In 2012, Spencer Thompson founded Sokanu, a career assessment platform aimed at replacing the outdated assessments that existed at the time.
Sokanu’s “Career Explorer” quickly became one of North America’s most prominent assessment tools and was adopted by the U.S. Government and top colleges around the world. The assessments were a huge hit with job seekers, yet Thompson struggled to generate sales.
Rather than fix his revenue model, Thompson looked for an acquirer who would value his enormous user base. Soon after, Sokanu received a lucrative acquisition offer from Penn Foster, an online educational institute.
In this episode, you’ll learn how to:
Utilize “dominance theory” to prop up the value of your company.
See patterns in historical data you can capitalize on.
Discover the hidden value inside your business.
Determine what terms are negotiable when selling your business.
Define why your company exists.
Find an ideal buyer for your business.
Listen Now
More About Spencer Thompson
Spencer is the founder of Sokanu and is now the CEO and founder of Prelude. Prelude is a technology company that hardens cybersecurity defenses.
Organizations of all sizes can use our tools to run continuous security tests against their systems to discover areas of weakness to fix.
We do that in a way that’s safe, transparent, and integrated with existing defensive tools to allow organizations to get ahead of real incidents before they happen.
Definitions
Earn-out: Earnout or earn-out refers to a pricing structure in mergers and acquisitions where the sellers must “earn” part of the purchase price based on the performance of the business following the acquisition. Source.
Due-Diligence: Due diligence is an investigation, audit, or review performed to confirm facts or details of a matter under consideration. In the financial world, due diligence requires an examination of financial records before entering into a proposed transaction with another party. Source.
Letter of Intent (LOI): A letter of intent (LOI) is a document declaring the preliminary commitment of one party to do business with another. The letter outlines the chief terms of a prospective deal. Commonly used in major business transactions, LOIs are similar in content to term sheets. One major difference between the two, though, is that LOIs are presented in letter formats, while term sheets are listicle in nature. Source.
Preferred Preference: Preferred Preference means that amount equal to the sum of the Preferred Preference Per Share for all shares of Company Preferred Stock (including any rights convertible into, or exercisable or exchangeable for, shares of Company Preferred Stock on an as-converted, exercised, or exchanged basis) issued and outstanding immediately prior to the Effective Time, rounded to the nearest one hundredth (0.01) (with amounts 0.005 and above rounded up). Source.
Acqui-hiring: “Acqui-hire” transactions, which are particularly prevalent in the context of start-up technology-related M&A transactions in the U.S., focus on acquiring a company primarily to obtain its employees and their skills, in addition to other possible assets. Source.
Dominance Theory: A theory proposed by Denise D. Cummins that interprets specific social cognitive functions as adaptations to the exigencies of living in a dominance (or status) hierarchy. Source.
Links
Do You Know What the Value of Your Business is?
Take our Value Builder Assessment to get a free estimate of business value and see how your company stacks up against the 8 Key Drivers of Business Value.