Insight
Dumont: Rebuilding everything post-acquisition is an acquirer's biggest mistake
“I think the biggest mistake is people take over a business and they feel like they have to scrap everything, you know, just get rebuild everything. And in some cases that's not needed. Like you need to continue the momentum that exists and start building the m…”
Insight
Dumont: Buyers always discover post-acquisition surprises requiring original team knowledge
“The thing that's been broadly true is that there's always stuff that you find out after the fact with an acquisition. And if you don't have access to that team or kind of the institutional knowledge for that product, it can become really difficult to find a so…”
Insight
Dumont: Acquirers often rush diligence and underestimate technical debt
“I find that generally folks kind of rush through the product that they're acquiring and not fully understanding the technical debt that exists within the business. If there is any, and in most cases with software there typically is.”
Insight
Dumont: Acquired businesses are almost never fully optimized
“Typically when somebody is selling a business, It is not fully optimized. So I think the thing that has been obvious from each one of these companies is there is always opportunity”
Disclosure
Dumont: Tiny Capital targets profitable companies with consistent, not exponential, growth
“I think something that Tiny does that's really smart is they acquire companies that are Already profitable. Are growing consistently, not exponentially. But you know, they have a good growth rate”
Insight
Dumont: Acquired businesses must actively balance growth investment against extracting earnings
“That's always the balance as an operator is how much do I want to invest in the business versus taking earnings out of the business. And it's important to note what stage the business is in, in terms of earnings versus growth and what you're trying to lean int…”
Insight
Dumont: Operating an acquired business is a tweaking phase many dislike
“It's different than starting a business. It feels different than starting a business. So do you want to be in kind of the, what I call like the tweaking phase, you know, where you're just kind of like taking something that has product market fit and you're try…”
Opinion
Dumont: Tiny Capital excels at aligning incentives for external CEOs
“I think one of the things Tiny does really, really well, and this is a whole nother discussion on how do you compensate correctly for operators aligning interests for people that come in and take a business and operate them as a CEO with you as the owner.”
Assertion Supported
Dumont: Bitly Burned Through Venture Capital Before Pivoting to Profitability
“Bitly was interesting because it was a venture-funded company that kind of blew through a lot of the venture capital needed to become a sustainable, scalable business, and I hopped over from Betaworks to Bitly, and I saw a lot of that, not necessarily post-acq…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Dumont: Stamped had organic traction but lacked sales and success teams
“Within stamped specifically, it had this great organic side of the business. But it was missing a proper sales org, success org you know, partnerships or all of these kind of new opportunities.”
Assertion Supported
Dumont: Tiny Capital acquired Meteor.com without its original team
“With that one specifically, a team did not come with that product, so it was, you know, just the company.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Dumont: AWS pre-commitments significantly cut major hosting expenses at Meteor.com
“There was a ton of opportunity in, you know, pre-committing on AWS and kind of reducing hosting expenses, which was one of the primary OpEx components of that business.”
Opinion
Dumont: Tiny Capital conducts extensive front-end diligence on acquisitions
“Tiny does a really good job of being very deliberate with the stuff that they buy and doing a lot of work on the front end.”
