This week on The Exit: When Eddie Whittingham left the police force to become a lawyer, he never expected to eventually leave law to start his own cybersecurity business, and then sell that business to Proofpoint, one of the biggest SaaS-based cybersecurity companies in the world. After just one day of work as a lawyer, Eddie knew law was not right for him so he set to work building his own business with the goal of matching his salary at the time. The Defense Works was a fraud prevention SaaS business, and with a focus on impeccable customer service and the goal of achieving almost zero churn, the business grew exponentially. After just 3.5 years Proofpoint reached out on LinkedIn with an acquisition offer. The result? An exit offer he couldn’t refuse for 10x the annual recurring revenue. Listen to hear the full story, as well as the three traits Eddie sees in all successful entrepreneurs.

Eddie Whittingham is currently the Founder of GoFounder. GoFounder is a company that provides the tools and training necessary for entrepreneurs to start and grow their dream businesses. GoFounder provides programs that are designed to help potential founders achieve their goals, regardless of their experience or expertise. Eddie was also the founder of The Defence Works before their acquisition by Proofpoint in 2020. Listen to Eddie and our host Steve McGarry’s conversation on this episode to find out more about Eddie’s exit!

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eddiewhittingham/

His current company: https://gofounder.com/

For a Free Flippa Business Valuation: flippa.com/freevaluation

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The Exit—Presented By Flippa: A 30-minute podcast featuring expert entrepreneurs who have been there and done it. The Exit talks to operators who have bought and sold a business. You’ll learn how they did it, why they did it, and get exposure to the world of exits, a world occupied by a small few, but accessible to many. To listen to the podcast or get daily listing updates, click on flippa.com/the-exit-podcast/

This week on The Exit: Adam sits down with us to share his journey of exiting when the offer was too good to refuse. After a varied career from volleyball coach to starting an MBA, Adam eventually ended up in Major Gifts Fundraising, where he came up with the business Gavyty, an artificial intelligence company developing productivity and data security for fundraisers. Adam quickly realized users weren’t engaging with his product as he expected, but with a small nuanced shift to focus on email usage, customers quickly began using the product regularly and the business grew to generating over $1M in revenue quarterly. In 2019, exit conversations started but the board was pushing to scale more. With three PE firms vying to acquire the business it was only a matter of time before one made an offer too good to resist. Listen to find out how the acquisition went, and Adam’s tips on when is the right time to exit.

Adam Martel is currently the CEO and Founder of Givzey. Givzey is the first AI-enabled fintech company specifically developed for the social good sector with a focus on providing donors flexible giving options and enabling nonprofit organizations easier and quicker access to capital to accelerate their world-changing missions. Before Givzey, Adam was the CEO and Founder of Gravyty until December 2021. Gravyty is a Boston-based artificial intelligence company developing productivity and data security tools to revolutionize frontline fundraising and protect donor data at nonprofit organizations.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-martel-36734b2/

His current company: https://givzey.com/

For a Free Flippa Business Valuation: flippa.com/freevaluation

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The Exit—Presented By Flippa: A 30-minute podcast featuring expert entrepreneurs who have been there and done it. The Exit talks to operators who have bought and sold a business. You’ll learn how they did it, why they did it, and get exposure to the world of exits, a world occupied by a small few, but accessible to many. To listen to the podcast or get daily listing updates, click on flippa.com/the-exit-podcast/

This week on The Exit: From a young age Marty Fahncke had an entrepreneurial drive, as a kid he started a bike refurbishment business. And this entrepreneurial spirit never left Marty, who now looks at businesses to acquire every day. Before he got into M&A Advisory, he was involved in a number of exits, and the knowledge he has gained from those exits is invaluable. Marty’s first exit was entirely unplanned and if he could do it again he might not have taken the first cash offer. The next business he built was one of the first dot com businesses to advertise on TV, a groundbreaking move at the time. When the business found itself coming up against a competitor, instead of going head-to-head, Marty acquired that competitor and within two years the business grew from generating $1.5M in revenue to $30M. Today, Marty has assessed nearly 2,000 businesses as a M&A Advisor and has incredible advice for any aspiring exiter. Listen to find out what common mistake many business owners are making when preparing to exit.

Marty Fahncke has been a business leader and investor for over 30 years, where he has used effective and innovative forms of marketing and strategic investments to grow companies to over a Billion dollars in revenue. Identifying and executing winning revenue generating strategies is Marty’s self-proclaimed Super Power, and since 2001, Marty has been a professional speaker, conducting keynotes, seminars, webinars and panels, passing on his knowledge and experience to audiences around the world. He is currently a Business Investor, Growth Strategist, and M&A Advisor at Westbound Road. At this company the goal is simple: Save jobs, grow companies, and add enterprise value to their investors and partners.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/martyfahncke/

His current company: https://www.westboundroad.com/

For a Free Flippa Business Valuation: flippa.com/freevaluation

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The Exit—Presented By Flippa: A 30-minute podcast featuring expert entrepreneurs who have been there and done it. The Exit talks to operators who have bought and sold a business. You’ll learn how they did it, why they did it, and get exposure to the world of exits, a world occupied by a small few, but accessible to many. To listen to the podcast or get daily listing updates, click on flippa.com/the-exit-podcast/

This week on The Exit: Lee Blaylock is a third generation entrepreneur: both his grandfather and father were real estate entrepreneurs, so Lee was bound to become one. He just needed to find a compelling idea at the right time. When his father sadly passed away, Lee found himself focusing on his studies, and he discovered his love for software and tech. This led him to work for Dell for a very long time, before he finally got recruited to work on his true passion — software — at Oracle. Two years later, Lee quit Oracle to start his first business, ServiceLane, a directory for home-oriented service providers. Lee went on to exit ServiceLane after it was funded by some of the biggest names in the industry, and he exited numerous other businesses. With this many exits under his belt, Lee has some great advice and tips for whoever wants to turn a passion into business. Tune in and grab pen and paper!

Lee Blaylock is the founder or co-founder of ConstructionBevy, NiceLeads, Find A Game, Annandale Capital, and ServiceLane. The first company he started, ServiceLane, was funded by Austin Ventures, Fremont Ventures, and Silicon Valley Bank, and was sold to Owens Corning. ConstructionBevy is a FinTech-enabled marketplace for the commercial construction industry, where they aim to help general contractors find the right trade partners for their work.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/leeblaylock/

His current company: https://www.linkedin.com/company/constructionbevy/

For a Free Flippa Business Valuation: flippa.com/freevaluation

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The Exit—Presented By Flippa: A 30-minute podcast featuring expert entrepreneurs who have been there and done it. The Exit talks to operators who have bought and sold a business. You’ll learn how they did it, why they did it, and get exposure to the world of exits, a world occupied by a small few, but accessible to many. To listen to the podcast or get daily listing updates, click on flippa.com/the-exit-podcast/

This week on The Exit: Bob remembers the very first time he logged into AOL and thinking “I’ve got to be a part of this internet thing”. After Bob cut his professional teeth at Procter & Gamble, one of the world’s largest consumer goods companies, he jumped head first into the startup space. He joined a digital marketing agency and after 6 years, experienced his first exit. The agreement was a five year earn out with 10% of the purchase price up front, something he would not recommend. When it came to his second exit from Ahalogy, a marketing-tech startup, he was prepared. After just 6 months of negotiations, Bob exited Ahalogy for an upfront payment of $20MM, with an earn out of up to $30MM after 18 months. Listen to learn more about being prepared for an exit and how to speed up negotiations.

Bob Gilbreath is currently Co-Founder and CEO of Hearty, where they give Access to a community of top-tier engineers vetted by their in-house tech team. This allows them to truly match engineers to the right hiring partners. Bob is a Founder with two strategic exits, and he is currently working on the third. Bob is the author of The Next Evolution of Marketing, amongst other works and information that you can explore through the links below.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bobgilbreath/

Bob’s Substack, with focus on tips for startup success: https://behearty.substack.com/

His company: https://www.hearty.xyz/

For a Free Flippa Business Valuation: flippa.com/freevaluation

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The Exit—Presented By Flippa: A 30-minute podcast featuring expert entrepreneurs who have been there and done it. The Exit talks to operators who have bought and sold a business. You’ll learn how they did it, why they did it, and get exposure to the world of exits, a world occupied by a small few, but accessible to many. To listen to the podcast or get daily listing updates, click on flippa.com/the-exit-podcast/

This week on The Exit: Adam started AdLibertas as a mobile advertising business, but after a few years, it was clear that scaling the business was hard, unless it pivoted. That’s when the company shifted focus from advertising to analyzing data to solve business problems for their clients. When it came to exiting the business, it was surprisingly easy to find a buyer. Branch, a Silicon Valley unicorn which is currently preparing for an IPO, had come to AdLibertas looking for a content partnership, but they quickly turned into a potential acquirer. When the founder of Branch wanted to get the deal done in 30 days, Adam never thought it would be possible. But the exit did happen in 30 days, and today, Adam continues to work with Branch as Head of Growth. Listen to uncover all the details.

Adam Landis is currently the Head of Growth at Branch and was the Founder & CEO at AdLibertas before its acquisition by Branch. The AdLibertas platform is a comprehensive way for app developers to combine, store, and report on app user data helping provide actionable insights for their entire organization. At Branch, they are transforming how brands and users interact across digital platforms. Branch’s mobile linking platform and measurement solutions power much of today's mobile traffic and are trusted by over 75,000 mobile apps and many of the world's largest brands to deliver seamless experiences that increase ROI, decrease wasted spend, and eliminate siloed attribution.

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/adlandis/

Website - https://www.branch.io/

Website - https://www.adlibertas.com/

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The Exit—Presented By Flippa: A 30-minute podcast featuring expert entrepreneurs who have been there and done it. The Exit talks to operators who have bought and sold a business. You’ll learn how they did it, why they did it, and get exposure to the world of exits, a world occupied by a small few, but accessible to many. To listen to the podcast or get daily listing updates, click on flippa.com/the-exit-podcast/

This week on The Exit: In freshman year, Yuxin wanted to improve his grades with new classes, but he soon realized finding the right ones through his uni’s system was a painful process. That’s when he and a friend decided to build a better class search system. It wasn’t easy, but once they finalized the system, the website took off. After 2 years they were generating over 1M sessions annually, so they monetized the site and watched profit coming in. The site was so successful, it was covering their university fees. With such a winning model, it’s no surprise that the university they were studying at wanted to acquire the business… Listen to find out how their exit went down.

Yuxin Zhu co-founded a company as a computer science major in college by creating a search engine that allowed students at their college to audit potential course discovery and information about their college path like never before, which was acquired by the University of California in 2015. Yuxin currently is the Co-founder of Replo, a company that provides web page building tools for ecommerce companies wanting a better solution to building a unique website.

Website - https://www.replo.app/

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/yuxinzhu/

Twitter @Replohq - https://twitter.com/replohq

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The Exit—Presented By Flippa: A 30-minute podcast featuring expert entrepreneurs who have been there and done it. The Exit talks to operators who have bought and sold a business. You’ll learn how they did it, why they did it, and get exposure to the world of exits, a world occupied by a small few, but accessible to many. To listen to the podcast or get daily listing updates, click on flippa.com/the-exit-podcast/

This week on The Exit: How do you exit a travel business during a global lockdown? When Cyrus Ghazanfar co-founded Pilota, a machine learning product to predict the risk of flight disruptions, he never imagined that every flight in the world would be grounded in just a few months. The travel market completely disappeared as flights were halted, and while the business could sustain themselves for a few months, it turned out COVID would last much longer. So how did they negotiate an Exit to Hopper, a travel company valued at $5B, during a pandemic? Listen to find out.

Cyrus Ghazanfar is the Co-founder and CTO at Beagle, which is aiming to solve inefficiencies in the 401(k) market. Previously, Cyrus co-founded Pilota where they used AI to proactively mitigate travel risk, which was acquired in 2021.

Website - cyzanfar.github.io/

Website - https://meetbeagle.com/

Twitter @BeagleFinancial- https://twitter.com/beaglefinancial

LinkedIn - linkedin.com/in/cyzanfar

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The Exit—Presented By Flippa: A 30-minute podcast featuring expert entrepreneurs who have been there and done it. The Exit talks to operators who have bought and sold a business. You’ll learn how they did it, why they did it, and get exposure to the world of exits, a world occupied by a small few, but accessible to many. To listen to the podcast or get daily listing updates, click on flippa.com/the-exit-podcast/

This week on The Exit: Jon Nordmark was working at Samsonite in the 90s, for eight years Jon learnt about the bag business from the ground up and managed 21 different marketing and distribution channels. When the internet popped up, he was excited to talk to the CEO about this new distribution channel. But the CEO didn’t see the potential of selling bags online, so Jon quit to start eBags. Early on, eBags were focused on conversion, going from $13 to acquire $1 in revenue, to a low of 12c to acquire $1 in revenue in the first year. eBags had a number of acquisition offers but investors weren’t happy with the early offers. Seven years after their first offer, they finally exited to Jon’s previous employer, Samsonite. At the time of exit the business was generating $165MM in revenue with just 120 employees. Listen to find out about the challenges of working towards an exit for 7 years and why they should have taken the first offer to exit.

Jon Nordmark is the Co-founder and CEO of Iterate.ai (2013-now), and was the Co-founder and CEO of eBags. After selling 29 million bags (worth $1.6 billion), eBags was acquired by Samsonite in 2017. Iterate.ai’s goal is to speed up Digital Transformation in a modern way, while 90% of Iterate's revenue comes from their patented drag-n-drop, low-code AI app platform called Interplay.

Website - https://www.iterate.ai/

Twitter @Jon_Nordmark - https://twitter.com/Jon_Nordmark

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/nordmark/

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The Exit—Presented By Flippa: A 30-minute podcast featuring expert entrepreneurs who have been there and done it. The Exit talks to operators who have bought and sold a business. You’ll learn how they did it, why they did it, and get exposure to the world of exits, a world occupied by a small few, but accessible to many. To listen to the podcast or get daily listing updates, click on flippa.com/the-exit-podcast/

This week on The Exit: Sara didn’t know that answering an ad on Craigslist for a cannabis agency would result in her buying, building and eventually selling that same company. The business grew to become one of the first cannabis consulting businesses in the USA, working to get licensing across the country. When Illinois legalized cannabis, the industry boomed and Sara found herself with a very valuable asset. Everyone wanted in, and Sara’s company was in hot demand. So how did an exit happen when Sara never had an exit plan, but had all the power? Listen to find out.

Sara Gullickson is an entrepreneur, investor, and corporate dealmaker with more than a decade of experience building and scaling businesses personally and professionally. A multi-state cannabis license holder, Sara has a proven track record in identifying new opportunities and infusing traditional business strategies into progressive markets. At age 27, she entered the nascent cannabis space and founded her first venture, a consulting firm called Dispensary Permits. She went on to build several other ancillary companies tailored to the cannabis industry including a tech platform and turnkey retail model.

Instagram @Thecbadvisors - https://www.instagram.com/thecbadvisors/

Twitter @Thecbadvisors - https://twitter.com/thecbadvisors

Website - https://thecannabisbusinessadvisors.com/

Website - https://saragullickson.com/

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The Exit—Presented By Flippa: A 30-minute podcast featuring expert entrepreneurs who have been there and done it. The Exit talks to operators who have bought and sold a business. You’ll learn how they did it, why they did it, and get exposure to the world of exits, a world occupied by a small few, but accessible to many. To listen to the podcast or get daily listing updates, click on flippa.com/the-exit-podcast/