Walking Away
Capital Thinking • Issue #1184 • View online
It was a tempting offer, but when it came down to signing on the dotted line, there were five reasons that convinced me to decline an acquisition offer and bet on growth for Groove.
I turned down $16M for my startup. Here’s why...
Alex Turnbull
CEO & Founder, Groove · Oct 19, 2023
“I can’t tell you how much I appreciate the offer, but it’s not the right move for us right now.”
After a torturous week of weighing up all my options, I managed to spit those words out. It took every ounce of bravado I could find inside myself. I was backing out of an acquisition deal after three months of negotiations and due diligence and I knew the partner at the acquisition firm was going to be pissed.
I was also turning down $16 million.
And sure, that would never hit the headlines as the latest mega-acquisition, but for a bootstrapped startup founder like me, it was a very tempting offer.
Even after taxes, I’d take home close to $7 million — a life-changing amount of money for me and my family. I thought of the stress-free life I could be living without the issues of being a CEO and founder. One of those issues was growth, and I wondered if it was a good time for me to bow out and leave the challenge of growing Groove to someone else.
But at the end of the day, I just couldn’t do it.
I saw so much potential in Groove, too many opportunities we hadn’t fully capitalized on, and several mistakes we needed to make right. I thought about all the things I still had to prove before I could even think of calling it a day.
Here are my reasons for turning down $16 million.
So I turned down the all-cash offer for Groove, believing the company could be so much more, and believing that I had so much more to prove.
*Featured post photo by pixabay