The Exchanges

Q So now I want to hear about, uh, Studio. So what made you, um, decide to build that product? Um, what problem was it solving? Um, do you want to just take an overview of that business?

A Let me show you the story because it's, uh, I think it's a nice story and together with my, with my partner, right? Like we, like we are true in this business, uh, literally. Um, so first of all about, about the business, what we created is basically an agency. It's nothing extremely disruptive. It's an agency for helping students mainly from Africa to pursue their higher education in the U S uh, completely financed. Um, so we were basically tackling and helping students that are brilliant and very talented, but didn't have the monetary resources to actually go on and study abroad. Um, so what we did is partner with a lot of universities in the US and Canada and partnering with a couple of financial institutions that were going, going to help through student loans, uh, for these students from, from Africa and some countries in Asia to pursue their master's degree, specifically in, in STEM, um, and basically changing the life of these students, right? Like we're Sending students from, from Kenya, from Nigeria, from Pakistan, for example, to the US, to a master's in cybersecurity, to a master's in data science and like, ah, the, the jump in their lifestyle that they were getting after that is massive from a salary maybe that they were getting in Kenya or Nigeria of 300 dollars per month to the salaries that you can get being a, you know, graduate in data science in, in the US. So…

AI assessment note: “It's an agency for helping students mainly from Africa to pursue their higher education”

Q sell your business. You have to point out the good part. Also, the bad parts, too, because some buyers will look at that as growth opportunities, it sounds like, and not having an AI component was a growth opportunity. Um, but tell me a little bit more about the buyer. Um, how did you land on him or her being, um, the right person to, to move forward with? So,

A Let me shout out to him. This is amazing. His name is David. Um, he is from the US, uh, living all his life there. And you know, like at the beginning, like when he sent the letter of intent is like, he's the CEO of an AI company. What would the, why would an AI company be interested in us? Right. So in my mind was like, no idea how this fits. Um, because what they, what they do is Uh, it's, it's AI for education, for writing, uh, college essays, all this kind of stuff. Um, so after we had that conversation with him and stuff, like, it made a lot of sense for them, both for implementing the AI in our process, but for utilizing all of their use surveys in another revenue pool, right? They, they are, um, making revenue of the students throughout their college experience, but once they were done with their bachelors, they lose that subscription. Um, Money from the students. So after that, monetizing one more of those students by helping them to find the studies abroad was perfect because their user base are not based in the US. They're based in Asia, in the Philippines and Singapore and Malaysia. So helping those students to go and study in the US after they graduate from their bachelor's. So it was, it was, it was fantastic how, how that happened. And he appointed the CEO to run that critical of the business, um, Amazing guy, Canadian, doing fantastic. So that was a bit of the be…

AI assessment note: “His name is David. Um, he is from the US... it made a lot of sense”

Q Let's move on to the, the good part. I want to talk about the, the acquisition story, um, the most, obviously, I'm biased, um, but how did you find Acquire.com, and, um, what made you decide to To sell the business?

A You know what it was? It was an Instagram app. That's how I found that about Acquire.com. Never heard about Acquire.com before. Never even knew there was a platform in which you could list your startup and people will buy. You know, I mean, I, I studied entrepreneurship and innovation in my, in my bachelor's degree, but, uh, you know, you, you always come on, even like having two years of experience creating and raising funds and everything. I always ask to myself, how do you sell a business? How do you exit the business? And this is like, you need to go to your main biggest competitor and get acquired only from, from that one. So it was very uncertain for me. So kind of, you were the ones that were educating me in that process. And that was, that was mind blowing, right? So I, I, I entered the website super easy to sign up, create. So like, I immediately called my partner. Hey, there's, there's this thing. I know we didn't even consider it about selling, but why don't we list ourselves In the platform and, you know, see what happens. So we read our profile. That was 10 minutes with the basic stuff. Um, and we left it there. We left it there for, for a month. Um, we were getting NDAs, people interested, some questions here or there, but it was actually one month until we got, uh, the letter of intent, uh, which was a big surprise. It surprised and like, like a shot of adrenalin…

AI assessment note: “It was an Instagram app. That's how I found that about Acquire.com.”

Q data room and point out all the good stuff in your business, because in, uh, due diligence, if a buyer finds something that they just, if there's something like that, you've just shared a bunch of other items that might kind of cancel that out. Um, so tell me about, um, the due diligence process, how you transferred assets, Um, escrow. How did, how did that whole, um, acquisition process?

A Um, I mean, that, during those 40 days, one month, 40 days, um, we faced a lot of ups and downs. At the middle of it, I thought this was not going through, then next week, yes, then another week, no. Um, you know, I guess, like, now seeing it in retrospective, it was kind of the normal process, but once you're, you're inside, you're freaking out about everything that's going on. Um, at one point, we thought that we have Share too many things in the data room and that they could just build it by themselves. And that's it. Oh, which was of course not like this. And they're fantastic in that perspective. Uh, so the, the, the escrow and the transfer assets and everything was pretty straightforward because at the end, everything is done digitally. Everything is, uh, through HubSpot, everything is automated through there. Um, so it was, the part was, was pretty easy. Then the, the, the new CEO came into place and he's Running, uh, the stuff at this moment, I'm acting as an advisor. I, what I did also as part of the agreement was to contact our providers, um, because at the end we're not B to C, but we're B to B. We get the money from the universities and we get the money from the financial partners. So the average deal size more or less is around four to 5000 dollars per student. We actually place abroad that's paid by the universities and by the financial partners. So we have to sig…

AI assessment note: “the escrow and the transfer assets and everything was pretty straightforward because at the end”

Q I'm excited to, you know, sign this with you, but before I do, kind of, what's the plan? What are your expectations of me? How can I make this an amazing process? I just want to make sure that, ah, this closes, because I'm talking to another buyer, um, but it all worked out for you, so. So what are you, what are you building, what are you building next?

A So I'm still, I mean, I'm still in my big startup. Right. We're, we, this, beginning of this year, we raised almost, 1.5 million dollars. So I'm the chief revenue officer here. Uh, but at this moment, you know, I've kind of, um, scaled at the point that I'm, I'm very comfortable with. I have a strong management team running operations. So I'm not running that much operations myself. So I'm kind of having a lot of free time to do all this stuff. And I'm enjoying that part because I lost to create things. Um, so I'm, I'm starting several things. Uh, one of the things that we have been doing in this last Six months more or less is, uh, is scaling up my family business, which is, uh, very cool and rewarding. Actually, my dad is a writer and he's never had a big success, you know, like selling his, his books just in like the traditional way, uh, just with editorials and this kind of stuff. Uh, so my sister is a strong marketeer. She's a head of marketing. She's fantastic. And I have that operation structure and, and Scalable aspect. So we came down to him and we built him like stop selling with agency stocks. I started with, uh, editorial, stop going to traditional libraries. We set up a TikTok account for him and Instagram account for him. That was my sister with his, with her creative, um, like thinking. I created all the Shopify. I created his, um, um, basically fulfillment in wh…

AI assessment note: “one of the things that we have been doing in this last Six months”

Q I'm going to throw a hard question at you. Um, what, what's, What's the biggest obstacle you've had to overcome? What's like the biggest mistake you made on your entrepreneurial journey?

A That's a tough one. Um, I made many mistakes, many mistakes. Um, and you know, like this last three, two, three years and, and this journey, um, especially with my other startups, uh, which, you know, we, we raised a pre-seed round and a seed round. We pivoted our business model more than four or five times. Um, and, and we had to take You know, strong decisions for, for that people then. Um, and most of the, I, I'm the chief revenue officer, right? So I'm, I'm in charge of, you know, developing the business model to scale the, all from the marketing sales, absolutely everything. Uh, and I made a lot of mistakes on, on how to do it. Like now in the last year we've, we've reached a quite scalable business, but making those decisions and having to lay off other people also because of my mistakes were, Something that is, uh, kind of, I don't want to repeat anymore in my life, um, which was also due to the fact of raising capital, right? Like raising over two million dollars have a lot of implications also. And, um, maybe in the future, if I create more startups, which I will, I would rather go to the bootstrapping and doing it myself rather than raising money, um, and having that, you know, Strong, uh, metrics to be met constantly, and that big backpack, backpacking your shoulder that's, it's, you need to, you know, drive this journey. So yeah, a lot of difficult decisions, but th…

AI assessment note: “having to lay off other people also because of my mistakes were, Something that is”

Q Nice. That's, that's a great background. Now I'm wondering, um, what would you say your biggest strength and biggest weaknesses as an entrepreneur?

A I'm a sales guy. I've been 12 years doing sales. Uh, so my, definitely my strength is, uh, is, is, is in sales and then also in creating and developing stuff. I consider myself a creator, um, and I'm always creating new stuff. I think Kind of reflected a lot in this journey, um, of the startup that got acquired. Uh, I mean, constant look for creating new stuff, developing new stuff, new ideas. So definitely that's my, my, my strengths and putting, uh, you know, the structure and the organization for, for scaling. Um, my weaknesses maybe sometimes is that I'm all over the place. You know, I'm doing too many things at a time, which at the moment it's, it's, it's okay because I'm living in Dubai. Um, I've been here for the last couple of years and I'm not surrounded by my friends. I'm not surrounded by my family. So kind of my 24 hours are focusing work. I work from home. So it's like very focusing and doing business, creating business, running my business. So, you know, it's like right now it's a good moment for that.

AI assessment note: “definitely my strength is, uh, is, is, is in sales... my weaknesses maybe sometimes”