Exit Stories: Recent Episodes
GrepBeat
Exit Stories features tech founders, buyers, and sellers from the Triangle, North Carolina and the Southeast to tell their stories about raising capital and selling their startups.
This program is produced by GrepBeat and hosted by Kevin Mosley of Jurassic Capital.
Thanks to Vaco for sponsoring season two.
In this episode, host Kevin Mosley chats with Katy Jones, the former CEO of FoodLogiQ. Katy shares her inspiring journey from being the first marketing hire in a tech startup to leading FoodLogiQ and their successful exit strategy after being acquired by The Riverside Co. Learn about the challenges of launching SaaS products and gaining insights into the dynamic world of tech entrepreneurship.
Special thanks to Robinson Bradshaw for sponsoring this season. It is a law firm with a passion for helping startups with offices in the triangle, Charlotte, and Rock Hill, South Carolina.
On the season 3 finale of Exit Stories, Pendo Co-founder Eric Boduch joins our host Kevin Mosley.
For those unfamiliar, Pendo is a software company that helps clients collect data on how customers use their products. Eric recently exited the company to launch his own startup venture studio, 24 & Up, in early 2022.
During this episode, Eric talks about his early entrepreneurial background, which includes selling ice cream on the beach, and how he took these lessons into the tech space. He talks meeting Todd Olson, who is now the CEO of Pendo, and launching their first startup, Cerebellum, a data integration software company, in 1999. They almost sold the company for $60 million, but the deal fell through because of the dot-com bust. Todd and Eric parted ways after that, but Eric stayed in the startup space.
They soon came together again to start what we know today as Pendo. Fast forward to today, Pendo is the second-largest unicorn in the Triangle and is valued at $2.5 billion.
On this week's episode of Exit Stories, Ascend Goals Co-founder Christine Nicodemus joins our host Kevin Mosley.
Ascend was created in 2019 as a simple goal setting app for high school students, but quickly evolved into something much more. Together with Reg Gabriel, Christine built the company into a student empowerment software platform that helps schools and mentoring organizations cultivate, track, and measure their goals and achievements. She talks about seeking acquisition opportunities early on and being acquired by edtech partner, Aperture Education. In 2021, the combined companies struck a deal worth $18 million with the largest school district in the country, the New York City Department of Education, which proved to be a major win for them. Aperture was acquired by Riverside Insights in May 2022. Christine also discusses working with an investment bank to sell the company, which included managing the IOIs and LOIs.
In this episode of Exit Stories, Karly Pavlinac, the co-founder and former CEO of WAAM, joins our host Kevin Mosley. WAAM was a digital training app connecting world-class trainers to individuals worldwide.
The idea came to her while she was working at an architectural firm and teaching paddle board yoga in Hawaii during the summer of 2017. From personal experience, she understood how difficult it was for fitness trainers to scale their businesses.
It wasn't an easy journey, but Karly was determined to succeed, even if that meant sleeping on a blow-up mattress in her parents' living room for two years. She discussed working with Cofounders Capital, recruiting celebrity trainers to join the app, and the lessons she has learned along the way. In 2021, Karly and her team discussed pivoting from mobile workouts to physical goods. That's when St. James comes along and acquired WAAM.
In this episode of Exit Stories, Ryan O'Donnell, the co-founder and former CEO of EmployUs, joins our host Kevin Mosley. EmployUs is a software company that aims to help employers get qualified applicants through referrals.
As a student at NC State, Ryan launched a startup called Pennies 4 Progress, which ignited his entrepreneurial spirit. He worked as a recruiter post-grad and quickly realized referrals were the most effective way to recruit. At the time, employee referrals were mainly tracked manually. So, Ryan created a tool to accompany his work, and help companies automate their referral programs. Alongside serial entrepreneur Jeff Stocks, he launched EmployUs in 2015. The company grew to over 100 clients across multiple industries, primarily medium and large companies. It even made NC TECH's Top 10 Startups to Watch list. Fast forward to 2021, EmployUs was acquired by Chicago-based Hireology.
In this episode of Exit Stories, Chris Romeo, the co-founder and former CEO of Security Journey, joins our host Kevin Mosley. Romeo is a lifelong cybersecurity professional who embarked on an entrepreneurial path. At Cisco, he developed the company’s security training program, the Cisco Security Ninja. It aimed to teach developers and engineers the basics of cybersecurity and secure coding. The high demand for such a program outside of Cisco led Romeo to resign in 2016, and launch the cloud-based platform Security Journey, which teaches developers how to improve security in their own companies. In 2021, Pittsburgh’s HackEDU acquired the company. Romeo shares the ‘Security Journey’ and what lies ahead in this episode.
On this episode of Exit Stories, Bill Spruill, the founder and former CEO of Global Data Consortium (GDC), joins our host Kevin Mosley. GDC is an award winning worldwide digital identity verification platform.
From being in the enterprise data space to joining AddressDoctor, Spruill shares how everything he learned prepared him for GDC. Early on, the company struggled to find product market fit, and after losing their sales lead, a decision was debated on whether the company should close. Nevertheless, he and the team set a simple goal: to grow 10% each month and see what happens. A few years later, in 2022, GDC was acquired by the London Stock Exchange for $300M, one of the largest deals of recent years to come out of the Triangle.
In this episode of Exit Stories, serial entrepreneur Robbie Allen chats with our host Kevin Mosley.
Robbie shares his journey in launching his website StatSheet, which transformed sports data into written content. In 2011, the company expanded to non-sports content and was renamed Automated Insights. Ai went on to produce over 1.5B pieces of automated content and release their natural language generation platform called WordSmith; they had customers like Yahoo and Associated Press.
In February 2015, soon after raising its Series B round, Ai was acquired by Vista Equity Partners. Robbie details how the company was able to make a successful pivot. He also explains why they sold soon after a fundraising round, and the patent technicality that saved the deal.
On this episode of Exit Stories, Greg Clary, the co-founder of Mi-Corporation, joins our host Kevin Mosley.
Mi-Co is a leading enterprise mobile software company specializing in audits, inspections, surveys and assessments. Clary ran the company as CEO until it was acquired by IdeaGen in 2021. He chats with Kevin about its' early development, its involvement with Microsoft and Apple, and how they grew their revenue by about 50% in 2020.
On this episode of Exit Stories, Neal Goffman—who is a seasoned sales, marketing and operations executive who specializes in startup success—joined our host Kevin Mosley.
Goffman served as the Chief Operating Officer at Vanguard Software, a global provider of cloud-based integrated business planning solutions, from 2016 and during the company's acquisition by Wolters Kluwer for $110M.
Goffman details exactly how he built their sales, marketing, and delivery teams, their channel partner program, and their “go to market” strategy.
Welcome to season three! In this episode, host Kevin Mosley talks with entrepreneur Brian Reale, who has more than 15 years of experience building tech companies. He co-founded and runs Durham-based ProcessMaker, one of the world's leading Open Source BPM & Workflow Software Suites. It is now available in 17 different languages and has been downloaded more than 1 million times. In February 2021, Aldrich Capital Partners invested $45 million in the company, taking majority stake. Brian managed to squeeze the nearly 15 year business journey into 40 minutes. Tune in to hear him discuss bootstrapping, meeting with financial advisors, OEM deals, relocating to Durham, and more.
Chaz Felix, co-founder and COO of Bronto Software, joins host Kevin Mosley—who is a former Bronto employee.
Chaz goes into detail about Bronto's bootstrapped story from 2002 to 2015. He talks about how his mindset shifted from scrappy startup to a scaling organization, and how all that work led to an eventual exit to publicly traded NetSuite in 2015 for $200M.
This is part II of a 2-part episode.
Chaz Felix, co-founder and COO of Bronto Software, joins host Kevin Mosley—who is a former Bronto employee.
Chaz goes into detail about Bronto's bootstrapped story from 2002 to 2015. He talks about how his mindset shifted from the scrappy startup to a scaling organization, and how all that work led to an eventual exit to publicly traded NetSuite in 2015 for $200M.
This is Part I of a 2-part episode.
Host Kevin Mosley interviews Tyson Nargassans, founder and CEO of Saylent Technologies. They talk about his entrepreneurial journey, from taking a leap of faith alongside his wife to fundraising right before the 2008 Recession to the twists and turns that led to an exit during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Host Kevin Mosley, along with guest co-host Paolo DiVincenzo, interview serial entrepreneur James Avery, founder and CEO of Kevel. The theme of today's episode is "Base Hits," the smaller exits that build experience and confidence before leading to bigger success later on.
Michael Ives, experienced CFO for PE-backed tech firms, joins Kevin Mosley. Together they walk through Michael's experience as CFO for Prometheus Group and Intelerad, both owned by large PE firms. Michael details what they look for in acquiring smaller firms and all the lessons learned on both sides of the table.
Paolo DiVincenzo, Co-founder and Managing Partner of Basis State, joins host Kevin Mosley. They run through Paolo's vast founding and exiting experiences with his own companies. Poalo also talks about his more recent endeavor with Basis State, helping sub-scale tech businesses find their strategic exit.
Silvia Aguirre, co-founder of Tax Technology Services (TTS), joins host Kevin Mosley. They talk about Silvia's journey co-founding TTS with her husband after seeing a consistent need in the tax market. She ultimately sold to tax giant, Avalara, and negotiated to keep the company located in the Triangle.
Richard Holcomb, Co-Founder of Q+E, HAHT Commerce, and StrikeIron, joins Kevin Mosley. They run through Richard's journey as a serial entrepreneur, from negotiating a killer deal with Microsoft to raising the most VC capital in the region, along with lots and lots of exits.
Dallas Romanowski, co-founder and former CEO of Performance Culture, joins Kevin Mosley. They talk in great detail about Performance Culture's acquisition by Kevin's Jurassic Capital in 2020, from building a long-term relationship to working through diligence to an eventual great outcome for all.
Glen Caplan, Partner at Robinson, Bradshaw, & Hinson, joins host Kevin Mosley. They talk about Glen's experiences and stories at all stages of a company's lifecycle, from formation to capital raising to ultimately exiting.
Host Kevin Mosley chats with Tom Simon, co-founder and CMO of Source3. Source3 was a company focused on digital 3D rights before pivoting to digital music rights – an industry near and dear to the founders' hearts – at the right time. They ultimately partnered with and exited to Facebook in 2017.
For the Season Finale of Exit Stories, Jesse Davis, longtime Triangle exec and former VP at Progress Software, joins host Kevin Mosley to tell Tales From the Other Side, giving valuable insight into how strategic corporate acquirers approach acquiring other companies, helping future Exit Stories subjects gain a leg up for the future.
Windsor Circle co-founder and CEO, Matt Williamson, joins host Kevin Mosley to share his incredible story from seeing a market gap at Bronto and turning that into a massively successful company with a fantastic culture that stood the test of multiple funding rounds and an eventual strategic exit to WhatCounts in 2018.
Steve Carnevale, former CFO of Global Software, joins Kevin Mosley as they talk about how transactions look from the CFO's perspective, including Geomagic's sale to 3D Systems and how Global Software went through two PE buyouts in the span of two years, ultimately merging into local acquisition giant, insight software.
Digitalsmiths' CEO and co-founder, Ben Weinberger, joins Kevin Mosley as they discuss Ben's journey from a dorm room in Illinois to following his now-wife to SC, then finally to NC as Digitalsmiths helped pioneer the way we watch TV today, ultimately taking VC money to take advantage of the market before exiting to a strategic corporate partner in TiVo in 2014.
Matt Schmidt, cofounder and former President of DZone, joins Kevin Mosley to talk about starting a company while still at NC State, bootstrapping over 15 years, and why he chose an investment banker to facilitate an eventual exit to a Growth Equity firm.
Steve Klein, cofounder and former COO of Statuspage.io, joins Kevin Mosley to talk about his journey as he and his brother went through Y Combinator’s accelerator, took very little money while growing quickly, and later were acquired by one of their customers, a newly-public Atlassian.
Doug Kaufman, former CEO of TransLoc, joins Kevin Mosley to share his entrepreneurial journey from getting his doctorate in social psychology to starting multiple companies before joining TransLoc, transforming them to a VC-backed growth company who sold only 18 months after raising to a strategic fit in Ford Mobility.
Nathan Shackles, solo founder and former CEO of Applicant Stack, joins Kevin Mosley to talk about how he built a company with solid fundamentals, ignored any labels associated with bootstrapping, negotiated strongly when he didn’t have to sell, and ultimately found a great strategic fit with Swipe Clock.
Anil Chawla, solo founder and former CEO of ArchiveSocial, joins Kevin Mosley to discuss how his cash flow positive and growing company bypassed traditional VC, eventually selling majority to Level Equity, and how he happily stepped aside as CEO as they gear up for the next stage.
Tobi Walter, co-founder and former CEO of Shoeboxed, joins Kevin Mosley to discuss how he navigated the end of a VC fund life cycle and ran a process to eventually find a very valuable strategic fit with PE-backed Earth Class Mail.