Why My $169 Million Exit Led to the Worst Moment of My Life
The following is an excerpt from Module 1 of our digital course. Learn more about the full course and get started now.
It’s 2013 and I’m lying on the floor of my home office, looking up at the ceiling, and my entire body is overtaken with stress.
I literally can’t stand up. I’m in the middle of a massive panic attack, and it’s scary. I’m lying on my back, and I’m looking up at a ceiling fan just spinning around, what feels like in slow motion, above my head. I want to stand up, but I can’t. It feels like a giant muscle spasm has frozen my entire back and up around the side of my neck. Honestly, it was like a car drove over me and stopped with the front tire on the top of my chest, ready to just crush me. I’m frozen in place with my heart rate going faster and faster. It feels like I’m in a complete sprint, and I’m just lying still on the floor.
I start to worry. Am I going to have a heart attack? I’m 31 years old. This doesn’t seem likely, but it doesn’t seem like my heart’s slowing down either. I’m completely overtaken by anxiety. This is a moment I’ll never forget, and the clearest thought I had in this moment was a question I was asking myself: “How did this happen? How did I get here?” I’ll share more of that story next.
I want to ask:
What drives you as an entrepreneur? Can you visualize the end of your journey as an entrepreneur? Where is it going to take you? Why did you become an entrepreneur? What were you hoping it would deliver? In your mind, you have an idea of the world that you will be creating for yourself and others through your work as an entrepreneur. What does it look like? Just take a moment and sit in that reality. What is it like? What will you do when you get there? When you reach this amazing, incredible place that you can visualize. This goal that you want to get to by being an entrepreneur.
Maybe it’s just having freedom, or maybe it’s proving to the world that you’re worthy, or that you’re smart enough or good enough. Maybe it’s making millions of dollars. Maybe it’s having a huge impact on your industry or changing the world. There is no wrong vision for where you want to go. But, each of us has that vision that drives us.
So, when you get there, what will you do? What will you change when you arrive? Will you retire? Is that the endpoint? Will you sell your business? Will you keep running it? What will you spend your time doing when you get there?
I want to tell you a little bit more about my background…
I started my first company in 1997. At the time I was obsessed with the dot.com tycoons in magazines like Business 2.0 and Wired and Fast Company. These leaders were young. They were influential. They looked more like me than regular businesspeople that I knew, and I wanted to become one of them.
As I started, a vision began to take shape. I was a high school student and 17 years old at the time. I came up with this vision that I wanted to be able to provide integrated software and hardware solutions to solve problems for small business owners. Yeah, that’s a pretty nerdy goal for a 17-year-old kid, but for me it was a path to gaining relevancy in the business world. It was a way to use the tools that I understood at the time, basic html coding and basic software coding for websites to solve problems for other people. This was my vision, the world where I mattered and where I could solve people’s problems. It kind of makes sense looking back on it. I grew up in a small town with less than 2,000 residents in the mountains of rural North Carolina. I didn’t exactly feel like I was supposed to become the next internet millionaire, and so that was my goal.
Four years later, I’m running a small software development company as a college student, and I get the opportunity of a lifetime. A restaurant delivery service needs a new web application to run their entire order processing system; the entire operations of their business. I take the contract and four weeks later the company transitions to the new software that I’ve created. I turn it around that fast. I’m so excited, I probably didn’t sleep at all. My dream has come true. I’m 21 years old, and I’ve built a piece of software that now runs an entire company. I’ve accomplished everything I ever set out to do. Life is really good, in this moment.
Fast forward two years to 2003, and I’ve now created an email marketing software company called iContact. We’re adding customers who pay a recurring monthly fee to use our software, and we’re starting to hire employees. Our third year in business, we pass $1 million in revenue. We get an offer to acquire our company for $6 million and we turn it down. We think we can go bigger. Revenue continues to grow quickly.
It’s now 2006. I’m 25 years old. On paper, I’m a millionaire, but in real life I’m living in a 400 square foot apartment, I can barely afford to put gas in my car, and my parents are still paying for my car insurance. Clearly, I’m just getting started in life, and I still don’t have relevancy in the greater business world. I’m helping my clients and I’m making enough money to survive with the help of my parents, but no one knows who I am. I haven’t become one of these people that I’ve read about in magazines. I haven’t proven enough to myself to feel worthy.
Around this time my business partner and I realize that most high-growth companies in North Carolina never sell for above about $100 million, so we set our sights on doing whatever it takes to try and get there. We passed the opportunity to sell the business for $6 million. We look at what it’s going to take to grow revenue to get to a value where we’re worth more than $100 million so we can sell the business at that level.
Then years later in 2012, a public company comes along and offers us $169 million for the business that we’ve built, and we take the deal. The business is sold. This is a massive and immediate paradigm shift in every possible way. It’s over. I now have more money than I would need to live several lifetimes. I’m 30 years old, but in that moment, I feel at least 60.
I’m completely exhausted.
If you’d like to start tracking and improving your mind as an entrepreneur, consider trying the Founders First app free for seven days. This could be the moment that starts moving your life in a new direction, and you’re joining over 3,000 entrepreneurs who already work together to make our tomorrows a little easier than today. Come join us.
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