Staffing-industry veteran Will Gilbert co-founded Socium – a U.K.-based company supplying workers to companies that needed them – in early 2019. Within six months, Socium was generating more than 7 million British Pounds (GBP) in revenue. A coffee meeting with a former colleague in the staffing business led to an acquisition discussion and soon after, Socium [...]
Ian Silverberg wanted to get into the health club business and approached a former employer about buying his gym. As Silverberg did his due diligence, he realized the club was sitting on a real estate goldmine that would all but guarantee his exit would be lucrative. Silverberg went on to separate the health club from the [...]
Arik Levy had a problem with his shirt. As a Vice President at PNI Corporation, he needed a pressed shirt every morning. When Levy had time to finally drop off his used shirts, his dry cleaner was closed. He’d have to go days without clean ones – until a lightbulb hit. What if a locker system [...]
Tom Pisello built Alinean, a consulting company which offered a set of tools to help salespeople express the value of picking their solution. The business was cruising with about half of its revenue coming from recurring licensing fees and the other half from consulting when disaster struck the Pisello’s family. Pisello’s wife succumbed to a seven-year [...]
Back in 1996, Sunny Vanderbeck started Data Return, a business that provided website hosting to big e-commerce companies. They grew 40% every quarter leading to an Initial Public Offering (IPO) in 1999 and an eventual market capitalization of $3 billion. Then the internet bubble burst. Customers started failing and Data Return’s growth flat lined. Despite the effect the [...]
Think back to the last time you booked an oversees flight. Chances are, you travelled within one of the big travel alliances: Oneworld, SkyTeam or Star Alliance. Airline partners share a common system which is why your bag shows up in the right place (most of the time) even though you may have taken a set [...]
Used cars from leasing and rental companies were being sold at physical auctions. Kelly realized the wholesale side of selling used cars was ripe for transformation and started OPENLANE, a digital auction for fleet owners to sell their old cars. Kelly raised money from some Silicon Valley venture capitalists and went on to grow the company [...]
Mark Deutschmann started Village Real Estate in 1996 and grew his residential real estate brokerage to 350 agents and $30 million in revenue – then, he heard some disturbing news. One of his agents and five former colleagues had been secretly planning to launch their own agency to compete with Deutschmann. Rather than steeling for a [...]
Glenn Grant started G2 Technology Group which was in the business of helping website developers host their sites with Amazon Web Services (AWS). By 2018, Grant had built his company to 30 employees and was planning to grow further by acquisition. That was around the same time he began fielding calls from Private Equity Groups (PEGs) [...]
Tommy Berretz co-founded Texas Aquatic Enterprise (TAE) in 2005 to maintain commercial swimming pools for condominium groups, apartment buildings and schools. The business grew to more than 200 employees on the back of Berretz’s sales skills. That's when he hired an accountant to value TAE. Berretz waited patiently as the accountant ran the numbers but was [...]
