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May 2, 202445mEpisode 40

How do you turn a LinkedIn message into a strategic M&A deal?

The short answer

Till co-founder Brady Nolan reveals how a single cold LinkedIn message initiated a 5.5-month, founder-led M&A process, resulting in a strategic exit to Best Egg. This case study breaks down the 'bet the farm' decision to kill existing revenue during diligence and why selling was a better capitalization strategy than a Series A.

Market Context

What 2026 exits actually pay for SaaS

Miro had $600M ARR and 250,000 enterprise customers. They sold for $1.79B — roughly 3x revenue. Their 2021 investors took a 90% haircut on their mark. This is the current market clearing price for quality horizontal SaaS. If you are building toward an exit, you need to know which multiple category your business belongs in — before your board does that math for you.

Highlights

  • The M&A process, from cold LinkedIn message to close, took 5.5 months (June to December 2022).
  • Took revenue to zero during diligence to rebuild the product, a 'bet the farm' moment that relied on the deal closing.
  • Immediately 10x'd its debt facility post-acquisition, solving the capital constraints that prompted the sale.
  • Grew potential reach from 250,000 renters to 12 million by securing software partnerships post-acquisition.
  • The deal was structured as cash-and-stock with an earn-out achieved within 3 months of closing.

The full breakdown

After raising approximately $16 million for Till, a FinTech platform for flexible rent payments, co-founder Brady Nolan and his partner faced a critical strategic decision. The company had identified a massive growth opportunity by embedding its product with major rent payment software systems, which would expand their reach from 250,000 renters to over 12 million. However, capitalizing on this required a scale of capital that would have meant a grueling series of venture rounds. Recognizing the difficulty of this path, the founders opted to run their own M&A process, viewing an acquisition as a more strategic way to fund their next stage of growth. Nolan ran the process like a sales funnel, building a target list of 40 potential acquirers. The winning connection came not from a warm intro, but from a direct, tactical outreach. “I sent a cold LinkedIn connection and message to their new head of corporate development,” Nolan explains. “Timing is everything.” That single message in mid-June 2022 kicked off a 5.5-month process that closed on December 1, 2022. During this period, the Till leadership team made a high-stakes gamble. To prepare for the integration with Best Egg and their new software partners, they shut down their existing property management channel. “We took revenue to zero,” Nolan recalls. “If this doesn't close, it was like a bet the farm moment,” a decision made even more stressful by the cratering macroeconomic and venture funding environment of late 2022. The bet paid off. The deal was structured as a cash-and-stock transaction with an earn-out tied to a key partnership, which the team achieved within three months of closing. The acquisition immediately solved their capital constraints, allowing them to 10x their debt facility and secure partnerships covering 12 million renters. The strategic fit proved successful, with nearly the entire team staying on post-acquisition. Nolan concludes, “The risk profile is significantly different. From a risk return opportunity, just a complete no-brainer... 100% the right move and I would do it again every time.”

Who's on this episode

Brady Nolan
Brady Nolan
Co-Founder · Till

Brady Nolan is the Co-Founder of Till, a flexible rent platform acquired by Best Egg in 2022. With a 15-year background as an apartment developer and investor, he identified a critical market gap: the misalignment between renters' income schedules and fixed rent due dates. He co-founded Till in 2018 to provide renters with more flexible payment options. Nolan led the company through multiple funding rounds, raising approximately $16 million before orchestrating the strategic sale to Best Egg, where he now leads the flexible rent business unit.

Questions answered in this episode

References & resources

Hosted by

Jason Kirby
Jason Kirby
Host · Founder, Thunder.vc

Podcast host, angel investor, and serial entrepreneur with 4× exits ranging from small businesses to VC-backed tech companies. Jason has been personally involved in over $100M in transactions and now helps founders close their next transaction at Thunder.vc, from pre-seed rounds to $100M exits. He coaches founders through their next major transaction and gets the deal done by introducing them to the right people in his network.

Apply to work with Jason

Full transcript

welcome to episode 40 of fundraising demystified today we have Brady Nolan co-founder and chief growth officer of till a consumer lending company that raised $1 million before getting acquired by beste if you want to know about the process of selling your company this episode is for you Brady shares his journey of raising money for till in their early days with just a problem statement the challenges of building a monoline consumer lending product and the importance of building trust with investors Brady also highlights the decision-making process behind the acquisition and the benefits of joining a larger lending organization we discuss valuable advice at length for Founders in detail including the importance of nurturing relationships with investors how to do it and considering strategic options for company's growth as a reminder to get notified of our weekly podcast and newsletter Please Subscribe at join. thunder. VC again that's join. thunder . BC now on to the show welcome back everyone welcome to fundraising demystify today we have Brady Nolan with us co-founder and chief growth officer of till welcome to the show Brady Jason thanks so much for having me excited to talk I'm excited to have you as well and today's gonna be an interesting story as you can talk about not only raising money for tail but ultimately selling it to to best EG and how you're currently operating it pte can you give the audience a little bit of background on you and how you co-founded till absolutely yeah so um I kind of have two phases of my career I was a apartment developer and investor for 15 years kind of on the institutional side of the market so building big multi- hundred unit aping communities around the country working with the big companies in the SP space to to manage those properties and I met my uh co-founder of in until as we were both kind of transitioning out of the institutional rental housing world he was the chief operating officer for one of the early institutional single family rental funds think backbacks full of cash on the courthouse steps in 2011 coming out of the great financial crisis they bought a few thousand homes and he had to figure out how do we manage all of these uh kind of scattered site rentals so he and I both had experience in rental housing had had seen what was happening with the renters incomes were not Rising anywhere nearly as fast as rent so rent was becoming more and more of uh of each renter's uh cash flow each month and property managers on site had no tools to individualize how they they worked with renters when that renter had a challenge paying that rent and so that was kind of the problem statement that we had been living in the first stages of of our careers my partner went then when they sold that fund he went to work for a fintech fund that shared a similar investor to um their their rental housing fund and so he was looking at the world through fintech but with the experience of being a property manager and starting to see like man there are some ways that we could use fintech to solve some of these challenges that we were having and our renters were having at the individual level and so that was really kind of the Genesis of till uh uniquely we we started this business with with like really without any idea what the products would ultimately become but a really deep understanding of the problem statement and we we kind of Jo together and started throwing some things against the wall to see what would stick in terms of product to solve that problem no it's awesome and I'm I'm glad you kind of shared you know the the back history there and you can kind of walk us through you know what you did with with till and kind of where you guys took it and and why you ultimately raised money and kind of what that experience was like raising money sure so we actually raised money before we had any idea what we were going to do we raise money off of the problem statement and uh we found a really supportive incredible investor uh both at that point to take a chance on us and very supportive throughout the the Journey of building till uh who said yeah I believe this is a big problem and I think you you guys are as good as any to go and try to solve it and so we we ultimately started playing around with products we had this idea of a loyalty program to incentivize uh renters to to prioritize their rent payment and what we tried initially was we called it the rental loan and it was essentially a a loan of uh up to one month's rent and the associated charges a one-time loan for folks that were already behind already late on their rent and the alternative is a late fee charged by the property late fees are often L latees are highly highly punitive and so often exacerbates the chance that the renters fail and so we were trying to give the reder an alternative where they couldn't make that payment at the beginning of the month Red's most rers biggest expense it's due on on the first of the month completely decoupled with how they get paid um so it's challenging for a lot of folks the stats are everywhere half the country's paycheck to paycheck more than half have less than $400 in savings rent is $800 billion a year in the United States it's a really big big problem um and so we we started with this product it could be repaid over up to nine months with no prepayment penalty what we saw was kind of really interesting most of the users didn't really want to pay us back they were already behind they were already delinquent so this was a a negative selection it was really challenging product but we we saw a subset of users who were performing really really well and their behavior was all the same they borrow they applied borrowed we one of the interesting things of our products we pay the the money right to the property we don't give it to the renter so we know that it's going to pay rent and they borrowed we paid their rent and they paid us back in that same month and they did the same process again the next month in the next month and what that was telling us is these are folks that are just trying to solve this like intram month cash timing challenge rent again due in full on the first it's the biggest expense and it drives the entire Financial month for that renter I have my car payment due right after then my cell phone then insurance and all these other expenses but the way the timing of when cash is coming in when I get paid doesn't line up with all those expenses so let's break up that biggest expense that happens first to give us more breathing room to then make those those other payments more reliably throughout the month and then kind of everybody wins the property management team wins because they're getting that rent in full and so that's the the product that we ultimately uh pointed towards and have been focused on since that was we started the business in mid 2018 it been focused there since and you know before we hopped on to the call You' mentioned you guys have raised about 16 million before getting acquired by bestag uh you had that early investor that was willing to bet on you you know kind of at the idea level which you know is phenomenal it's always one of those things where in you know a lot of Founders are jealous of where they wish they could have that but sounds like you were already kind of in the world of investment Capital allocation and uh so it sounds like you had some relationships already kind of established which is you know the number one way of raising Capital but um you know walk us through the the fundraising Journey so you kind of secure the capital at the early stage and then kind of move on from there uh kind of walk us through the different stages of raising capital and and how you deploy that Capital sure and then maybe I'll be front running this conversation a bit but I I don't think that ever you know raising money so early was both a gift and a uh something that we constantly had to manage we constantly we're setting value early we constantly to live up to the you know creating enough revenue and so we go raise the next round it was that hamster wheel started very very early but our product was and has always been Capital it's a line of credit it's a loan uh and so when our product was Capital we needed to have Capital to lend out uh we were so early and just trying to build a like some early learnings proof of concept that we couldn't go and borrow we didn't have a track record enough yet to borrow so we had to raise Equity capital in the form of a precede round uh to then you know have a couple very very small team I would say we were a lowercase f lower or maybe uppercase F lowercase T fintech like no Tech um but just like again building proof of concept and that proof of concept was we needed money to lend out so uniquely for our product like we kind of had to um but it definitely allowed us to leave what we were doing to go take a chance on this uh on this big big problem statement and I think most importantly it aligned us with this investor who ended up being incredibly supportive throughout the entire Journey which I think I've already said twice and and we'll kind of come more into Focus as we have this discussion but money is money's out there and you know I think when when thinking about raising money the other aspects of who is investing in you is probably even more important than the check that they're writing this guy was incredibly supportive incredibly strategic and you know we would not have been able to get to the outcome we did without that kind of core Flagship early investor and so you know in most cases yeah you didn't have the track record so you couldn't raise like a Deb facility which would be more accustomed for what you guys would approached to you know with this model I guess you know got that initial preed how much did you raise in those early days oh I think it was like a million dollars and how much of that was used to turn over and Prov provide as capital to your customers oh man good question probably half I can't exactly remember um but we you know our product turns very quickly it's only outstanding for 30 days so we're able to do a lot with not a lot of money not a lot of debt to lend we're able to service a number of customers and get a lot of of learnings without a a huge lending pool no that's awesome um and so you raise about a million you get off the ground you start cycling through that that money what ends up happening after in in terms of you know subsequential rounds you know coming out and just kind of what's the overall performance of the business yeah so we grew our product has always been a B2B Toc product there's there's always a channel partner between us and our end customer the End customer is the renter uh initially that channel was big institutional property management companies and so we were growing really really quickly when we aligned on that rental loan as that initial product in hindsight makes sense we are transferring the landlord risk onto us for no cost to the landlord so there's really no reason that we shouldn't have grown that channel really really quickly and at some point probably mid 2019 we went and raised a true seed I think we raised I don't know I can't remember five6 million something like that in a in a seed round um because we were growing we had great logos the big big known property management companies uh were were working with us to for us to offer this product to their renters we were learning how to convert that channel into actual customers how to engage the the property managers to help us do that um and we saw you know growth really accelerating and then we sat and saw that behavior I mentioned that though we needed to kind of rethink the product into a more recurring use to to give those folks that were using it that way like a like a better experience not have to reapply every month make this more like a a true payment tool instead of just a onetime loan and so in Fall of 2019 we said all right we're going to build that product and we're gonna our product team put the calendar together and scope the project and we're going to launch that product initial pilot in March 2020 and great so off we set and second week of March the world shuts down and all of a sudden we had never done any marketing we had never the only go to market was me calling property management companies I we started this business I'd never heard of a CRM I mean I'm like we're just we're real estate guys kind of figuring this out and we had probably 100,000 units of housing that offering this through maybe 30 40 different property management companies and all of a sudden in a week I had three and a half million units of housing operators call to ask us if we would partner with them for that for the loan product because they're terrified it's co they can't charge late fees they can't evict they have no idea what's going to happen they're thinking that their collections are going to go to zero and so they're looking to just transfer risk and Moss to us um and so all of our risk advisers said don't put any Capital out pull the product back and we launched the the flexible payment product that I was mentioning but we launched it without a balance sheet so we were essentially managing these the payment plans for these properties who had to offer them because again they couldn't charge a Ley and they couldn't evict and so it was interesting we didn't scale that product as fast as we could have if we still were had the balance sheet component we fronted the money but it gave us a lot of learnings on how renters would pay in this kind of more flexible Behavior collectors were really good and so in June of 21 we relaunched our balance sheet we raised some additional equity in the form of our uh of a note and we went out and got a debt facility to support that and like off we went growing again like pretty rapidly through that property management company Channel yeah it sounds like a great way to going to be the right place right time solving a huge pain uh it looks like it came out unscathed with you know the option of selling to to best EG so let's kind of transition to that so you kind of built this product you grow you found a couple growth leevers got some good channels uh for growth which you know message all founders find channels that work uh uh that's seems like exactly what you did as a chief growth officer so walk us through kind of the the exploration of the best EG acquisition kind of before it C it into the actual result like what was what was going through your head what was the relationship prior how'd you build that relationship sure yeah so my my partner and I my partner David is our uh CEO and runs our business unit at best EG he and I had throughout the evolution just like lamented how challenging building a monol line consumer lending product can be and at some point the product should live inside of a much much bigger scaled lending platform the the onus of looking on when we started to look for at that potential option was we we were evolving our goto Market strategy from Distributing through the property management companies where there are about 20,000 that control the 25 million institutional housing units redel housing units in the country into partnering with the major scaled software systems that offer the digital reped payment experience for the same 25 million homes there's about eight systems versus 20,000 landlords so each of those potential Partners has significantly more scale and we started to have those conversations because we wanted to offer this well we wanted to partner them to access that scale but offer it as more of an integrated uh payment option for the renters that were using the product and immediately those systems got it we' built we have one competitor we' built together this is a real thing flexible rent flexible payments for rent was here and the systems wanted to to offer it next to a and debit card and credit card is a way for rers to pay rent and so independently the our scale was going to go from I think when we sold we had 250,000 renters that could use the product pretty quickly through these Partnerships it was going to be 10 12 million with the first couple Partnerships and we never could have like navig maybe never not is might be a bit too fatalistic but it would have been extremely difficult Capital markets challenge to navigate like raise a series a go big get a bigger de facility raise a series B go get a bigger de facility and that was even before late 22 early 23 when the capital markets for early stage companies cratered with interest rates rising and so we believed we're in these rooms with you know public software companies engaged in Partnership dialogue with like at that point thousands or tens of thousands of dollars of cash in the the bank as we're going of going towards like potentially raising an A and it just was like became very clear that that was going to be a very difficult Capital markets challenge we had a bunch of Partnerships lined up that if we went and exited and sold to build the company build the product inside of that a bigger scaled lending organization we would solve our Capital markets challenge overnight and we could just focus what was best for the product which is let's get it out let's make sure every you know in our mission of every render should have the opportunity to pay flexibly and so we had been engaged with series a conversations we were uh engaged with one uh investor in particular and it became again clear that we were going to let's let's start to have some conversations and look into a sale and we ran the process ourselves and it was really like we used our advisors friends to kind of build a Target list and I like ran an outbound strategy like literally ran it like a sales funnel and reached out to about 40 potential acquirers that fit the bill of online consumer lending platform um best bank Partners you know scale to enable us to fit inside of it nicely and service this this growth opportunity um best egg I had not heard of them they came through uh a friend of ours who was the cro of another large lending platform and like hand to God I sent a cold LinkedIn connection and message to their new head of corporate development she had recently started they had recently raised a lot of money in early 22 and I just like happened to hit her when she was looking on she was on her computer had LinkedIn up timing is everything and we connected and like immediately we knew that this was the right home for us and it fit their initiatives in terms of raise some money to do some Acquisitions same mission same customer profile incredible group of people uh so it all fit a cold email message not even email LinkedIn I'm sorry cold LinkedIn whole LinkedIn message landed you an acquisition to what appears to be a pretty great outcome uh for all involved both for you know the company and and kind of the future Prospect of the company for everything you kind of mentioned as to why you explored an acquisition but you know you doing your prospecting and looking at opportunities you know that right time right message you know had you needed or messaged best AAG a month earlier maybe it wouldn't have you know got to WR person um but such an important thing but also you know you had to have a company that was worth acquiring and build something that was you know a real business and so on but uh you know in terms that Outreach I do love these stories and hearing kind of how these things ultimately come together and and this definitely might be the tagline for the the podcast you know Cool C uh LinkedIn message get you acquired um so let's uh let's kind of talk a little bit about this process in terms of you know helping the audience understand in terms of timeline okay so he sent uh the head of Corp da newly ired you know a message on LinkedIn you have a meeting things look great and you start marching towards a process how long did that process take what was involved in that process and kind of what were some of the scary moments where you thought you know is this actually going to happen or not because often that's the case yeah well the process was I think probably sent that message mid June of 22 and the acquisition closed December 1st of 22 it's about 5 and a half months um I think the the scary process was less so the scariest part of the process was less so about things with best egg it was more about the macroeconomic environment and the Venture funding environment were cratering Consumer Credit in most Cycles is is always like the first thing to go and that is what we do and so we're we we there was a couple things that happened during this process one we believed to win we had to focus on this embedded system partnership Channel which means we completely cut the property management company Channel while we were going through the acquisition process we we were a lot best EG bought into it but we didn't have a the deal wasn't closed so I I literally had to break up with about 80 channel partners and you know probably 10 plus thousand users we we dropped we took Revenue to zero and we gave our product and Tech Team six months nine months to build this embedded product we had two partners that were we negotiated while we were going through the acquisition we'd been working with them um and you we told them about the acquisition they they obviously were excited about the heft of uh what we were to become versus what we were at that point from a financial perspective and like we essentially negotiated or partnership agreements to sign concurrently with closing of the acquisition our product is unique there's only 12 times a year can be used to pay rent and so what we call the rent cycle is highly operationally intense which takes like 10 days of the month in terms of all the funding and money movements and enrollments and all that so it gives our engineering team like 20 days out of the months to really work so they love this because they got 69ine months unencumbered with no r Cycles to to to work and so it was really about we we had the confidence to make those moves because best egg was doing everything that they said they were going to do so in terms of like what was stressful about the process or what was hard about the process it was not from the best egg perspective they were wonderful there was a really well-run acquisition um they ran a great a great process partner who um who's our CEO and we kind of transitioned the like I went kind of developed the relationship he got to took it and executed the acquisition um all that was wonderful the stressful part was we're taking Revenue to zero in a like outrageous macroeconomic and Venture funding environment so like if this doesn't close this's like a bet you know a bet the farm moment and we just were very open with our team everyone bought in and you know kind of rallied around this as the as the as the rallying cry that is such a like as as someone that's been through him and and helps companies found you know work through this process it's such a scary thing to see Founders kind of make this gamble especially the market environment it's also it's like have you tried to straddle multiple options you might not have had enough of a choice to you know succeed on yeah so it's like bet the farm was maybe the only choice and you know it seems like it worked out but um you aent tell Founders like don't you know as much as you want to work towards the outcome of the exit you know if you have the resources and ability keep your options open but you know in this case it seemed like you guys made the made the right choice for your circumstances which it's a very hard pill to swallow especially at the moment um you know shutting down all those Partnerships and everything it definitely it was a that was we built some really great relationships with some really wonderful Partners on the property management company side they were challenging conversations to have uh but it was like pretty clear to us that there was only one way that this product should be offered and you know we I think there was some clarity in in in that decision making process our team bought in and you know again all of this at the end of the day boils down to people and the people on the other side of the acquisition transaction we had built trust with them and they bought in and so I think you know it was uh there was probably there were definitely some stressful days during that period but when you when you've built that level of trust across your team and with that potential acquirer it made it a little bit easier yeah as I mentioned often in the show it basically always comes down to relationships and you know building that trust and and openly communicating back and forth in real time with your credential Partners or acquirers or investors and and being transparent all along the way ultimately allows for these kind of bet the farm type moments to to work out um so it's been over a year since the acquisition you know how has the deal kind of instructed H you're you obviously stayed on you're still there uh it sounds like things are going well but kind of what how what was the orchestration of the deal and in terms of just how how did you guys March it toward the finish I believe there's an earnout uh and how has that worked over the last year or so how how are you feeling about it we feel great I mean it's it is um everything that best egg promised everything that they built up in terms of the types of people that they are the culture that we were joining has been has been true in Spades just a wonderful group of people who care deeply about their customers um who have a mission to kind of bring Financial confidence to those with limited savings it it fits exactly what we're doing with our product so we found 100% sent the right home we you know immediately like 10x the size of our debt facility we you know we're able to make people decisions that we couldn't make before we had the resources to partner we now have four of the eight major scaled software systems we'll have that those those four Partners serve 12 million renters we had when we shut down the land Channel we had about 200,000 units now our parts of 12 million we're negotiating three of the other four systems only because we have the scale of of best egg and the support of the the leadership team there in in in uh building this product our team is happy I think everyone but one team member uh is still here by choice um and the whole goal was again this was instead of a series a so we sold early and we sold to build continue to build this product everyone who joined Till There was a commitment to this mission that we're trying to that we're trying to capture and that mission has not changed uh as part of this transaction so there's a reason Beyond I want to be in an early stage startup or whatever it may be there was a reason that everyone joined and that reason has not changed as part part of beste um and so the yeah the the deal was a a cash do split U there was one earnout hurdle tied to uh an execution of a partnership that we hit in three months from closing so everything that could be earned has been earned um and we're you know I think importantly we were able to join a business that when you step back and look at its trajectory and where it sits in the market and the size of the market across all of our products opportunity to build value I think like the upside potential is probably as good as it was when we were at that point in time with till and the risk profile is significantly different so from like a risk return opportunity just a complete no-brainer uh and so yeah yeah I mean all those as we think about like why and structure and you know the incentives were there the structure was done was was put together well they've been wonderful postacquisition from everything from like certain elements of the deal that kind of we're still around to how they've supported the product and our team um so I got 100% the right move and I would do it again every time no that's it's not often I get the someone that kind of Rants and Raves post acquisition as much as you do uh so it's great to kind of hear these big success stories and kind of how they they cultivate out of you know building something great but then you know putting yourself out there trying to relationships and you talk about the cold LinkedIn message you know leading to what turned out to be a great uh outcome um what were some of the mistakes or I want to say the word regret because it doesn't sound like you have any regrets but like what were some mistakes or things you could have done a little bit differently along the process either raising money or selling the company oh it's a great question um I we made a ton of mistakes I'll I'll I'll kind of share I'll share three quickly two pre-sale one postale the first one is David and I first time like Tech Founders had like very little experience with like how do you build product and you know we knew the industry very well we knew the problem very well and a lot of times we just said like this is what we need to build we're our product folks like no that's not how you build products we need to go talk to customers understand pain points this is the process we need here's how we validate and like no no no we just want to run fast like do this and one bad way to build product and two it's frustrating for a product team um then it was like we were part of the The Venture process is you know we've got to hit Revenue growth hurdles to raise the next round and so we were constantly like making product related decisions for the wrong reason to like chase the next metric for the next fundraise versus like what do we fundamentally need to do next to like build the product from the right the right perspective so when we um when we kind of figured that out we rebuilt the entire way that we operated the business just like literally everything tore to the to the studs and rebuilt and became like pretty good operators because by driving a alignment and trust and Clarity across all divisions of the company and a syst that we still use today and that part of which Bess has picked up on some of the things that we that we've done so that was that was one you've got to be got to drive Clarity in decision-making across your leadership team and put people that you trust in a position to make decisions and tell tell you what needs to be done the second one was I don't know if this was mistake I don't think this was a mistake with the information we had at that time but um something I would have done probably differently is our our biggest competitor uh scaled faster during covid because they we pulled our balance sheet back and they pushed their balance sheet forward so they were able to capture a lot of property management company growth I think they got smoked on their I let me not say that I think I think they had some delinquency challenges that year which they worked through but it enabled them the ability to scale really quickly when the market was really nervous and really wanted a product like this that actually took the balance sheet risk uh so nobody knew at that point that we were to have $6 trillion dollars of liquidity in the economy and that like oh we had like some you know delinquency uh tick ups but nothing like it could have been and so ultimately I think they made probably the right decision from that perspective because it really uh like significantly step changed their Channel growth um where we were more conservative from that perspective so kudos to them um on that one so that that's a you know something that you know I don't know what the trajectory would have been differently for us had we made the decision we but nonetheless and then the third one um when we joined bessing I think absolutely like holistically the right um the right way to think about this the CTO had been at a major tech company for a long time and done overseen many many Acquisitions and he's like the best way to judge success is like how many of the team is still there after a certain amount of time and he said the the the biggest correlation that we saw was how quickly we tried to push in like full scale integration versus like how we make the acquisition and then we slowly integrate we let the company kind of run as it was we integrate the shared areas where we can and then learn and slowly integrate in and uh that's that's what we did I think you know for the most part absolutely uh was the the right way to go I think there were some places where we could have pushed some more integration quicker um but that's kind of a more nuanced nuanced thing I ended up like people were happy and people have stayed so overall like big success yeah I think that's the most important part it's you know it's always you can always kind of do the Monday Morning Quarterback but it seems like ultimately everything worked out and is going in the right direction and you I appreciate you sharing those those insights and your experience yeah I guess before we part what would be some parting advice to the founders out there that you maybe have raised some venture capital and are kind of in maybe a similar boat where they have to make a decision to go back out and raise another round or pursue an acquisition yeah a couple things one is I my partner David ran the board and the relationships with our with our investors at till like so well he was very open with challenges very communicative and it really engendered a lot of trust with our investor base so you know the entrepreneural journey is is hard and there's a lot of ups and downs for any company but that really built in a level of trust when we needed to go to them for support when things were down and so all like do everything you can to pull in your investors as much as possible make them a part of the journey and build that relationship with them because there will come times where you are going to need your existing investor base for support so that is like number one advice no matter what Avenue of uh continuing to capitalize the business you're exploring and then two I mean every business and every business climate is unique and so I you know I don't have like the magic piece of advice but we made the decision to sell because of like the Strategic value that an a specific type of acquiring business could provide us um so it wasn't just like about a Payday it was about how do we best so we looked at it as a fundraising you know how do we best capitalize this product for the next couple stages of growth and you know this was the clear the the clear like most strategic way to do that that's the decision we made and I think that you we got our team on board and so I would just give advice to of like what are your goals and what is like be look wide at how to accomplish those goals for your business and then you know I think you'll be very real with yourselves as leadership team and you know I think the the solutions will will uh kind of clarify from there I'm glad you mentioned that I think that's always what it comes down to in a lot of cases is good relationship with the existing investors and nurturing them the best you can and showing that you have you're doing your absolute best and taking on your fiary responsibility of you know the driving towards the best outcome of the company and maintaining that relationship with your partner uh co-founder David uh doing that and enabling options for you you know down the road because of those relationships I think it's a valuable advice for for Founders to keep in mind as they consider their options uh moving forward so um Brady I appreciate you being on the show appreciate you sharing your story and sharing this you amazing outcome that uh has seemed to create a growing relationship with your choire best EG and your team uh where can the team learn more about you or sorry where can listeners learn more about you uh and what you're doing at best EG I am on LinkedIn Brady Nolan um and I love to connect and build a relationship so anybody who's listening feel free to connect and would love to chat uh bestegg.com uh there is a flexible rent page to learn more about our products uh those are probably the the two best places all right well really appreciate it Brady and thank you for being on the show Jason you're awesome I love what you're doing and happy to be a little part of it thanks so much thank take care thanks for listening to the show today we hope you learned something valuable and if you did be sure to let us know in the comments or by hitting that 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VC we provide a free tool to help you identify which VC family offices or lenders are the best fit for you using raai it will save you a ton of time from chasing the wrong investors and since launching our free tools Founders that have joined our Network have gone on to raise over $1 billion do in financing again you can find these free tools at thunder. VC and as a reminder we release new episodes every week so stay in for by subscribing to our newsletter at join. thunder. BC again that's join. thunder. BC and if you or someone you know has recently raised around and want to share your story please email me at Jason thunder. BC and that's our show we hope you enjoyed it and we see you next week