Cheryl Contee on Selling Attentive.ly
“This podcast takes you through the process of selling your business and finding out why the buyer wants to buy your business,” shares Sam Thompson a Minneapolis business broker and the president of M&A firm Transitions In Business. “The sellers were able to have the buyer share with them how the selling business fit in with their overall strategic plan.”
Cheryl Contee co-founded Attentive.ly along with Rosalyn Lemieux. Together, the partners offered a Software as a Service (SaaS) app that helped non-for-profit organizations perform “social listening”. Their offering was used by organizations to identify and drive engagement among their influencers.
The business was a success from the start, but thirsty for cash, so when social media companies started to tighten down their privacy settings, Contee and Lemieux decided it was probably best that Attentive.ly find a new home inside a large organization.
The partners ran a process to find a buyer and ultimately sold to Blackbaud, a NASDAQ traded software and services business specializing in the non-profit world.
There’s lots to learn from Contee including how to:
- Lower churn in your SaaS app.
- Evaluate an M&A professional to sell your company.
- Leverage the power of relationships to find an acquirer.
- Get an acquirer to reveal their product roadmap.
- Ensure an acquirer doesn’t decide to compete with you.
- Think about the four types of financial outcomes from selling your business.
- Avoid the biggest regret Contee has about her exit.