Welcome to After The Exit, the show where I interview CEOs after they've sold their startup and have them share the lesson they've learned about business, relationships, and life.  

Today we have two very special guests: my current co-founders Chris and Nikki Ridenour. Before they were a married couple, they started in 2012 as co-founders of LISNR - an ultrasonic proximity platform. Chris as an engineer and CTO, Nikki as a designer. After working with a ton of major artists and hosting 30K+ user activations, they raised Series A with Progress ventures. Shortly thereafter they left the company in 2014. That lead to Chris founding Casamatic and going through both the Ocean and Brandery accelerators in Cincinnati - and later raising a seed round from Accelerant. After pivoting from b2c to b2b they decided to shut down the company and return the funds to the investors. Chris then joined me as CTO of Cladwell for 2 years, while Nikki went through the Uptech startup accelerator with her startup Farmbee. Chris later joined Nikki on Farmbee after they had their first child. Now - they are current co-founders with me in Boilerplate.legal.  

If you’re short on time and just want to browse the lessons, go to https://www.allsmith.org/aftertheexit/chris-and-nikki-ridenour and you can browse a list of all of the lessons and click on the hyperlink to watch individual lessons.  

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This post is part of a Youtube/Click-able Blog Series called “After The Exit” — the show where I interview CEO’s after they’ve sold their startup and have them share the lessons they learned in blood about business, relationships, and life. Look — you can learn a couple of tips from how they built it, but the real wisdom — the moral of the story — comes at the end — after the exit.

Today I'm really excited to introduce you to my friend Jonathan Smith, former CEO of Kai. Before Kai he was a Chief of Staff for a consumer research firm, then applied what he learned there to launch an app for a megachurch in Cincinnati. From there he built Kai - a conversational fitness coach powered by AI. They raised around $100K from friends and family and went through back to back accelerators - first a faith-based accelerator called Ocean, and second Techstars Chicago. Shortly after leaving Techstars they shut down the company due to a lack of fundraising traction.

This episode is brought to you by Visible.vc - Raise capital, update investors and engage your team from a single platform.

It's also brought to you by Boilerplate.legal - Affordable, streamlined, venture capital-approved legal documents for your startup.

Welcome to After The Exit, the show where I interview CEOs after they've sold their startup and have them share the lesson they've learned about business, relationships, and life.  

Today I'm really excited to introduce you to my friend Bob Gilbreath former CEO of Ahalogy. Before Ahalogy, he and some friends founded and sold Bridge Worldwide, a digital agency in 2004. He then spent a year at a local venture capital firm, CincyTech. He initially was an investor and board member of Ahalogy (which was founded by Michael Wohschlaeger) then joined as a co-founder after a pivot. They raised $1mil in 2013, $3mil series A in 2014, and a few more rounds in '14 and '15. After his co-founder left they went from 55 to 30 employees, then pivoted to focus on influencer marketing. They got profitable, were named leaders in Forrester tech report, and started doubling revenue from 2016-2018. After hitting $10mil revenue run rate they were acquired by Quotient Technology for $50mil.

If you’re short on time and just want to browse the lessons, click here to browse a list of all of the lessons and click on the hyperlinks to watch individual lessons, or watch the entire interview here. 

Today I'm really excited to talk with my friend Chris Bergman former CEO of Choremonster. Chris dropped out of high school and was art director at a skate magazine in San Diego (that I personally subscribed to at the time). He then started building websites and built an app development company called Wiseacre Digital. In 2011 they had an idea for an app that would make it fun for kids to do chores - called ChoreMonster - and with this the concept got into the Brandery Accelerator in Cincinnati, OH. After leaving the Brandery they got investment from a local VC Cincytech. They later raised a Seed round from Detroit Venture Partners in 2013 and got into the Disney Accelerator in 2014. After shopping the company around for sale in 2018 he ended up taking an acquihire deal with Verizon in 2018.   

If you’re short on time and just want to browse the lessons, go to https://www.allsmith.org/aftertheexit/chris-bergman-sold-choremonster-after-the-exit-episode-4 and you can browse a list of all of the lessons and click on the hyperlink to watch individual lessons.

Welcome to After the Exit, the show where I interview CEOs after they've sold their startup and have them share the lesson they've learned about business, about relationships, and life.  

Today I'm really excited to introduce you to my friend Whitney Casey, recently exited CEO of Finery.  Before Finery, she oversaw product development and growth at Match.com and also lived a life as a producer and/ or correspondent at CBS, CNN, Fox, ABC, and NBC - winning two Emmy's in the process. She founded Finery - a personal stylist in your back pocket (and a competitor of my previous company, Cladwell). She raised $5mil in seed funding from NEA, partnered with Match.com, and was named CNBC's top 100 startups to watch worldwide. As she was raising Series A at a $30mil valuation privacy laws began to shift so according to public sources she opted to sell to Stitch Fix for an undisclosed amount.  

Hope you enjoy!

If you’re short on time and just want to browse the lessons, go to allsmith.org/afterthexit and you can browse all of the lessons and click to a hyperlink to that specific lesson in each youtube video.

This episode is brought to you by Visible.vc - Raise capital, update investors and engage your team from a single platform.

It's also brought to you by Boilerplate.legal - Affordable, streamlined, venture capital-approved legal documents for your startup.

Welcome to “After The Exit” — the show where I interview CEO’s after they’ve sold their startup and have them share the lessons they learned in blood about business, relationships, and life. Look — you can learn a couple tips from how they built it, but the real wisdom — the moral of the story — comes at the end — after the exit.

Today’s guest is Jeremy Pryor, who sold his Explainer Video Agency, Epipheo, in September of 2020. Before starting Epipheo, he was a pastor turned entrepreneur — looking to integrate his faith, family and business all together. Epipheo was his third try at building a company. It started with a viral explainer video that Jeremy’s friend made in Christmas 2008 — it was the first of its kind, so they decided to capitalize on the hype and build a brand around it. This led to them capturing their first customer — Google Wave. This resulted in hundreds of leads coming in. The kept growing to around 700 leads per month, then competition set in. The decided to brand themselves as the premium explainer video company, pushing them upstream from mostly startups to mostly large companies. As the business grew, one of the co-founders went on and started the Bible Project, and around that time Jeremy came back in as CEO for 4 years. He stepped down about a year ago and brought in the former director of Ops in as the CEO to prep the company for sale. They just closed on a sale to him and the director of design in Sept 2020 for an undisclosed amount.

If you’re short on time and just want to browse the lessons, go to allsmith.org/afterthexit and you can browse all of the lessons and click to a hyperlink to that specific lesson in each youtube video.

Big thanks to John Stieger of Cintrifuse for hosting me and Ry Walker (founder/CTO, Astronomer.io) on this conference call on angel fundraising. 

Here are my consolidated lessons learned from 7 years running a venture-backed startup, Cladwell. You can also read the Medium post/jump to the lessons you care about here: https://medium.com/@blakesmith/70-lessons-learned-82751e223c8b

Last startup, I published the lessons I learned once each year. This time with my new startup, Boilerplate, I want to publish them weekly as I go. Subscribe here and get a weekly email where I talk about what I learned this week. Check out the Medium article here. 

Last startup, I published the lessons I learned once each year. This time with my new startup, Boilerplate, I want to publish them weekly as I go. Subscribe here and get a weekly email where I talk about what I learned this week. Check out the Medium article here.