Built to Sell Radio

Robert Glazer started an affiliate marketing agency called Acceleration Partners in 2007. Glazer never took outside capital and grew Acceleration to almost $28 million in sales before he sold a majority interest to Mountaingate Capital in 2020.

Robert Glazer started an affiliate marketing agency called Acceleration Partners in 2007. Glazer never took outside capital and grew Acceleration to almost $28 million in sales before he sold a majority interest to Mountaingate Capital in 2020.

Sandy Hansen-Wolff was a newlywed when her husband of only a few months, Randy Hansen, was diagnosed with leukemia. The doctors told Randy that one in four patients in his position succumbed to the disease. The couple scrambled to deal with the diagnosis and what would happen to Randy's feed business, which was generating revenue of around $1 million, if he were to pass. Randy died a few months later, leaving Sandy with little more than a handwritten list of his assets, including a heavily leveraged business.

Melissa Kwan and her co-founder built Spacio, a company that helped real estate agents win and manage leads that come from hosting open houses. Kwan built the company to roughly 100,000 agents using Spacio when a chance encounter at an industry conference led to an acquisition offer from HomeSpotter.

In 2013, Kate Field started The Kombucha Shop offering home-brew kits that people can use to make kombucha. By 2018, the kombucha craze was in full swing and Field was invited to pitch her business on Shark Tank. Field asked for $350,000 in return for 10% of her company which was generating around $1.2 million per year selling kombucha kits. Field got an offer for $200,000 in cash and another $150,000 line of credit in return for 10% of her company from Barbara Corcoran and Sara Blakely, the Spanx founder who was a guest Shark that day. Despite her success on television, a series of surprising events led Field to walk away from the Shark’s offer and sell The Kombucha Shop the following year. This episode is a raw account of the highs and lows of the entrepreneurial journey.

David Darmanin co-founded Hotjar, a software company that helps website developers and owners understand how their users interact with the sites they build. Darmanin and his partners bootstrapped Hotjar to around $40 million in Annual Recurring Revenue before selling it in 2021.

David Perry co-founded Gaikai, a video game company that enables popular games like World of Warcraft and Call of Duty to be played on just about any device. Perry raised $50 million through three rounds of funding and sold Gaikai for $380 million to Sony.

Anthony Fracchia built Altruis Benefit Consulting to $2.5 million in revenue when he started to get unsolicited calls from potential buyers. He initiated conversations with an acquirer only to learn they planned to gut his staff and kill his brand.

Rafael Zimberoff built ShipRush, an application that helps businesses streamline their technology, to 12 full-time employees when he sold it to Descartes for $14 million, plus a $3 million earn-out.

This week’s episode of Built to Sell Radio is the Intel edition. We focus on four recent guests and highlight the strategies that made their companies built to sell.