Non-Negotiables Of An Exit with Melissa Kwan

Today we’re talking to Melissa Kwan, co-founder and CEO of eWebinar, a company that takes any video and turns it into an interactive, automated webinar. Having always been in sales, Melissa found herself working in real estate right out of university. Ten years ago she found herself starting her first real estate tech company. Four years later she was starting her second real estate tech company. Listen in as she talks about a successful exit and all that led up to it. One of those companies was Spaceio, a real estate open-house application. Rather than signing in at an open house with paper and pen, it’s done on an iPad. They then feed all data back to the company and automate all the follow-ups for the agent. As they weren’t venture backed, their main KPI for success was revenue. While they had some private investors, Melissa says it was always a race to break even. A main misconception with venture capital is its a choice to have it. Melissa says they simply couldn’t raise the capital, so she used revenue from a previous company and took out a loan. Melissa says, looking back, she’s glad they didn’t get the venture capital, or they wouldn’t have been able to sell for what they did. They’d always been a small company, with six people at their peak, but got over one hundred enterprise customers before they sold. -- 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/