascinated by the people behind these businesses. What can I learn? You know, Tiny is a great business, but it was created by people. It was created by Andrew, by Chris, by you. And I'm like, what are— how do they think about things? What do they know about what they're doing? What worked for them? What are their— ultimately, what are their superpowers? And I asked you, what's Chris's superpower? Because forget Andrew, everybody knows Andrew. He's popular. He's out there.

He talks.

He's got a big following. Almost nobody knows Chris. I had dinner with Chris and I was like, I fucking love this guy. This guy's— he's dynamic. He's really engaging. He asks great questions. And so I've only known him for a couple hours in my life. You've known him for a lot longer than that. What is Chris's superpower that, that he brought to Tiny?

I mean, Chris's superpower is just being able to— Andrew is so high-paced and so high-energy that Chris is just able to modulate that and kind of be the sober second thought, you know, we're not going to do this, or that's way too much, or, or whatever. Um, you know, a very interesting piece of the Tiny partnership, at least at the beginning, that I thought was really quite unique and interesting is that Chris and Andrew had Tiny as this vehicle that they would share together, but then they could also do things on their own, investments, businesses. And that actually, I don't even know if it was intentional, but that provides this great release valve of, okay, all the time, Andrew would come up with some you know, cockamamie emotion about some restaurant or whatever. And he would just say, okay, I'm going to go do that on my own. And Chris could have the same thing. Like Chris was great at investing in public equities and he could go do that on his own. And I, um, I know that doesn't directly answer about Chris's superpower, but it is this like interesting structure. I think one thing that can really go wrong in partnerships is if it's like you're dedicating your whole life to this thing and everything you do is going to be through it, it can really turn into this prison if you don't share the same tastes as, as your co-founder. And so having this like release valve. And being aware of that is really nice.

People normally pick partners who are like them, right? But they— but Andrew and Chris are not like that. You know, I guess, is that a— what did you learn from that?

Yeah, I mean, I would also say like, Andrew is really good at sales and kind of creating this new vision. And then Chris is really good at being kind of the negotiator and actually like, getting a good deal and structuring it well and everything. You know, there's all kinds of things about about negotiation, like one thing that would be like structurally another interesting thing is, you know, I would, I would be kind of the front guy on a lot of deals and would come back to them and they would kind of be quarterbacking it. And what was nice is like I would throw out an offer that I thought was really aggressive and it was kind of the most that I could like emotionally stomach.

Aggressively high, aggressively high, low, you know, really low, really low.

And so this is, I want to be clear, this was back like in the early days when we had no money and we were really trying to like be scrappy. Tiny is not really like this anymore, but, and then I would say, okay, like I've really got this down. You know, and then they would just look at me and, cause they'd never talked to the seller and just say, I think you can do like 25% less. And like sometimes I feel like I want to throw up, you know, talk through that when you have to present a shit offer to someone.

I imagine some, a lot of times, maybe not a lot, 10, 15% of the times they're like, okay.

Yeah, more than that. And actually what's even rarer is at least I always have this fear that they're just going to lose it, you know, like how dare And that almost never happens. It happens sometimes, but it almost never happens. And another nice dynamic there is you can always say, well, hey, like I'm on your side. Like I, you know, it's the old car salesman gamut of like, my manager's killing me. It's the same exact setup. Right. And that's, that's super helpful. And, you know, Chris shared all kinds of tricks with me. Like one great one is it's always best to just kind of, when you float an offer to just not say anything else, people will immediately start negotiating against themselves. And so one trick that you can use if you're on, I guess it probably doesn't work on Zoom, but if you're on just a call is you can like say your offer and then hit mute. And then you can like be like, you can start saying, oh, you know, whatever, but they'll just hear the silence. And that's a big thing as well because oftentimes you just need to let it float and sit out there, but it's like too uncomfortable for you to actually do that.

Dude, I've got this friend who works in the CIA. And I was talking to him and he has to negotiate with people. You know, basically his job is to convince people to become spies. So if he goes to the Middle East, he has to convince a guy who's loyal to some country in the Middle East to commit treason. And when he like goes to these negotiations, his tactic is, he said the same thing. He goes, I say what I want and what I want to happen. And then I shut up. And his other coworker was there and he was like, who's not part of that. He's like, dude, They do this to me all the time, just at work. I'll notice they say something and I just want to fill the silence and I want to keep talking in it because it makes me uncomfortable. And I ended up just talking, talking, talking, and they sit back not saying a thing and they always get their way.

Yeah, totally. I mean, one, one very cynical way of looking at negotiation is that it's just who can bear to be uncomfortable longer. And like, that's certainly true. You can do that in a retail setting.

You know, Sean does that all the time. Sean, I think we, when he negotiates.

The king of the awkward silence.

Yeah, he's very comfortable.

I have a condo on Awkward Island.

Yeah, he's the mayor of that area where he's just very comfortable being uncomfortable in a conversation.

Jeremy, you told me something else that Chris taught you that is less about kind of the gamesmanship. I think when we think about negotiation, we often think about the gamesmanship. What do I say? And I think you already said one interesting thing, which is A lot of times what you don't say, it's to stop talking and let them talk. But another piece you had mentioned to me was like, it's not you versus them. Can you explain that? Like how Chris taught you it's not you versus them?

The way that I like to frame it, the more kind of mature, the way that you can really do, I think, for your entire life and not kind of get, you know, be known as this like bastard who's just relentless and negotiate against. It's kind of, I love this idea of in a traditional negotiation, you're sitting across the table from one another. And the way that I really like to reframe it is you're both sitting on the same side and what's on the other side of the table is the problem. And the problem can be you want $50 million for the business. I wanna pay $20, but it's still this like, okay, this is a problem. Let's work together to figure this out. And it's this very subtle thing, but it makes a huge difference. And that's, I think that's how you start to unearth, okay, maybe like it's actually not ca— it's cash and something else that's more important for you. Or why do you want $50? What is it that's $50 that's so important? And why can I feel like I only I can pay 20 or whatever. And that works really well. I use that every day. You can use it in like relationship problems and everything of kind of like making the problem other and then putting it out there and being like, let's work together on solving this thing. And there's just something so much better about that than the kind of like, I'm gonna hit mute and stare at you and like break you.

You know, like, well, see, Jeremy, the problem that we're trying to solve is I want the money in your bank account to be in my bank account. Uh, yeah, exactly. I want that, I want that Chase account to say 5-0.

Yeah. Now it, it is true though. Uh, uh, you know, one of the things my dad taught me, one of the best things my dad ever taught me, he's like, when you go into a negotiation, it's not the same thing. It's not us versus them. It's, he goes, make a table of your needs and your, like, basically your needs and then your gives. So like, what do you have to offer? And then what do you, what do you need back? And then what do they have to offer? What do you need back? And they're never like, perfectly symmetrical. It's not like— and so, for example, some of the things they need are very easy for me to give, cost me nothing, or I'm totally comfortable giving that. And it's actually their fear or their, their big sticking point was something that's not so hard for me to give on. Or maybe I could go out of my way to give more even than they're, than they're, they're expecting in that area. And in this other area, I need something and then they're happy to give it. And so that's usually the better way to do it.

My favorite question is what would need to be true? So it's like, okay, you want to sell your business for $100 million. What would need to be true for me to pay $100 million for it? And you can just lay it out like, like what would make this a no-brainer? And you can do that in any situation. And you know, sometimes it's impossible, but oftentimes it's far more possible than you think when everyone actually lays that out. Because usually there's some sticking point that you don't realize, or, you know, it's something that is kind of outside of the scope of things you've already talked about. And I'm always amazed by how much that works. That works like as I've been fundraising, it works there. Like, what would need to be true for you to be like, oh, it's easy for you to give you money? Or, you know, for a trip, like, what would need to be true for everyone to be excited about going on this trip? Like, it's just such a good question. And it really sets that up as like, let's collaborate on this.

That was my pickup line. What's a guy like me got to do to be with a girl like you? And then she's like, do you have a friend? Yeah. What's his name?

You have this other thing on here where you talk about how, what do you say, a cold email is the most asymmetrical trade and that you've actually cold emailed a bunch of people. There's one guy in particular who you listed that I wanna ask you about, but it sounds like the cold email has done well for you. Explain more.

Yeah, I think it's funny. I've been saying this a lot more like publicly into groups and stuff. And it's still like, if everyone cold emailed, the ARB would go away, but I think it's just too scary or whatever that people don't do it. It's still a huge opportunity. I will say like the addendum to that advice is you gotta have the goods when you show up for the meeting or the call or whatever. I think like, I think, I don't know, maybe it's just like anecdotally, cuz I talk about this a lot. I get a lot of cold outreach and you also like, the second part is you gotta be really good when you show, when you show up. But if you're good, when you show up, like it's just this incredible, incredible kind of hidden secret, which is there's always a scarcity of talent. Like no matter who you are and you know, how much money you're worth or whatever, there's a scarcity of really awesome people. And so everyone has an infinite appetite to meet people who are interesting, talented, have a unique view on things, whatever. And if you can present that, like You, you will really kind of go a long way. And, and the downside, I can't even remember. I'm sure I've sent hundreds that have never been responded to. I've never got a bad response. It's usually just no response. And I don't even remember the non-responses, but the ones that I've got responses from have been amazing, you know? And so I think, um, I definitely think more people should do it, especially if you're young or you're a student, that, that alone can be enough of a hook. Um, that like most people will meet with a student if they seem switched on and, and interested and. Yeah, I'm still amazed that people don't do it, but I've started to see people do it and then they show up and they don't have anything to say or they don't have questions for Barrett or whatever, and that can be really bad.

We already know your first deal, but that was the first one. But I want to know first deal, worst deal, best deal, weirdest deal.

It's like the fuck, murder, marry. We did first deal, Dribbble, which might also be best deal. What's the worst deal that comes to mind? What's the big mistake you made?

The worst deal—

and name names and list their email address and social media handles.

Yeah, the worst deal is actually the one that I can say the least about, which should indicate how bad of a deal it was.

Give us the abstract.

Yeah, the worst one was just that the person was dishonest and I should have known and I didn't, and I ignored it for greed reasons. Cause I just thought this was such a good deal. I could look past these things.

When you say I should have known, I ignored it. What are some things people could look out for? What can I learn from that?

Yeah, it was, it was not this deal, but there was a friend of mine who buys similar types of companies, did a deal where they flew in the founders to meet them in person. And the first night, the founders wanted to know where they could get drugs. And you know, that And that is like, in and of itself is not a strong signal, but in that context, in that situation, it's like, kind of what more do you need to know? And it turned out that they were doing a bunch of stuff that they didn't disclose or whatever. It's always stuff like that. Like someone who's really flashy is almost always a bad sign. All these little things. And, you know, even like in the case of this deal, I introduced the person to a bunch of different friends and, you know, experts, and they were all like, this guy is really something, you know, like, you— I don't really know why you're dealing with this person. And it's— it is funny how you just get the blinders on when something is so good. And I think we've all, all made that mistake. And so yeah, that, that one, it just turned out that there was a bunch of things that we didn't know about, and it went very badly, and we lost all our money. It was a really small check. Fortunately, that was like the one upside, but So that one was pretty rough.

What's the most unique or weird deal?

The best one, I mean, it's kind of too early to tell. One that I really, really love is this company called Mealime. It's a meal planning app that TinyBot in 2018.

Meal planning made easy. So 4.5 million people, it says on the website, use this app. And what do you do? What ingredients you have, and it gives you like a bunch of recipes to cook and lines them out for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

But it was just this really awesome app, and it was made by this really amazing technical guy who had just built this really great product. Like, I remember the moment that sold me is like, they— you know how the iPhone turns off when you put it close to your head? Um, he realized that you could use that sensor if your hands are dirty while you're cooking. You could wave your hands over that sensor to like go to the next part of the recipe or stuff. All just these little things and they have these huge butterfly effects. Like, turns out when you do that, Apple thinks that's really cool and then they feature you in the App Store and like you, there's all these small details. Um, and we bought that business and it grew a lot. We got all of our money back in the first couple of years. And then this was the only business Tiny has, um, has sold to date that, uh, we sold. We made two major grocery retailers came along and I guess like in a boardroom somewhere They had just decided, you know, we need an app. Um, and so they both became interested and it was kind of funny because, um, I, you know, the company that I was at before Tiny, we had sold the company to Workday and it was a pretty difficult, um, uh, experience. And so I kind of viewed it as like my chance to get another go at selling a company to a public business and really kind of, it was going to be my turn to like get a good deal. And, um, and then we sold it, we sold it for, you know, a huge revenue multiple, made a lot of money, you know, up excess of 25 times of our money. And, and it's still today, it's like, if you look it up, it's still used. It's this great thing. I think the original team is still there. They were very happy with the outcome. I just love that because it was like, it was this kind of perfect little situation and this great little, almost like, like craft app, like just someone who cared a lot about making a great product. And I love those.

And the weirdest deal?

It was basically this company A big Fortune 500 tech company bought a business and the business had two business units and the big Fortune 500 only wanted one of those units. And they basically had to divest of it very quickly. And so we were able to buy it for— it was doing $10 million of recurring revenue and it was shrinking. The business was shrinking because it was built on top of another platform that was becoming less popular over time. And, um, and we were basically able to buy it for so little that we borrowed all the money and then paid back the loan in like 3 or 4 months. And so we basically got it for free. We were able to, we bought this out of the Tiny Fund and we were, we could write this great update to our investors saying, hey, uh, you know, we didn't call any capital, but you now own this new business. We're going to do a distribution soon. And it was like small dollars, but it's cool to pay nothing for a business. Um, and then the interesting part is like, we also got a domain that's probably worth a million or $2 million depending on how fast we wanted to sell it. And so it was kind of this like fun little deal of like, can you actually do a business for, can you buy a company for no money down? And, you know, it won't be a business, it will not be a 20x and it's not going to grow for 10 years, but we'll make many multiples of our money on it. And it's fun, like in the actual fund statement that like KPMG does, they have to list the cost. And so the accountants listed it as like a $36 cost basis, which is, I guess, like the actual money that went into the deal. And those are cool. Like you can be really, really creative. You don't have to put a lot of money down.

How did they find you or you them?

We, in that case, we knew a board member. Um, and it was the situation where again, we made a bid there and they didn't like the bid and they went and tried and shopped it around and turns out like there's a very limited set of buyers for that kind of thing. And especially ones who can do a deal really, really fast. Um, and so it was kind of this, we understood why we had the right to win this, this deal. We understood that money was not the most important thing here. Um, and so we were able to get it for this, this great price.

That's it for part 1. We actually kept talking to Jeremy and it was so good that we're going to turn it into a 2-parter. The second part is actually all about what he would do today. So the first part was kind of like how they, how they built Tiny, the deals, the lessons learned, and that was the past. And now I asked him basically, if I was going to do Tiny today, what would I do? What deals would you be looking at? What businesses do you think are great buys? What opportunities do you see? And he tells us the single best investment opportunity he sees today. In this next part. Enjoy. That's coming out tomorrow.