In 2012, Ryan Coon started Rentalutions, a platform to help landlords manage and communicate with their tenants more effectively.

The business showed steady growth, but Coon wasn't satisfied.

Five years in, Coon rebranded the company to Avail and focused his marketing to target DIY landlords with under ten rental units to manage. The changes proved successful as Coon grew the business to around $7 million in revenue before selling to Realtor.com in 2020 for approximately five times revenue.

When Jodie Cook started her social media agency, nothing happened without her involvement.

Desperate to free herself up from the minutia of running her company, Cook started to systematize her business with Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs). After a few missteps, Cook mastered the art of delegation.

In 2016, Ryan Kulp launched Fomo because he saw marketers using aggressive popups on their websites.

Kulp reasoned that if he could show other people were shopping and interacting with a site, it would give new visitors confidence in the company.

Fomo allows businesses to show off real-time customer interactions (purchases, opt-ins, even pageviews) with a line of code the company installs on their site.

Kulp led Fomo to around $1 million in Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) before deciding to step down as CEO in 2020. Two years later, an acquirer approached Kulp about acquiring Fomo. Initially, he wasn't interested, but after some soul-searching, Kulp decided to sell Fomo to Relay Commerce in a lucrative exit.

The economy has been a roller-coaster over the last quarter.

In this special episode of Built to Sell Radio, John Warrillow reveals the downside of trying to time the market and shares four alternative ways to know when to sell.

Rory Fatt began his entrepreneurial journey running marketing seminars for restauranteurs. After several owners approached Fatt to do their marketing for them, he decided to launch Royalty Rewards in 2005.

The business was a multimedia marketing platform that helped small businesses market their products and services by rewarding loyal customers. The company took off, hitting just over $2 million in revenue in its first year.

Inspired to achieve financial freedom, Fatt began to explore selling his company. In 2022, he accepted an offer from Schianti Partners that would set his family up for life.

Jeremy Nagel started his entrepreneurial career teaching clients how to get the most out of Zoho, a popular CRM platform. Nagel began cultivating a small following on YouTube by sharing his advice for Zoho enthusiasts.

Given his status in their ecosystem, Zoho approached Nagel about creating an SMS plug-in for their application to allow users to text their clients while using Zoho. Nagel developed the application while keeping his day job. Despite only dedicating one or two days a week to its growth, the feature quickly became one of the top five applications in the Zoho marketplace.

Two years later, Nagel received a LinkedIn message from the head of corporate development at MessageMedia with a lucrative exit offer he could not refuse.

Touraj Parang has experienced the highs and lows of selling a company.

In 2009, Parang sold his first company, Jaxtr, for pennies on the dollar. He took the lessons he learned and joined Webs.com, where he helped Haroon Mokhtazarda sell his company for over $115 million.

Parang left Webs.com and joined GoDaddy as a leader in their acquisitions group, where they acquired dozens of companies during his tenure.

In the latest installment of Inside the Mind of An Acquirer, Parang shares how companies like GoDaddy acquire companies.

Ten years ago, Timo Armoo was on a flight from his home country of Ghana on his way to live in a council flat in one of the U.K.'s poorest neighborhoods.

Motivated to live a better life, Armoo started Fanbytes, an influencer marketing agency dedicated to connecting brands with social media influencers.

The company took off.

Fanbytes reached 65 employees and hit revenues of 8-figures when he decided to sell the company to Brainlabs for around 3X revenue.

In 2015, Lorenzo de Plano co-founded Solace Technologies, one of the first vape manufacturers in the United States. The goal of the business was to create a discreet vape pen that customers could use as an alternative to smoking cigarettes.

The business boomed to revenue of more than one million dollars a month, but a looming threat had de Plano eyeing an exit. So, when a $15 million offer came in, he bit.

In 2007, Laura Roeder started selling online courses on how to market through social media. Her courses gained popularity, resulting in Roeder growing an email list of around 70,000 people. Inspired to further serve her customers, she decided to create social media scheduling software.

It was one of the first social media planning tools that allowed you to schedule your social media content. Piggy backing off the list she had built from her online course business, the company hit $1 million in recurring revenue in only 11 months.