21: Rob Walling on Life After Acquisition

Today, on the Early-Stage Founder Show, I’m talking with , whose resume is hard to cover in this short intro, but I’ll do my best. He was most recently the founder of , a lightweight marketing automation tool that was acquired by in 2016. Before that, he bought, grew, and sold the keyword tool , is a co-founder of , an online community of entrepreneurs helping each other succeed, author of , co-host of the , and co-founder of , the world’s biggest conference for the world’s smallest self-funded software companies. He also has bought and sold many, many other smaller apps and websites along the way. If you couldn’t tell, Rob embodies the term prolific when it comes to building companies and sharing his knowledge, and is one of the driving forces behind the self-funded startup movement. If you aren’t familiar with him, stop listening to this and head over to andybaldacci.com/podcast/rob to find the show notes for this episode and check out the links to everything, including several interviews covering what it was like selling a sizeable SaaS company. You won’t regret it. Since Rob is so prolific, I wanted to focus on something he hasn’t talked about as much: what happens after you sell your company. In most cases, you don’t ride off into the sunset with bags of money. In fact, you almost always are required to stay onboard, sometimes for up to 3 years. In this interview today, Rob shares what the post-acquisition transition was like, what could have made everything easier in hindsight, and his advice for founders who see an exit in their future. I’ve looked up to Rob ever since I read Start Small, Stay Small years ago, so having him on the show was a real treat for me, but I think this is an episode you’ll get a lot out of as well.