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 [...]
Walk down Nashville’s Lower Broadway any night of the week, and you can hear aspiring artists belting out cover tunes from Elton John to Garth Brooks. In many cases, these musicians come to Nashville to be discovered but pay their rent using the tips they get by playing other people’s songs. Most are lucky to eke [...]
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 [...]
You’ve worked hard over the years as the owner of a successful business and you’ve decided that it’s time to sell. “No problem,” you think, “I’ve made a nice living with my business, so it should sell quickly.” Not so fast…..statistics show that of all the small businesses that go to market in the US, only [...]
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 [...]
Most company founders are good at the first stages of entrepreneurship. But in the phases that follow, they may only be average. Just because you have a knack for starting companies, doesn’t necessarily mean that those skills translate well into growing one. There are celebrated cases of founders who have successfully started and grown a business [...]
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 [...]
