This installment of the “31 Founders at Applied Intuition” blog post series uses accounts from the ex-founders to show that off-ramps are not always exits.
Discussions about startups inevitably lead to the question of an exit. Investors want to understand how they will be repaid, and when. Potential employees are curious about what they can expect to reap from their long days and weekends.
Our conversations with the ex-founders yielded pictures of different end games.
Greg Granito, who was involved in starting two companies before joining Applied Intuition, where he is now an engineering manager, commented only briefly on the journey’s end for his startup, an acquisition by Instacart: “Yeah, that wasn't bad."
“We had two options,” Gaurav Bhatia, an engineering manager at Applied Intuition, said of the exit decision for his startup Ottomatika. “Either we really take VC money and go crazy, or we decide to basically pick one [suitor], and have them acquire us.” Which route did they choose? Acquisition by Delphi.
“We had lots of acquisition opportunities. A whole bunch of people wanted to acquire us. Delphi just made sense.”
For Yaser Khalighi, now an engineering manager at Applied Intuition, he was not thinking about an exit when he started SceneBox. “No, actually this was not the outcome that we were planning for,” he said. “Our objective from the get-go was to delight customers."
As Khalighi and his team were building their platform, he recalled, they realized that the customers needed their solution, but also needed other technology. Some of their customers worked with SceneBox at the same time they worked with Applied Intuition. That required integration, and eventually it became clear that a unified approach made sense.
“At that time, we didn't have the capital to build that,” Khalighi said about the prospect of SceneBox developing a unified toolchain. “So, at that point it made sense for us to join a company with more of an end-to-end offering.” Ultimately, SceneBox became part of Applied Intuition. His thoughts on the result?
“I love the outcome. I was excited about the exit because it wasn't an exit. It was an acquisition where I continue doing what I was doing and then the product lives on. I don't think it's very healthy for the entire community that somebody comes up with an idea, and then they exit, and the idea dies. I think it should live on.
“And then my personal satisfaction is just working on that idea for a number of years, even after the acquisition,” he added. “That's why I call it acquisition. I don't call it an exit. I'm still in it.”
On Doing a Startup Again
Successes and failures. Wins and regrets. Talk to enough entrepreneurs about their experiences and they will share stories about each. Extend the discussion to doing it again and a few themes tend to bubble up. This cadre of founders exhibited candor about what worked and what failed in their ventures. They also were largely positive when asked whether they would do it again, albeit with some caveats.
“The joke that I make when people ask me this is that ‘I wouldn't wish being a founder on my worst enemy,’” Engineering Manager Adriano Quiroga said. “That is half joke, half truth. I think it just takes a very special kind of masochist to start a company like that and like it. And a lot of people start and never want to do it again. I think from my perspective, I would 100 percent do it again. I love it. It was great.”
Alan ElSheshai, a senior software engineer, had an interesting perspective on the value of startups in general, apart from his own experiences. “I still think they're probably one of the best institutions we have in our economy. I do think there's a huge amount of waste in the fact of how much people's lives and effort is just lost because they're swimming in the wrong direction or because they didn't know the customer.
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I was excited about the exit because it wasn't an exit. It was an acquisition where I continue doing what I was doing and then the product lives on.
“That being said,” he continued, “I still really like startups and would do it again.”
Reflecting on his first foray as a founder, Bhatia noted that his son had just been born when his first startup was launched, and that was a huge challenge. “I don't think my wife and I even understood what we were undertaking. So, I wouldn't do that again.
“But I think a startup again…it really depends on what you're entering into. I think we entered into an area where there was no market. We were trying to create a market. That's hard. Creating a startup into an existing market I think is a much better ordeal. That I would definitely tackle again.”
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