Kevin Ryan has had a long and storied career as a leading figure in New York City's technology. He is the founder and CEO of AlleyCorp, an investment firm that has invested in a variety of startups, and is a serial founder who has participated in the early stages of companies such as Business Insider, Zola, Gilt, Pearl Health, and Transcend Therapeutics. there is. As president and CEO in the 1990s and early 2000s, he helped found the ad tech company DoubleClick, which was later acquired by Google for $3.1 billion in 2007, transforming the online advertising industry. He then co-founded unstructured database provider 10gen, which was later renamed MongoDB and went public in 2017.
Last Tuesday, I interviewed Ryan to discuss a pivotal moment in corporate transformation for the benefit of this year's Startup Battlefield 200 companies at TechCrunch Disrupt.
As part of the Startup Battlefield 200 program, selected founders will participate in a series of exclusive masterclasses from top VCs, successful founders, and operational experts, in addition to pitch training workshops. This virtual program is designed to prepare and excite you for exhibiting, demoing, and pitching at Disrupt in October.
During Ryan's session, he covered everything from finding great co-founders to when and how to raise money to how a founder's focus should change as the company scales. He provided a wealth of useful advice to companies at every stage.
But given his background at DoubleClick and MongoDB, I've learned how company founders know when to respond to an acquisition offer, when to respond, or when to hold off and try to go public. I asked if I should make a decision.
“There's no equation, but what I'm thinking about is, number one, what's our outlook going to be?” he said. “Let's stop being delusional. How much is our company growing? What will this company look like in three years? What is the exit strategy? How many other buyers are there? How do we compare to others?”
He added: “Most people underestimate the time factor, so even if it's worth $100 today, it will be worth $200 just to break even in four years due to risk, cost of capital, etc. It should be worth ,” he added. Would you like to register as a CEO? [because you believe] Does that mean we're worth $300? If you really believe so, we should wait. But if you just think it's going to go to $150 or $170, you should probably sell today. This is because we also need to take into account that the market may close at any time. You and I could list many unexpected events over the past 25 years. Ukraine war. No one saw inflation coming. No one saw a lot of things happening…and suddenly everything died. ”
He generally believes that more people should sell sooner rather than hold out for becoming the next Mark Zuckerberg, who famously turned down the chance to sell Facebook to Yahoo for $1 billion in 2006. He said that. (Disclosure: Yahoo owns TechCrunch.)
“I think more people should probably sell than average,” Ryan told me. “You'll definitely read stories about $20 billion companies that turned something down, but there are many other examples of people. [sold]”
He added that many founders aren't thinking clearly about personal wealth from acquisitions, chasing bigger and bigger numbers rather than settling for life-changing sums. And if it doesn't stick, it often ends up being zero.
“I had this conversation the other day,” he said. “If someone were to sell now, they could make $30 million. $30 million is an incredible amount of money. That's life-changing, right? And they could… leave in a year and leave. You can do so many things. And you know what? $60 million won't make you any happier than you were at 30, but starting from scratch makes a huge difference. is born.”
“Reaching 60, 90, 100 sounds great, but it actually doesn't change your life much.”
You can watch the entire interview here.
There are only three weeks left until the disruption. Don't miss your chance to gain valuable insights from top industry experts. Register here to secure your pass.