This week I talk with John Sheehan, Founder of Runscope! And this week is slightly different from previous episodes in that we quickly jump in to the story of Runscope itself. Runscope’s story includes running out of money, laying off their entire staff, going through an acquisition two separate times, buying back shares from investors and all sorts of fun steps in between!
Show Notes:
- 1:00- Origins and pre-Runscope
- 6:45- Fundraising and landing a Seed round
- 7:50- What was the goal when you started before you had a product?
- 10:06- Why to not raise a Seed round before you have built anything
- 12:00- “The best decision we ever made”
- 13:04- The pressures of certain situations makes for better business decisions
- 13:54- Seed to A round- What’s the next thing
- 15:12- Fast and furious series of meetings
- 16:19- “If you can identify a bubble, that’s an opportunity”
- 17:31- Playing all of our cards
- 18:28- The B round
- 20:44- Starting the sale process
- 21:30- Taking an objective look at the business in hindsight
- 22:50- Not an easy decision
- 24:10- Letter of intent to sell
- 25:40- Culture clash
- 27:41- Cutting costs
- 29:04- Layoffs and tough decisions
- 30:09- Keeping the business afloat with two people- John and Frank
- 31:26- Separating duties to sustain the business
- 32:30- Getting out of the black
- 33:27- Going from the stress of burning money to being profitable
- 34:33- Transitioning out of running the business with only 2 people
- 36:24- Hiring support and an engineer
- 39:50- Motivation to sell
- 41:35- Setting out to find another buyer
- 42:47- CA Technologies acquisition in September 2017
- 43:45- Emotional rollercoaster
- 46:09- A very good acquisition outcome
- 47:48- “Part of me wants to bootstrap next time”
- 49:46- Moving out of the Bay Area was not the end of Runscope
- 51:52- Developer tools and other industries of interest
- 54:33- Selling Runscope twice has allowed for a lot of experience in the process