SPEAKER_00 0:00

Yeah, I mean I know most people listen to podcasts are probably gonna be like planning and selling a business and like my biggest piece of advice is get financial advice. Like get financial advice.

SPEAKER_02 0:10

Bradley Keenan is the founder and CEO of Deceminate, an employee advocacy platform that encourages staff, partners, and customers to become social media brand investors. Founded in 2016, Bradley helped pioneer the firm's growth. In February 2026, Deceminate received a strategic investment from Spotlight Equity Partners.

SPEAKER_00 0:32

The financial structure and valuation and all that stuff will always come into it. I think anyone who says otherwise is is lying. But I don't always think that people should just pick the biggest number because having been through a transaction that I didn't really enjoy post-sale, like that that difference can be worth your happiness for a good period of time. So as we started to talk to potential uh partners, the principal at Spotlight flew, he landed, uh, did a red eye, got a train from Heathrow into London, straight in the meeting, and you know, other people had just done Zoom calls where it's really impersonal. You know, they clearly wanted to have a proper human-to-human uh interaction for their benefit as much as ours, you know, to get a vibe, see whether we, you know, we were good uh good people. We went out to lunch and yes, there was chemistry, like we we we got along. Um and everyone says this, but they actually did it. Oh, we'll help you regardless. I had that so many times. You're like, oh well, you know, regardless whether we do a transaction, we're still here to support you. Like they were sending us leads introducing us to people before the deal closed. Um, you know, for me that was that was good faith, and certainly, you know, it wasn't for show because it's continued uh through through our first, well, I think we're at six months now or so.

SPEAKER_03 1:54

You're listening to the closing call, the podcast where we dive into the journeys of founders as they navigate the highs, lows, and pivotal decisions that led to the defining moment that we call the closing call. We're excited to kind of recap your journey at Disseminate along with the team and you know how we ended up getting to the closing call. I'd like to start actually with just the fact that Disseminate was built on one really interesting message that you had unpacked, and that's um, you know, employees are the most underutilizing, underutilized uh marketing department of a company. And so maybe you can walk us through, you know, how did you uh uncover that insight and where that led to the business you you run today?

SPEAKER_00 2:44

Yeah, so it actually goes all the way back to 2014. The business started way after way after that. But um I sold I had a business previously to disseminate a company called ETail, which I sold to uh a company who was then called Channel Advisor. They were a publicly listed uh tech company at the time. And as part of that transaction, I had a two-year uh two-year earnout, but there it was always the expectation that I was only going to stay for that two-year period uh in the strategic acquirer. And one of the ways that I saw that I could help hit my earnout was if I got their sales team to be more active on LinkedIn and start sharing some of our case studies, information about you know the products that they just acquired into the business, that would increase leads, which would increase the probability we were going to hit our earnout. And started reaching out to the sales guys saying, hey, we wrote this case study with Unilever or whoever. And then I just couldn't get them to couldn't get them to do it. You know, so I started you know writing it for them, putting it in a Word document, sending it to them. And this was around about the time that companies like Sales Loft and Outreach were gaining real traction. And I start was already uh thinking about what my next business would be. And you know, I thought about combining two things, and I thought, well, what about if you had outreach, like automated email, but you had that for social that you know put those two things together. And so it was actually me just solving a problem in my previous transaction that came to the idea. It actually transpired that this had already been done by other businesses in the past, I would say uh way too early. But it was like one of those dreams when you invent something. Uh I don't know if you guys have dreams you invent things either all the time, and then you wake up and you Google it, and then you realize that this is a thing that already exists and you're you're not that smart. So uh it was essentially like that. So I I sometimes claim I invented employee advocacy. Technically, I did, I just I didn't invent it first. Um, and then yeah, we were kind of confronted with that. We built a prototype, it'd already been done before, and then it was just really a question of saying, is that a positive thing or a negative thing? We saw it as a positive because it kind of proved the product market fit to an extent, and then it was just a matter of you know, going at it like a startup does, try and win clients and and build it.

SPEAKER_01 5:16

It's excellent. And you could definitely say you're the first one, I believe, to write a book about employee advocacy. Um do you know you you're uh you're an author on the side as well.

SPEAKER_00 5:27

Yeah, and you know what? We've actually done I might get that number wrong, more more than 2,000 copies, which I'm pretty happy about. And it brings in brings in leads. We get leads attributed to the book all the time. Um I will say, like, without being too British about it, I I don't go around telling people I'm an author, put it that way. Um it's a very, I would say it's more of a a field guide like help book for a very specific purpose. Uh my wife's an academic. Um, I don't think she would consider me an author, put it that way. Um But for the people the people that read the book who are running advocacy programs, we get loads of positive feedback. So that's essentially all I can ask for.

SPEAKER_01 6:11

Well, excellent. Um, really appreciate that that context and background here. Uh, you and Ryan obviously have been building this together from the start, you leading kind of the commercial and sales end and Ryan being more of the technical co-founder. How has that partnership worked over the years and what's the key to a successful co-founder relationship through the ups and downs of starting a business?

SPEAKER_00 6:35

Let me let me start by answering that question by telling you what doesn't make a good partner, and I can I can tell you this from experience. So I always use this analogy with people who have children that when you have one child and you get it right, you think you've nailed parenting, and then you have a second child and you realize the second child is completely different to the first. Businesses to me are exactly the same. So the first business in eTel had its own set of challenges. None of those challenges were were the same in disseminate, had its had its own set of challenges. One of the challenges I had in e-Tel, my first business, I founded that company when I was 24, I think. Um didn't have any capital, did it all on credit cards and uh, you know, just pure hustle, I guess. There weren't that many smart people who wanted to come work with me. So I found a guy, I won't say his name, but basically found a guy, we started working together, he was a bit quirky, but we kind of got along because we both were a little bit nerdy, like sci-fi and stuff like that, but we didn't get along. And that was the most stressful five years of my life because it got to the point we hated each other, so we couldn't we couldn't have conversations without there being conflict, we were just completely different personalities. So when I went into disseminate, because I had already had uh a transaction behind me, it I I I kind of had the benefit of time, I guess. Like I didn't have to rush into doing something, and there were two things for me like the product had to be great because I didn't I didn't want to be selling something that was subpar, and I wanted to have a really good relationship with my co-founder, like that was just I I really because I didn't want to I didn't want to not enjoy my life. Started off with uh one engineer who was a friend of mine, still a friend of mine. Um, but I just I over I overestimated, well, sorry, underestimated the task at hand, and it was just a little bit beyond him at the time. And then I said to another friend of mine, who's the best engineer you've ever worked with? And he said, Oh, this guy Ryan, he's in Kiwi, lives in New Zealand. I worked with him when he lived in London. And I said, Can I get a call with him? Because I'd love I'd love to chat to him and see if I can get him to join this new thing I'm doing. And at the time I lived in the Middle East, and he said he'll he won't move to the Middle East, he's he he loves New Zealand too much, and he just had a baby. Anyway, we had a call. It turned out that both our children have this, both our youngest daughters have the same name, um, uh, which is Aria, not like Game of Thrones, like the uh the Melody, like A-R-I-A, which is quite a weird name, and both our children had the same name. Um got along really well. Anyway, he he flew to Dubai two weeks after we had our first call with his family and moved immediately, and then we went straight into the Google um uh co-working space. It's called I don't even know if it exists anymore, actually. Um, we went straight into that, we just started working together. Our wives got along really well, our kids got along really well, so we were able to put you know those stereotypical all days in, and our wives were just having barbecues and having a great time uh and enjoying themselves, which which was awesome. Um, and we still get along now. I don't think we've had a disagreed on things, but we've not had any conflict since we founded the business. Um, it's just a personality thing. I I would be friends with Ryan if we weren't running a business together, and I think that that makes the difference. So I think if someone's looking for a co-founder, I would say if you get the ick, like don't get married. You know, like if you get the ick on date one, don't have a date two, just like wait until you find the right person.

SPEAKER_03 10:25

It just makes such a big difference. It's phenomenal advice. Luckily, Zach Zach and I have been friends since uh high school, so it made things a little bit easier, but I definitely resonate with that. That um it's much easier to to work closely with with friends that you really respect and and have fun with. Um, so that work feels a bit more fun than like actual work itself.

SPEAKER_00 10:48

Yeah, and I would say how it links back to like the commercials of things. I think one of the things I've seen in startups that have reached out to me, whether that's for like angel investment or what have you, sometimes companies just have too many co-founders, and there's so many personalities. Like I spoke to a business a few weeks ago, there's like five co-founders, and already they haven't even launched yet. Two of them don't get along. And I'm I'm sort of thinking to myself, you you're gonna have to get a huge valuation for you all to be happy, and statistically, some someone's gonna have an argument at some point. So I'm a big fan of simplicity, so I think you know two or three people is probably max, and you know, you've got to get along when things are hard because they're hard, you know, 99% of the time.

SPEAKER_01 11:36

So yeah, speaking of uh, you know, difficult situation to navigate, uh, disseminate was entirely bootstrapped. So you had no outside investors, just you, your wife, Ryan, and his wife on the cap table. Was there a conscious decision behind staying self-funded? And how did that shape your company's DNA and growth trajectory early on? Um, and then as you grew and gained product market fit?

SPEAKER_00 12:03

So I would say that we I mean, technically we were bootstrapped 100%, but because I had had an exit prior to that, I guess I was the investor and the founder. But in the grand scheme of things, we didn't have investment, like we didn't have the levels of investment that that some people some people get. But when it's your own money, like if you literally are spending, you know, investing in hiring over an engineer or you know putting an extension on the house. If there's that decision between you utilising the money personally or in your business, um, it it frames things in a certain way in your mind. So you you're very conscious of um how you spend money, where you spend it. And actually, I think it was a strength for us for for many years, and it was a coincidence that we're doing this podcast today because I was watching this YouTube video this morning where it was talking about the Dr. Zeus book, um, uh Green Eggs and Ham. Um, and that book was a bet between the publisher and the guy, I can't remember his name, who wrote the Dr. Zeus books, that he couldn't write a bestseller using 50 words. And this whole concept was around like constraints being a benefit for creativity because it causes you to like have absolute focus on what you're doing. So because we were bootstrapped, we didn't have the ability to get distracted with saying, Hey, we could go and build this other product, or we could do this, or I've we've never been able to hire the wrong person. So uh to date, I've done the final interview for every single employee in disseminate, um, that no matter how junior. And actually, it was a it was a net positive for us for many years. But there does become a point in the future where as you grow, there there gets this situation where the more successful you are, the bigger the cash flow swings become in the business. So you can actually be in a situation where you're too successful and it it becomes riskier the more successful you are. So I think it's a there's the there's a good time to do it. I I used to be one of these people that was against funding. Um I just think I'm against funding at the wrong times.

SPEAKER_03 14:21

Makes perfect sense. It was very evident actually in your customer retention and product market fit very early on. We looked at many uh different platforms in the in the broader employee advocacy, engagement, you know, marketing tech landscape, and the vast majority of them had core retention. You were um you know the exception with phenomenal retention, a clear ICP, an understanding of exactly what your customer wants and what should be on the roadmap. And so it's actually what drew Kaisen to want to work with disseminate. This is very clear that those constraints led to very you know scalable business economics.

SPEAKER_00 15:04

Yeah, it's been I I would say that the retention is just I don't really think we necessarily thought about retention until we started going through the process. So if we didn't really have any benchmarks, we have this I guess it's a cheesy phrase that we overuse internally, which is it's not always your fault, but it's always your problem. So we treat it in that way. So when we're coming up with C How C S work with customers, they obsess over the customers being successful. So they're not waiting for the customer to pick up the phone to say, hey, I have this problem. They're actively monitoring customers' accounts and will reach out to customers. Uh, and we've actually found it's a problem the other way, which is really interesting. We've started to do uh a smaller, I won't say a startup package for what we do, but it's a it's a lower price point entry into our products, so smaller businesses. And I think some of them actually get annoyed with us, and and they're like we we're almost like love bombing them a little bit, and they're kind of saying, could you just leave us alone, give us the tech, and we'll we'll do it ourselves. Um so we've had to yeah, turn down the love bombing on the uh on the smaller companies, but for enterprise customers, they don't they don't want you to give them more work to do, so we just try and do the heavy lifting for them.

SPEAKER_01 16:24

Speaking of uh another attribute that drew us to disseminate as well as other investors is your enterprise customer base. So you started serving smaller companies to landing names like McKinsey's and the Nissan's and other global brands of the world. What was the inflection point where you realized you had genuine product market fit at the enterprise level?

SPEAKER_00 16:47

I would say COVID was a big shift in how people viewed what we did. It was a really interesting, that's probably not the right phrase, not a really interesting time. It was, I guess it was a it was interesting from a perspective of at the start of COVID, nobody knew what was gonna happen in business. So I remember having this conversation with the the team at the time, which may have been, I don't know, 15 people at the time, and saying, like, you know, there's there's this thing, bit people are talking about it, people are going on furlough, etc. etc. And we need to be mindful of that. Like if we just stand still for the for the foreseeable future, that would be success. So don't get bummed out if we don't grow in the next, you know, however long this is going to take. But what happened was there was all of these businesses that pre-COVID would be primarily face-to-face meetings, sometimes people dialing in, you know, with uh, you know, the old the triangle things on the desks, you know, like sometimes people dial in, but people would be in meetings, people would be at events. So people's personal brands, their perception, even internally, was in real life. It was that's how that's how we knew each other. And then we had this period of you know, one to two years where people couldn't go to events anymore, and companies started saying companies started saying, How can we be in touch with our customers? Obviously, LinkedIn had a huge growth during COVID as well. So actually, there was loads of customers that we had been doing groundwork for uh to get into them and have them as customers pre-COVID that then started calling us, and that was where we started to get bigger and bigger enterprise customers. Um, and that's just continued and continued now. So, like the majority of our customers would sit in the you know 5,000 plus employee mark. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 18:40

It's it's really interesting, almost somewhat of a blessing in disguise, but at the same time, we noticed you had quite the foresight on AI native feature sets as well and and functionality. Um you were way ahead of your time in terms of the other products that existed in the in the market, um, as it relates to kind of uh you know smart scheduling and voice recognition. Like help me understand how did you guys land upon the AI native feature functionality that you did? And was that in uh reaction to serve the enterprise customer base? Was that some foresight you knew they they needed?

SPEAKER_00 19:19

It was actually the the magic uh what would be the word that the the secret source that everyone has access to, but that we would have wanted all the way back when we started playing around with this idea in you know 2016, 2017, because the I I separate employee advocacy into three stages of uh its maturity. Like stage one, pre-disseminate, there were companies that were doing this, uh, as I said before us, and the pitch at that point was if we give a single message to all of our employees and they all share it, and they all say exactly the same thing, it will be on brand, everyone will be happy, and we'll get everyone to say it. And that was success. And then people did it, and then companies went, hang on a minute, that looks a bit weird. Like 200 people just said the exact same thing on LinkedIn at the exact same time. It was obviously written by marketing, and then when we started, uh you know, when we realized we had competitors, we were trying to find ways to differentiate ourselves against our against our competitors. So we started giving people multiple options they could choose from. So you could have one that was a little bit more extroverted in its tone of voice, but the the challenge with that, there was this the more variations you created in the text that you gave the employee, the more work marketing had to do. So the better you had to do more work for it to be better, and then we layered in different titles and it just compounded, where you've then actually got to get this post into the hands of the employees, you've got half hours work to do. And then Chat GPT was released, and then there was that point in time where you know the the nerds put myself in that group, were playing around with it, going, Oh my god, this is gonna be amazing. But my first thought was, oh my god, we can now we now have this access to this engine that we can say create me 300 variations of this. Uh, and that was really when the Chat GPT API first came came out. And that went really well. But then the challenge with that moving forward and where we're at now is that people are more aware of AI generated content. Um, it typically underperforms content that's uh you know authentically written. So now what we have the ability to do is for people to essentially train, I won't say train their own model because that's an exaggeration, but essentially create their own preferences around their own tone of voice. So First of all, the company can create their tone of voice. So they say, create me 10 variations of this post caption in this our company's style, how we you know, the types of words that we use. And then once it reaches the employee, the employee can say, I write like this. I write in British English. You know, I don't like emojis. Like my marketing uh VP of marketing loves an emoji. I don't. So yeah, you know, his will have emojis in it, mine won't. Uh you know, he might be a little bit more extroverted in his tone of voice, mine won't. So now we have this thing where the company are providing content to the employee, but when they're sharing it, they're actually sharing something which sounds like them. Um, and so for us, AI was just like it just plugged so many uh gaps.

SPEAKER_03 22:45

Yeah, what a what a tailwind. I mean, talk about perfect market timing as well, as you you all stayed ahead of sort of this this AI wave, um, which is fantastic. And uh it's very cool to see how you fine-tune that feature functionality over time to be able to replicate the personal voice of any one individual at an enterprise as well as the voice of the enterprise, which is which is great.

SPEAKER_01 23:10

Yeah, I definitely I recall during the process too, you know, those AI-enabled features while still having a human in the loop to be able to review is something that the market as well as other strategics really um thought as a key, saw as a key differentiator versus you know some of these bigger or larger, better funded platforms like Hootsuites, Prout Social, Everyone Social. And speaking of those competitors, um, you know, there are much larger, better funded platforms yet. What allowed your such a lean team at Disseminate to out-execute some of these bigger players?

SPEAKER_00 23:55

I would say that there's different reasons based on the different types of competitor. So I would say, you know, the Hoot Suites and Sprout Socials of the world, and there's there's a number of other social media platforms like them. I mean, they're great. They're they're they're solid platforms, they've been doing it a long time, you know, they know what they're doing. But for them, advocacy is a it's an it's an afterthought of something that goes into social media publishing. It's like social media publishing first, and wouldn't it be great if your employees also shared this post? So I think if that's what you want, there those platforms do really well. For us, we were we came at it from the perspective of solving the problem for employee advocacy for companies. And that meant that because we were solely focused on that that problem, there are so many things that our platform does that will solve a headache for the person running uh an advocacy program. So, like a good example of it would be if we think about lots of little small things, being able to change the copy that you're giving someone for a specific individual in the company stops your CEO sharing a post because maybe they're busy, they're not paying attention, sharing a post, talking about themselves in the third person, that's a headache. You know, if Bradley Keenan starts saying, our CEO Bradley Keenan did this, so it's gonna look really silly on LinkedIn. So if you compound those types of problems and magnify them by a thousand, that's why somebody would use our platform versus uh you know, uh a Sprout Social or a Hootsuite. And then the more focused employee advocacy platforms, I just think it's just a matter of vision, um, culture in the business. Uh, you know, I can't really comment too much on what the uh the other guys do. All I know is that if you hire a good engineer, they can be 10x better than a bad one. So employee count and funding to me doesn't necessarily translate to output. You know, for me, hiring the right people and having the right vision is more important than that.

SPEAKER_01 26:09

Yeah, it sounds like you know, as a smaller organization, you were allowed to move quicker and really listen to the voice of the customer versus some of these bigger players that move a lot slower. So that that was definitely very apparent from the feedback in the market um as well as your customer base.

SPEAKER_00 26:27

We have a tool we use uh uh called product board. I'm sure it's people will be familiar with it. But it's great because it gives our customers the ability to submit ideas to us and then also vote which ideas are important to them. It kind of democratizes the the your product strategy. It has a downside because if you focus only on that, then you you don't do the more innovative things. But just by doing that and showing customers that you're listening to them and help shape the product. I was convinced our minimal viable product was I I actually think I once said this is so simple, we'll never need to add another feature to it. And you know, we've still got three years worth of ideas in the in the queue. Um, so it does show you that it it never ends.

SPEAKER_01 27:14

Yeah, it's like I I know you're a watch guy, so it's it's like us uh watch connoisseurs telling Rolex to release the Coke bezel, but it'll never happen.

SPEAKER_00 27:24

One day.

SPEAKER_01 27:26

Uh well, excellent. One one other question that might be a little repetitive. Uh in the 12 months leading up to the transaction, disseminate was growing at 46% with over 105% net revenue retention and turning profitable. What clipped operationally during that time to drive that acceleration before launching the process?

SPEAKER_00 27:48

The the biggest factor to it, outside of moving from a single rep uh situation where we had, you know, we we always had one AE and then we had uh an AE trying to perform, but never really getting there. We had we operationalized sales a lot more, bought in a professional uh guy by the name of Neil, um who only actually did a year with us, uh, left on amicable terms, still friends, um, but he came from a much bigger organization and he started to put in place systems in Salesforce, you know, quotas, really building a sales team. And then when Joe took over from Neil, it just continued to grow. So now we and before the transaction, we had a multi-rep team running on quotas. Um, I wasn't being, you know, I wasn't as involved in sales, which the moment I stopped being involved in it, the the growth shot up. So you know, think of that way, if you will. Um and the other big factor was moving customer success from being purely a support function into it being a revenue function. Uh, Emily joined and she made some changes in the team, but the biggest change she made was shifting the culture in CS from it being not moving from support to revenue, but making it a revenue-generating support team. Um, and that that had a huge impact on our on our growth as well.

SPEAKER_03 29:19

We have to tip our hat off to you. You did a phenomenal job executing on on all of those kind of new hires and deploying those people in the best way possible where they could be successful themselves. And I know that's not easy running my own business. You know, you you gotta provide the support and resources for folks to actually be successful, even in a bootstrap manner. So it's it's very impressive because what what we noticed as we started to get to know you is you know, the business was accelerating and all these things were going right, which gave us a lot of faith in in being able to represent you well and and have a successful partnership. So got to tip our hat off to you.

SPEAKER_00 29:56

Yeah, it's a it's a cliche, but like hiring the right people is the best thing you can do. You can always, let's say you can always fire the wrong people, but like try and hire the right people. And I look for a certain quality when I hire people, especially senior people, in that they will be autonomous, they won't require me to like micromanage them. And that's because I'm a terrible manager. So if I was to micromanage them, we wouldn't be very effective. So I try and hire people that will just go and get the job done without me telling them to do it. Uh and that just filters down into the rest of the rest of the company.

SPEAKER_03 30:34

Well, it worked swimmingly. Um I I know as we started to get to know you in early 2025, um, we weren't the only ones knocking on your door. Um, there was other investment banks, other potential buyers. Um, what sort of led you to start to think, hey, maybe now's the time to evaluate a transaction other than you know Kaisen's encouragement? Would love to hear your thoughts on you know timing in your mind?

SPEAKER_00 31:01

I think there was multiple factors in it. So I'm yeah, I'm lucky that I've been I've been through the process twice. I know a lot, most people don't get to do that. So it's nice to be able to compare two two situations. But in any startup, the moment you reach a certain point, your inbox just starts to get flooded. As no doubt, you guys, you guys get involved in that as well when you're when you're pitching for business. But you get some, you get you'll get investment bankers approaching you, you'll also get other companies, and you will get value-buying, roll-up type businesses approaching you. So you actually start to tune it out because it becomes too much noise. So you actually get so many of these messages, you don't know which ones are real. And we were approached by a strategic acquirer, and it clearly was real. So we had a started a conversation, and to be honest, uh like because I'd because I'd sold a business to a strategic acquirer before, and I'm not advising anyone not to do that, it's a very different experience to continue in the journey because the hard work in an acquisition from a strategic acquirer is the post-merger integration. It's like bringing two businesses together, you're typically going to be the smaller one. Um, and I learned loads when I did that with channel advisor, but the journey for me in disseminate, I just didn't feel like I was ready for disseminate not to be the star of the show, I guess is what I'm saying. And so we had strategics talking to us, it then turned into two strategics, and then I started saying, well, actually, if we're gonna have conversations with strategics, my preference is actually go to go uh the private equity route, we should bring somebody in. And I didn't actually go into my inbox, I spoke to somebody else in the industry and said, look, you know, without blowing smoke, you know, I was like, who are the good guys? Who can I have a conversation with that are actually going to tell me the correct information? I don't want to be told the company's worth X just to sign a piece of paper to realise, you know, a year later it's worth Y. Um, and then we had a conversation and you guys were complimentary of the things we were doing right, you were critical of the things that we were doing wrong, you know, in a constructive way. We did reference calls and uh spoke to an English guy, can't remember his name, um, but he was saying that you you guys, he was basically telling you guys to go to bed. He was like, I during the transaction, I'm messaging them, you know, it's all hours of the night, they're still messaging me back. So for me, that that that's a that really helped pick an advisor because I'd done it before and it wasn't that experience. Um, yeah, and then it was a matter of finding the right partner that we can continue the journey on that's gonna be a net positive for the business, as opposed to it just being like the business being broken up and put into another organization.

SPEAKER_03 34:12

Yeah, greatly appreciate that. We certainly have a culture of leading from the front and being in the trenches with with the team. And I know Ryan uh really enjoys some some of those sleepless nights to get you know a deal across the the line and especially to really impact um you know founders' lives as they go through uh sometimes the most impactful transaction of their of their lives. Um but I I I'd love to understand, you know, why why choose a US advisor versus UK advisor? Did you contemplate that at all, or did you always know, like, hey, we we probably want a US buyer, so maybe I'd love to understand the the decision there I don't I don't think there was a decision necessarily to pick a a US maybe there was actually we assumed that the majority of our interest would come from the US.

SPEAKER_00 35:04

So maybe that was a maybe that was a factor, but I I mean I'm probably an atypical founder, but gut feel is usually what I go on. So if I get bad vibes, even if logic points in a certain direction, I normally step away because I I always think the future me, if it goes badly, will look at the past me and be like you should have trusted your gut in that situation. So I don't necessarily think I intentionally picked a US-based firm. It was more yeah, it's more culture around like work ethic, commit commitment to the outcome. And yeah, some you know, I don't want to put I don't want to put you guys in the same category as other types of businesses, but you know, you can speak to a few different businesses and get the ick, and uh advisors and lawyers fall into that category sometimes.

SPEAKER_03 35:57

Yeah. I would say we we had um pretty amazing chemistry because uh yourself and and the team were up at all hours. Um, you know, I I have to tip my hat off to you as well in terms of how responsive you were throughout the process. So and and your willingness to you know be on late in the evening if we need to be on US time or you know, um early mornings if we if we need to be on at that time as well. So um yeah, I I would say uh you know, similar to choosing an advisor, you'd also really trust your gut on who the right partner was for disseminate to select and and do a transaction with. Help us walk through you know your decision-making process there.

SPEAKER_00 36:45

Yeah, do you know what's it's a similar situation? Obviously, finance finance the financial structure and valuation and all that stuff will always come into it. I think anyone who says otherwise is is lying. But I don't always think that people should just pick the biggest number because having been through a transaction that I didn't really enjoy post-sale, like that that um that difference can be worth your happiness for a good period of time. So as we started to talk to potential uh partners, Spotlight flew to England. Uh they all came, or not all of them, but uh four people flew. Uh the principal at Spotlight flew, he landed, uh did a red eye, got a train from Heathrow into London, straight in the meeting, and you know, other people had just done Zoom calls where it's really impersonal. Um, you know, they clearly wanted to have a proper human-to-human uh interaction for their benefit as much as ours, you know, to get a vibe to see whether we, you know, we were good uh good people. We went out to lunch. Uh we intentionally sat people in certain places, like without kind of like making it too formal, but you know, we made sure their operating partner for uh customer success was sitting with Emily, um Michael, who's one of our advisors, uh, got along with him really well. And yeah, there was chemistry, like we we we got along. Um and everyone says this, but they actually did it. Like that, oh, we'll help you regardless. I had that so many times. You're like, oh well, you know, regardless of whether we do a transaction, we're still here to support you. Like they were sending us leads, introducing us to people before the deal closed. Um, I flew out to the US, spent a week in the Berkshires with Michael and uh um this uh kind of it's kind of a uh corporate event, but it was more of like an off-site. He was introducing me to loads of people, and the deal hadn't closed. Um, you know, for me that was that was good faith, and certainly uh, you know, it wasn't for show because it's continued uh through through our first, well, I think we're at six months now or so.

SPEAKER_01 39:05

Definitely, and then and every process is I would say an emotional roller coaster. Did you feel that during this time period having an advisor um to help you get through the the gauntlet that a process can be compared to some of your other exits that you may not have used an advisor for, would you say that was helpful and how did that uh call it shape your experience?

SPEAKER_00 39:30

There's actually two, probably two parts to the answer to that question. So the there was this similarity between my first transaction and my second one. Actually, the thing that I they have in common, if I had done it myself, I would 100%, I'm not sure, never been sure of anything more than this, I would have burnt it both times. I would have 100% walked away from both transactions. Um just because you need someone there to talk you off the ledge because you're busy, you're trying to run a business, you know, you might have a HR that issue that day, you're of course your business is still growing, hopefully, during the process. And no matter how good your relationship is with uh an acquirer, you're going to have things that you don't necessarily agree on while you're negotiating. And the compounded stress of trying to manage it myself, whilst I I would have upset people, they would have ended up getting a bad vibe from me because they would have you know that my stress would have come across. So, in both situations, my advisors, you know, you guys and also uh the company that represented my last transaction, the deal wouldn't have happened if I hadn't have worked with them. So um, yeah. Uh does that answer the question? I think there was a second part to it, but I can't remember what it was. Remind me.

SPEAKER_01 40:51

No, yeah, that that that was perfect and answered our question there. So appreciate that and appreciate the late nights that you know we're both feeling stress. I I think in every single process, as you mentioned, there's going to be multiple times you feel that. Um, and it and it's good to have a team around you to help you get through those tough times. So uh and that that kind of applies to to every facet of life as well.

SPEAKER_03 41:14

Um I'd say we appreciate Elliot and and Ryan bringing the same kind of level of maturity. It could show that in in your leadership, Bradley, that you know, everyone uh kept a level head even when negotiations got a bit tense. And uh that's not always the case. So we definitely appreciate working with you and the team and how how level-headed you were throughout the process.

SPEAKER_00 41:36

I mean, I appreciate you saying that, Shane. I think we both know that it's not 100% true. Um do you know what it was?

SPEAKER_03 41:43

I actually do hot head moments.

SPEAKER_00 41:45

Yeah, but then there was there was nothing that was like, you know, you know, people slamming their fists on the table. It's more just a uh a um endurance. Uh there's an endurance component to it because it's like when someone says to you, I uh oh, I've just I just had an offer on my house, we're gonna exchange and we're gonna exchange and sell it in a in a month. You just if you've ever bought or sold a house, you know that isn't gonna happen in a month. So these things do take time, and I think you just have to have patience. But most founders aren't very patient, I'm not very patient, so you you can get up frustrated with that. I think what was good for us is because I had done it before and done it, I was it badly, but due diligence in my first transaction was so stressful because it was a publicly listed company, they were asking us for things. Uh, I had to go and find them every time they asked me for something, and this was pre-Google Drive. So you're you're literally going through a filing cabinet trying to find an employee contract and all this stuff. And so when we started disseminate, we were really pretty organized with our documentation. We did our infosex, you know, ISO, so that forced us to be um vigilant with uh where we store things. So due diligence was actually quite but it well, it wasn't that bit wasn't stressful because it was literally just like, well, here's everything that we have because it's all in this in this drive.

SPEAKER_01 43:13

Definitely. Um and is it you know, there's a moment in every transaction when the deal starts to feel a little bit more real than before. What do you remember most about your closing call?

SPEAKER_00 43:26

Do you know what it was such an anti-climax? Um without without talking to like both I keep mentioning both transactions, there's this thing, and like I remember when I remember when I was a sales rep before, and I always always wanted to start my own business. Like it was like uh an obsession, a compulsion. I was like, I'm gonna start my own thing, I'm gonna grow it, I'm gonna sell it, it's gonna be amazing. I got married when I was like, I think we were married when we were like 24, I had my first kid when I was 25, and that was when I started. A startup just after my first child was born. So when you're driving around, you're doing late nights, you you daydream, right, about this moment in time where this thing's gonna, you know, like you guys probably don't have it. The English English TV show only falls in horses. There's this thing in there where he says, like, this time next year, we're gonna be millionaires. And like I'd always dreamed about this scenario where um, you know, you'd sign the piece of paper, you'd cheer, it would all be like that. The first, the first transaction we did, my wife wasn't there because she was we she lived in, we lived in Dubai. I came back to the UK, and that was a signing all the papers and it was done. But then when I called my wife to say, like, congratulations, this has happened, our dog had attacked our cat and like viciously, and the cat was in the vets, like having its face stitched back on. So this moment I dreamed about of like telling my wife that our life's changed and blah blah blah, was just killed immediately because we were too worried about our cat surviving. Right. So that time was kind of that time was killed, and then we went to this bar and then we bought champagne and blah blah blah. And then when I went to pay the bill, my card got declined because the money had gone into my account, my bank had freaked out, shut down my bank account, so I actually had access to no money, and I'd just taken us all out for this meal, so I had to borrow money from one of my friends that was at this thing, and then in this transaction, because there were because there were different time zones going on, and there was like, without getting into the the complexities of it, there were different pieces of paperwork that needed to be signed at different times. I was actually having dinner with two of my friends who live in Switzerland. I'd flown over to Dogsit for my friends, because they're lovely people, and also they have this lovely uh apartment that overlooks Lake Logano, and so I thought I'd have a nice, relaxing weekend. So we were expecting the deal to close, I think, on the Monday. So I was going to be home in time for the Monday again with my wife, celebrate the deal going through. But for some, I and I can't really remember how this happened, but a piece of paper got signed pre-us thinking it was going to get signed. So then our who in Philip, who's now our chairman, he called me and he was like, you know, congratulations, like this is done. And I was with my friends, and I didn't want to make a big deal out of it because I didn't want it to be like a big, like, showy off you type thing. So we're sitting having dinner, I'm talking to Philip, and I'm like, Oh, that's good that's great, yeah, yeah, cool, cool, yeah. So I'll maybe we'll catch up on Monday. And then so I hung up on him and continued the conversation. And I I just didn't didn't tell my friends it had happened because I wanted to process it, and then I had to phone Philip and say, I'm really sorry that it must have sounded like I was disinterested, but I just I I so I both both times complete anti-climax. Um, but don't regret either of them. It's just uh, you know, when you imagine a thing's gonna be like a certain thing in your head, it it doesn't play out like that.

SPEAKER_03 46:53

I'm sure it does for some people, but see that's where you and Ryan differ, Bradley. I'm pretty sure Ryan took the whole team out to the bars what's this close, so yeah, I can I can be.

SPEAKER_00 47:07

Yeah, I got I got some uh I got some photos, so uh I I felt like you were celebrating on my behalf, so I I appreciate it.

SPEAKER_01 47:14

Definitely. I know uh yeah, for for myself and probably you two at the end of these transactions, you know, the the best thing or uh what sounds the best is just rolling up in your bed and getting 12 hours of sleep. So that's what I was excited about.

SPEAKER_00 47:30

Yeah, it was like that, but I mean it was it was it was weird because it was like back to it it wasn't like it happened and then you know people had this stream of, I don't know, saying love into the sunset. It was it was back to work the next day, continuing doing what we're doing, but now we had uh we have uh partners working with us. So it changed the dynamic a little bit, but it didn't it didn't feel like a before and still doesn't feel like a before and after transaction type thing.

SPEAKER_03 47:58

Um so yeah, and maybe I need to has um has has nothing changed, no no new watch, new car, or would love to hear anything you've you've purchased since the transaction that feels a little different than you did before or just a bigger savings account before, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 48:18

Um yeah, I mean I know most people listening to podcasts are probably gonna be like planning on selling a business, and like my biggest piece of advice is get financial advice. Like get financial advice. Uh the first time I saw my business, I lived, I lived in Dubai, like I was young, I I turned just turned 30. You know, like I thought that I thought that the money was like it was infinite money, I could do whatever I wanted to do. So, you know, you buy buy a car, you buy another car, you you bought this big big house, women pool. Uh it's beautiful, but ultimately not not like didn't make me happy. It it it wasn't as much of a big a deal as I thought it was. So this time I was like, well, I kind of done all done that, which sounds a bit pretentious, but like I'm just gonna invest the money. Like it just it's pretty boring. Um life, I live in the same house, uh, drive the same car. Um haven't I I bought a Seiko uh while I was in Tokyo, um just as a memory from from the trip. The only thing I've bought is I bought the chairs behind me. Uh uh always wanted an Eames lounge chair, so I bought that. Um, but yeah, nothing, nothing really too too glamorous, to be honest. I wish I could give you a better story.

SPEAKER_03 49:35

Yeah. Well, with this deal, you could fill the whole house with with those chairs, I guess. But it's it's good you you sought out financial advice and and really are investing at this point. I guess that's another question is you know, what what would you advise other bootstrap founders that you know are starting to prepare for a transaction and thinking through it? Um, or what are some of the best pieces of advice you would give?

SPEAKER_00 50:01

I the I I'm gonna say something that they're just gonna hear all the time because I listened to so many MA podcasts as we were leading up to it, and yeah, getting your shit together, like your documentation, getting a deal room put together that is complete. You people say it all the time, and I I guarantee, I mean you you guys can tell me, like I bet most people ignore that advice. Um, but it's so stressful if you don't have like your yeah, your proverbial shit together, because it just that compounds. So like have that stuff done, and then you can still do your day job whilst also selling the business. Because if you take a foot off the gas while you're selling the business and your growth goes down, you can end up in a situation where you your growth's gone down and you haven't sold your business. Um, you know, you've started to dream about the I don't know, the the chair you're gonna buy or whatever. Um, and you have to have a team around you that will continue to run the business if you're you know absent uh at times. So, but I think any business that's gonna be valuable needs to have those things anyway. So it's not like do them just to tell the business, it's just general good practice.

SPEAKER_03 51:14

One thing we certainly appreciate about Disseminate is not not only did you have your documentation in order, so us preparing the data room was was simple, but you know, a lot of companies underappreciate pipeline management and sales and marketing KPI reporting. And you you had reporting across every division of Disseminate, and that's a lot of what we help companies do in advance of a transaction. So it's certainly helpful when we were working with you that there was a lot of raw material and and reporting already in place for us to work off of.

SPEAKER_00 51:47

Yeah, it's one of these things where like data is I I like to keep it simple so you can actually act on data. I think sometimes you can have too much of it. I think the hygiene of it is the most important thing, so that you can actually run queries and get insights from it. Sometimes people have loads of data that just doesn't connect. Um, but again, I can't take credit for that because it's not my not my uh not my strength. I'll give Elliot full credit for for that.

SPEAKER_01 52:17

Yeah, definitely what what helped us in the process is is your books being clean and having someone like Elliot there um where we already had a strong foundation where we weren't spending months on end trying to clean the books and get ready for a transaction. And I feel like that actually helped us later on because we were able to prepare your materials early with the plan to launch later in the process. And then when you said, hey, I think now is a good time for X, Y, and Z reasons, we were able to immediately just launch the market, I think, within a week or two. So I think everything worked out uh you know perfectly in terms of timing, and you know, it it's a testament to you know how the business was before we even got engaged with you.

SPEAKER_00 53:02

And we've since, you know, we now have a CFO and uh she joined the business a month ago or so, and Elliot's over the moon because you know they've been working together, and she's like just so complimentary of like the work he's put together. And this is someone who, you know, uh I think he finished university, I can't remember, but uh yeah, he did finish university, but um, I don't think you might be saying I don't think he he I don't think he came out of university with like um the best best grades. So to have a CFO kind of like look over his work and say, actually, you've done an amazing job there, I think he's he's super, super pleased with that.

SPEAKER_03 53:40

I'm sure he is. Um, you know, a lot of founders I think um h hesitate to proceed forward with a transaction because it's a bit scary what could be on the other side. You know, are they gonna get along well with the partner? What does post-transaction look like? Should I stick around, or is it better that I transition myself out? You know, what what has been your post-transaction life journey thus far?

SPEAKER_00 54:05

I think for the first couple of weeks, Elliot and I, you know, we we continued, we're doing our day job, but we were saying that we felt like we were on holiday because we were only doing our day job, we weren't also uh doing the transaction, which just felt like our workload went went down. I think if you pick the right partner, the you can get that one plus one equals three. I'm sure there's situations where it can be, you know, one plus one equals minus five. Uh but again, if if you find the right partner, then it does become a net positive. So they've introduced us to customers, uh, companies that have now become customers, some of pretty significant size. What they also have is operating partners in each discipline. So where as a as a founder, like I always said to people, like, I'm aver I'm I'm average at loads of things. And that means I can do a bit of marketing, I can, you know, I can I'd say sales was my profession before this. I I can't write any code, but I can do like a certain amount. But eventually your leadership team get better than you, or you should hire people better than you at those disciplines. But the great thing is when you have the operating partners coming in, my leadership now have partners that know their stuff, so they're able to bounce ideas off of somebody else who's been through that, you know, maybe taking a business from you know 10 to 50 million as an example. So it just broadens the network. And what I know was said pre-transaction, you're always like, you know, will that actually happen post-transaction? But it became really evident that Spotlight invested in me. They not they invested solely in me. What I mean is they invested in having me in the business. So they got me a business coach, uh, they're supported me. So all of that stuff compounding. Now I don't have the transaction to do. I can actually focus on being better at running a business. So for me personally, it's uh it's a growth opportunity to continue to grow a business inside a private equity run owned business. Um, and obviously I rolled over a significant amount of equity, so still have decent skin in the game. So um so yeah, I I think if you get the structure right, then it works, it can work great.

SPEAKER_03 56:32

Yeah, we're we're thrilled to hear it's going so well. And hopefully that second bite of the apple is bigger than the first.

SPEAKER_00 56:39

Well, this is it. Well, Sukan always says like a few more apples rather than another bite of an apple. So, you know, the plan is uh the plan is a few more apples, but you know, I think it's a you know it's probably a five to seven year journey. Um, but you know most of us are pretty young. I say most of us, the majority of the team are pretty young, so um, so yeah, we're excited about continuing.