At the end of 2018 I sold my shares in Retargeting to Rareș Bănescu, the partner I founded the company with in 2013. I waited until after the holidays to write about it, because I wanted to do it with a clear head rather than in the heat of the moment. Now, in the first days of 2019, I think I can put down on paper what I feel and what I have learned.
You will not find amounts, terms or behind-the-scenes drama here. Not because there is anything to hide, but because that is not the interesting part. The interesting part is what stays with you after you walk out of a company you spent years building.
What an exit feels like
If you asked me to describe it in one word, I could not. There are three, and they come all mixed up. I wrote more about the signs that it is time to sell your business.
The first is relief. When two founders pull in different directions, even with all the courtesy in the world, it drains energy. A decision that has been made and owned frees up space in your head.
The second is emptiness. For years, the first thing on my mind every morning was Retargeting: the product, the customers, the next step. Suddenly the question “what do I do today?” has a different answer. Nobody prepares you for that. It is a strange kind of quiet, like after a long flight when you can still hear the engines.
The third is pride. We started with a far from modest ambition: to build the best marketing automation tool in the world. You can smile at a sentence like that, but ambitions like that are exactly what push you to build a serious product instead of a weekend project. Retargeting exists, it works, it has customers and a team. Nobody can take that away from me.
A different vision is a healthy reason to part ways
The reason was simple and, I believe, entirely legitimate: we no longer shared the same vision for growth. I wanted us to focus on the US market. Rareș wanted us to focus on Europe. Both options can be defended with good arguments. The problem was not who was right, but that a company cannot go in two directions at once.
Two years ago I wrote about how to choose a co-founder and what to do when you want different things. Back then it was theory. Now I can say it from experience: the worst thing two founders who no longer see the future the same way can do is stay together out of inertia. The company feels it. The team feels it. Sooner or later, the customers feel it too.
So we chose the grown-up option: one of us carries on with the company, down the road he believes in, and the other steps out. I wish Rareș and the team every success on the path they have chosen. Sincerely, not out of politeness.
What I take with me
I sold the shares. Not the lessons. Here is what I keep:
- How a SaaS is built. A monthly subscription is a promise renewed every month. You do not sell once; you win the customer again every month. That changes how you think about product, support and pricing.
- The US market. I learned how big it is, how competitive it is and how differently you need to speak there. Translating the website is not enough. You have to think differently.
- A product is a conversation, not a plan. Our best features came from the real problems of online stores, not from our own meetings.
- The team matters more than the technology. Code can be rewritten. Good people who stay when things get hard are much harder to find.
A while ago I wrote about building a SaaS from Romania for global customers. I would still sign almost everything in that piece today. I would only add that the road is longer than you imagine at the start.
What I would do the same, and what I would change
I would choose my partner the same way. We built something serious together, we respected each other and we parted in a civilized way. That is no small thing. I would keep the ambition too: I would aim very high again.
I would change one thing, but an important one. I would talk much earlier, and much more explicitly, about the long-term direction: which market, at what pace, with what resources. When a company is small, everything feels negotiable and you put off the hard conversations. They do not go away; they just get more expensive. If you are starting something with a partner, write down on a sheet of paper, from day one, where you want to be in five years. And come back to that sheet every year.
The difference from 2009
This is not the first time I have sold. In 2009, in the middle of the financial crisis, I sold the majority stake in MarketOnline, Mediadot and Azerty (an online store and two Romanian online retail businesses I had built and acquired). The alternative was bankruptcy. I did it under pressure, with my back against the wall, and I regretted it for a long time. I wrote about it in my piece on 20 years of entrepreneurship in Romania.
This time was completely different. There was no crisis pushing me, no creditor at the door, no rush. It was a calm decision, made after weighing the options. And I think that is the essential difference between a sale you regret and one you are at peace with: not the price, not the timing, but the fact that you made the choice, rather than circumstances making it for you.
If I had to draw one conclusion for other founders: never sell because you are forced to, if you can avoid it. Prepare early, so that you can sell when you decide to.
What comes next
I have no big announcement to make, and I do not want to make one. Since March I have been living in Limassol, Cyprus, where I am a business advisor to a local company, and in the year ahead I want to do more of what I enjoy: advising and investing in other companies.
I work for equity, not fees. I do not charge by the hour and I do not take a retainer. I take a stake, so that my success depends on their results. If I do not deliver, I do not get paid. To me it is the most honest way to give advice: you should have something to lose if the advice is bad.
And, I admit, I am already getting itchy. An entrepreneur without a new project does not sit still for long.
Instead of a conclusion
An exit is not a full stop. It is a comma. You close a chapter, take what you have learned and move on, with more experience and, hopefully, fewer mistakes.
Have you been through a split with a partner or the sale of a business? What stayed with you afterwards: the relief, the emptiness or the pride?