The pair discuss the secrets to developing a successful exit strategy, including understanding investment math and driving alignment between early and new investors. Travis also touches on the importance of understanding how investors make money before making exit decisions as a founder. 

Brice began his career in the space when he was hired by Trade Publishing Company, the folks behind Autotrader, in 2006. About eight years later, He decided to venture out on his own and create TrendPending, which enables buyers and sellers to effectively communicate and understand the value of vehicles in the market. Brice talks about the 10-year journey, from his own acquisition by private equity, the acquisitions they've done together since, and to the impact of having a career coach and strategic advisor.

Thanks to our season sponsor, Robinson Bradshaw.

During this episode, David will offer his actionable advice on how to stay ahead of well-funded competitors, the importance of "smart money", and his best three lessons for entrepreneurs.

Under his leadership, InMotionNow grew into a software-as-a-service platform that helps businesses manage their content product and marketing campaigns. He shares his insights on scaling a sales organization, the investment process, and their exit strategy. He reflects on the lessons he learned being a non-founder CEO. He also gives us a glimpse into his newest venture, Map My Customers, a CRM platform designed for field sales teams.

Matchwell was marketed as the rebellious alternative to healthcare facilities to find workers–Rob even jokes about growing a long beard to match the brand's persona. In July 2022, Matchwell was acquired by Medical Solutions, one of the nation's largest healthcare talent ecosystems.

Special thanks to Robinson Bradshaw for sponsoring this season. It is a law firm with a passion for helping startups with offices in the triangle, Charlotte, and Rock Hill, South Carolina. 

Special thanks to Robinson Bradshaw for sponsoring this season. It is a law firm with a passion for helping startups with offices in the triangle, Charlotte, and Rock Hill, South Carolina. 

Special thanks to Robinson Bradshaw for sponsoring this season. It is a law firm with a passion for helping startups with offices in the triangle, Charlotte, and Rock Hill, South Carolina. 

This season is sponsored by Robinson Bradshaw, a law firm with a passion for helping startups. The firm have offices in the Triangle, Charlotte and Rock Hill, SC.

For those unfamiliar, Pendo is a software company that helps clients collect data on how customers use their products. Eric recently exited the company to launch his own startup venture studio, 24 & Up, in early 2022.

During this episode, Eric talks about his early entrepreneurial background, which includes selling ice cream on the beach, and how he took these lessons into the tech space. He talks meeting Todd Olson, who is now the CEO of Pendo, and launching their first startup, Cerebellum, a data integration software company, in 1999. They almost sold the company for $60 million, but the deal fell through because of the dot-com bust. Todd and Eric parted ways after that, but Eric stayed in the startup space.

They soon came together again to start what we know today as Pendo. Fast forward to today, Pendo is the second-largest unicorn in the Triangle and is valued at $2.5 billion.

Ascend was created in 2019 as a simple goal setting app for high school students, but quickly evolved into something much more. Together with Reg Gabriel, Christine built the company into a student empowerment software platform that helps schools and mentoring organizations cultivate, track, and measure their goals and achievements. She talks about seeking acquisition opportunities early on and being acquired by edtech partner, Aperture Education. In 2021, the combined companies struck a deal worth $18 million with the largest school district in the country, the New York City Department of Education, which proved to be a major win for them. Aperture was acquired by Riverside Insights in May 2022. Christine also discusses working with an investment bank to sell the company, which included managing the IOIs and LOIs.

The idea came to her while she was working at an architectural firm and teaching paddle board yoga in Hawaii during the summer of 2017. From personal experience, she understood how difficult it was for fitness trainers to scale their businesses.

It wasn't an easy journey, but Karly was determined to succeed, even if that meant sleeping on a blow-up mattress in her parents' living room for two years. She discussed working with Cofounders Capital, recruiting celebrity trainers to join the app, and the lessons she has learned along the way. In 2021, Karly and her team discussed pivoting from mobile workouts to physical goods. That's when St. James came along and acquired WAAM.

As a student at NC State, Ryan launched a startup called Pennies 4 Progress, which ignited his entrepreneurial spirit. He worked as a recruiter post-grad and quickly realized referrals were the most effective way to recruit. At the time, employee referrals were mainly tracked manually. So, Ryan created a tool to accompany his work, and help companies automate their referral programs. Alongside serial entrepreneur Jeff Stocks, he launched EmployUs in 2015. The company grew to over 100 clients across multiple industries, primarily medium and large companies. It even made NC TECH's Top 10 Startups to Watch list. Fast forward to 2021, EmployUs was acquired by Chicago-based Hireology.

From being in the enterprise data space to joining AddressDoctor, Spruill shares how everything he learned prepared him for GDC. Early on, the company struggled to find product market fit, and after losing their sales lead, a decision was debated on whether the company should close. Nevertheless, he and the team set a simple goal: to grow 10% each month and see what happens. A few years later, in 2022, GDC was acquired by the London Stock Exchange for $300M, one of the largest deals of recent years to come out of the Triangle. 

Robbie shares his journey in launching his website StatSheet, which transformed sports data into written content. In 2011, the company expanded to non-sports content and was renamed Automated Insights. Ai went on to produce over 1.5B pieces of automated content and release their natural language generation platform called WordSmith; they had customers like Yahoo and Associated Press.

In February 2015, soon after raising its Series B round, Ai was acquired by Vista Equity Partners. Robbie details how the company was able to make a successful pivot. He also explains why they sold soon after a fundraising round, and the patent technicality that saved the deal.

Mi-Co is a leading enterprise mobile software company specializing in audits, inspections, surveys and assessments. Clary ran the company as CEO until it was acquired by IdeaGen in 2021. He chats with Kevin about its' early development, its involvement with Microsoft and Apple, and how they grew their revenue by about 50% in 2020.

Goffman served as the Chief Operating Officer at Vanguard Software, a global provider of cloud-based integrated business planning solutions, from 2016 and during the company's acquisition by Wolters Kluwer for $110M.

Goffman details exactly how he built their sales, marketing, and delivery teams, their channel partner program, and their “go to market” strategy.

Chaz goes into detail about Bronto's bootstrapped story from 2002 to 2015. He talks about how his mindset shifted from scrappy startup to a scaling organization, and how all that work led to an eventual exit to publicly traded NetSuite in 2015 for $200M.

This is part II of a 2-part episode.

Chaz goes into detail about Bronto's bootstrapped story from 2002 to 2015. He talks about how his mindset shifted from the scrappy startup to a scaling organization, and how all that work led to an eventual exit to publicly traded NetSuite in 2015 for $200M.

This is Part I of a 2-part episode.