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Colin and Brent discuss buying Prolifiq, a bankrupt enterprise software company.

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Colin Keeley: [00:00:00] uh, hello and welcome back. This is Colin Keeley here,

Brent Sanders: and I'm Brent Sanders,

Speaker: and we are two guys buying and building wonderful companies,

Brent Sanders: wonderful internet companies.

Speaker: Yeah, I, we haven't done this in so long.

I was like, that doesn't sound right. But we're back. , We have a new deal. Do you wanna give a bit of an intro ,

Brent Sanders: . Let's give a little bit of background on, on where we've been. So I guess all to say we've been pretty heads down on, , our existing portfolio, but really the interesting thing and the reason for the podcast is, , this new deal.

So we had, we've recorded past. I think two podcasts, or maybe even three, about prior deals that have failed, that have been sort of these venture orphans and, , going after these businesses that are, uh, either saddled with too much debt or have a upside down cap table, and they're really still great businesses, , they don't work, right?

Like, they don't work in the sense that, , there's a huge amount of debt due and it can't service the [00:01:00] debt or. What was raised on, a, whatever stage , in valuation doesn't quite line up to where the business is now. And, , investors aren't quite interested anymore and employees are disillusioned that their equity's not gonna be worth anything and they get kind of trapped.

So we've recorded a couple of these and we chased a couple of these and we finally got one. So this, , this episode's about that deal. We can talk about, the, the genesis of it. I mean, we've talked about our intent here. I think that we've covered a lot, but just as a recap, these are good companies.

These are software companies that still run, and their overhead is, is generally fairly low because it's software. And so, , we found this, this deal that actually fell on Colin, this fell on your lap. Like, I guess, why don't you start with how this came on your, your radar.

Speaker: , Uh, how it came to me initially. So I have a mutual friend. With a venture debt provider. And so the background is, I wrote like a Brian Johnson article and a bunch of other kind of operating manuals [00:02:00] and he shared 'em with his wife and this like best friend debt provider.

, So they had read it before or read a number of my things before, , this guy was a customer of South my, Latin America staffing company. And then he reached out because. , This company ended up in distress 'cause of taking on this venture debt. , And it was heading toward bankruptcy really quickly and they basically lost all their team members.

They knew I had this team of recruiters. He's like, Colin could rebuild the team. And then Colin and Brent had this kind of credibility of running software companies. So that was the initial introduction and I guess timeline there. We were introduced kind of the end of July and it was like. Uh, great.

This company's heading towards bankruptcy really fast. Let's just take it over. Before bankruptcy, the plan bankruptcy was July 31st, and that was set in stone because they already told their insurance company that it was gonna be that day, and so insurance was gonna drop them. And then the board, wasn't gonna stay as the board.

. If they didn't have insurance, so it was [00:03:00] like a, a drop dead date no matter what. And so it was, I made an offer and it was like, let's just take it over. We have the people in place who could do it tomorrow. , We don't need any employees. 'Cause they didn't really have any, I guess at that point.

Or we would just take a couple people. , The board was uncomfortable with that because it looked like potentially an insider deal and just going to bankruptcy and then selling was cleaner for liability for them. , I don't know if you looked into it, the board was chaired, I think by, , the former CEO of Johnson and Johnson, which is crazy.

It's like a $500 billion company.

Brent Sanders: No, I didn't know that.

Speaker: , So they had a super impressive board. I guess, uh, maybe it's helpful, we could talk about the company. Prolific is the name of it. It's sales enablement software. , So it's a Salesforce plugin effectively. , , I looked up the background, I didn't know all the background.

, Started in 1999 with just services and then in 2016 it pivoted to pure software since Pure software, , 85% gross margins. Effectively, , raised the series A like 10 million in equity over time, roughly 2 million in debt. , it's like 3 million ish in a RR and it was growing [00:04:00] 20% year over year.

, Then I got all this because I saw that they tried to sell with an investment bank, and I found that pitch deck from like a couple years ago.

Brent Sanders: So all, all to say this business is cruising along, growing, growing, and growing. And then at some point they, they raised some debt, right? And it was. Uh, not serviceable after a certain amount of time.

Like what, what was the exact situation to get them into this bankruptcy? I mean, was one, mainly one senior debt holder that we ended up dealing with?

Speaker: Right? I mean, do you think a pure software company that's just the plugin run on Salesforce, so like super high margin. I mean, how could you have ever add up in distress?

, But yeah, they took on venture debt and they just couldn't, do the debt coverage over a period of time. So they got back on. Or unable to pay a number of their bills. Their team was large. It was like 15 to 20 people, I think. , And they just ended up in a situation where they effectively ran outta money.

Brent Sanders: So [00:05:00] we typically don't like to talk about mismanagement, but I think there may be a component to that here, or just like, um, some level of, whether it's on the CFO level and I don't know who the CFO was, but there, there just seems to be some sort of disconnect as to cash management.

Speaker: Yeah. I think, if you have a company and you raise a bunch of money and expectations are that you're gonna, triple, triple, double, double every year. You kind of build out a team with that expectation. , And you don't run it like you would if you owned it outright. And were happy growing 20 to 50% or whatever , year over year. , So yeah, I think there is overhired and then you, I think there was definitely an opportunity where they could have cut back dramatically from like 15, 20 people to a more reasonable team and, run the company in a different fashion, but they didn't, and then, we.

So we eventually took it over, but we can talk about that later. And you go through every expense and you're basically rebuilding a cost structure from zero, and they were just spending a lot of [00:06:00]money on basically everything you could think of.

Brent Sanders: Yeah, yeah. So fast forward to when we get involved. So it enters into bankruptcy and I remember.

This is, it feels like forever ago, but it really wasn't that long ago, but it was like trying to get in before that. And then it went through the bankruptcy proceedings got out of bankruptcy fairly quickly, and then we structured a deal with the senior debt. I mean, they were essentially given the assets of the business, and then we purchased it outright.

And so we now have the assets, but the lights have been shut off, right? Like everything's been shut off all the accounts. So we really spent. , A lot of resources just trying to figure out what are all the logins, what are all the things, where is everything running? And I guess one of the things that was most amazing to me for a technology company is to have your, I mean, I guess this is the advantage of running on Salesforce is, the AWS account was effectively locked out and then eventually shut off.

The domain was lost and turned off. All emails were turned off. I mean, every. Every bill was [00:07:00]shut off. Every credit card was shut off. There was nothing that was by the day that we took it over. There was nothing that we could log into and like see a list of customers. It was all, prior institutional knowledge from some people that were still around that were willing to talk to us.

And they were very, very friendly. They wanted to see a home for the business, but we had to essentially recover everything.

Speaker: Yeah, this was by far the biggest mess, and not normally how bankruptcies go. So it entered bankruptcy July 31st. Normally you keep like a crew in place, they get paid and then you keep paying the bills that are essential to keep the business running.

, For whatever reason, everything stopped completely on July 31st, so no more money came in the door. And then they stopped playing every single expense and every employee July 31st, and then. Maybe, we kind of made bankruptcy sound simple. Like normally it's a , like a six month or nine month process to get this to the point that, people submit multiple bids and try to buy the company and then the [00:08:00]like bankruptcy.

Trustee, they get paid as like a percentage of the deal, and that takes a long time. But if the company ended up in that path, there'd just be debt. There'd be nothing for anyone going forward. , So we were able to get that, not we, but like the venture debt holder actually didn't have any power until it entered bankruptcy and then they were the most senior.

And they were owed so much money that it basically equaled the assets. , So the unsecured debt providers got nothing. They, the venture debt providers effectively got all the assets. , So it got conveyed to them. That was like a month later. And then we got kind of tied up in legal with them for like two months for whatever reason, to finalize stuff.

So we didn't actually close till October 31st. And so. The employees that we were hoping to keep on in that, there was at one point a plan to keep on, they're like the head of sales and like the sales engineer just to keep things running. They, can't just live without, , compensation for months and months and months.

So most of them went on to take [00:09:00] other jobs. So we were in discussions with them, but then the discussions over time kind of fizzled out. So we were able to. Bring back like the tech side of things. , So that was great. But otherwise, the rest of it we had to, rebuild the team effectively.

Brent Sanders: Right? Yeah. And so the saving grace here, . Was, the fact that it wasn't running on server. I mean, so they had an AWS account and it's like normally you'd expect once those servers turn off, everything turns off. But because of, the nature of a Salesforce plugin or a Salesforce application, it's running on, the customer's instance and Salesforce, .

. , So, fast forwarding to now, we are still even navigating some access issues, but most of the, the accounts we have restored access to, , the domain was the, the biggest one. I don't know if you want to talk about catching that, but that was something that effectively expired and we were able to catch it.

, And get access to the main prolific prolific.com, , to, to reinstate emails. 'cause everything was keyed off of emails and [00:10:00] particularly weird, like they didn't keep passwords. The, the methodology here was, oh, let's not keep passwords. We'll just use password reset, which is a great idea in a sense.

Unless your DNS goes wrong, unless your domain stops working, then you can't reset anything. So. Getting that was the key to a lot of things, to then, okay, we can, we can rest control and with some cooperation from the, the former CEO who's, been very willing to help but is also, not really, um, is working on behalf of the, the new owner, right.

The, not us, the, the, the debt provider who, who took control of the, the business. So like, it's been very, very interesting and, and very. Dynamic on, everything's like, okay, how do we get access to this? How do we get access to that? And usually all things point to email, right? A lot of accounts are within, okay, you need to have an email account here.

And so once we got the domain secured, then it's like, okay, this is actually gonna probably work. It's like we're gonna be able to get this. So [00:11:00] then there's the, the other interesting part, which is, okay, we need to get. , Salesforce involved because, they were on their marketplace. We're distributing the application through them, and that has been a very interesting process because there's, a variety of accounts.

There's partner accounts and, and that's been a kind of a wild west of. Trying to reach out to and escalate, , support tickets that really aren't taken seriously until you, you kinda get loud enough and, and get enough sort of attention to your problem. , But thankfully that is, is finally getting resolved.

Speaker: Yeah, so as soon as you stop paying the bills, obviously all the services go down. , And then we couldn't, normally you just log in and you, pay the bills and you get stuff live. Again, we couldn't do that because. The domains and emails were lost. , And so legally we, bought all the assets, which is like the customer contracts.

Customer contracts stick around in bankruptcy. They don't like get dismissed or something. So that's all there, we bought the [00:12:00] code, the ip, , and the domains and stuff, but. The domains are locked in AWS to the best of our knowledge and we couldn't log in and get it.

And then we talked to them and they're like, we need a court order. And which is effectively, you have to go to litigation and they're explaining like, this is what we require to hand this back to you. So it's you basically, it's sue them. And then you have a judge, uh, locally, like around Seattle that determines, potentially quickly, but potentially not that.

Okay, these guys own the domain and you have to give it back to them. Right. So we were interviewing a bunch of litigators. It was gonna be like 25 grand is our understanding of it. , So we were all set to do it. We talked to a bunch of litigators, we found some good ones, and I was like, ready to sign with them and just pay the money and get it done.

. But then in that process I was also having to rebuild like a, just a marketing website since I was down as well. And I was trying to use a way back machine and like recreate it from what I could find. And I went to the website and it was for sale for $20,000 and I like immediately [00:13:00] messaged you and then I called you, was at a coffee shop at the time it was like, I don't know how to explain this, but I think, if we buy this, this solves our problems and we could get emails and login and everything back.

And I think you were just as baffled as anyone. But yeah, I just put it on an Amex credit card. 'cause it's like if they don't give it to me, Amex is, will cover my back and, , refund me. So I paid it. And then, like a week after that we got the domain and once we had the domain you could restore a bunch of things and we were mostly off to the races.

Brent Sanders: Yeah. Which is what a weird and wild stroke of luck that was. I mean, I, I suppose we should have caught it. We were monitoring, had several domains, but that being the one, uh, that most of the accounts were tied to has, been the, the key thing to, to unlock. So, getting that it has, that was the weirdest thing.

I've never seen that happen before. And getting that was just a kind of a, a massive stroke of luck. , 'Cause otherwise yeah, the litigation pathway, and then once it's out of AWS's hands, we would've gone through litigation and now that we see. [00:14:00] What has happened over time is we would've gotten access to that account and then the domain, potentially A, not be there, or b.

Had been expired by the time the litigation was successful. So we spent $25,000 for nothing. , Since the AWS account is effectively been closed, deleted, like I've tried to restore it. Once we got that account, they said, no, it's too late. It's, we've deleted the account and the contents of it. So, there are things that have been lost.

Thankfully, it's a, not customer data or B, like something that we need to run the business. So not a. And I guess taking one step back is like you talk about buying a business. Like we, we've recorded a million podcasts about diligence and all the steps we take and all the normal, workflows. It's like none of that was possible.

We, we didn't have code to look at, we didn't have any of the code that we could make a decision and say, Hey, is this something we want to acquire? It's like, it's just a much different animal. So we, we made the decision largely based on. [00:15:00] Customer adoption. And what has been a resounding, , and, and continues to have now that we're talking to customers is like they've continued to use it.

And now some of them have backed away because they were told this is not gonna be on forever and eventually would die. , But let's take a moment and talk about like the competitive marketplace. This is a, an account planning tool, and it has a killer feature. It does a couple of things very uniquely, and one of those, Salesforce launched their own free application to do this, but it doesn't do it in the same way.

And what we're hearing from customers, which has been really reinforcing that we did make the right decision, is that, Hey, we tried that. We would've liked to move to it, but we can't because it doesn't have X or it doesn't have y. And it's not necessarily in their roadmap. , So it's, it's been a really interesting, in terms of, , technical product, I've been a very interesting journey for a uncovering what and how it actually works.

But then also it is a very unique value proposition that it has and it has these features [00:16:00] that, large customers are, are relying on. And so now that we've gotten access to the code, we've restored, the, the accounts related to that and, and. Being able to , actually distribute updates.

It's like great, from having customer conversations around, hey, this view's broken, or that view's broken and it's been largely like style issues or there, there are reported bugs, but they're not to the point where I was expecting to come in. It's like, Hey, this has all stopped working and we need to restore it.

It's actually, no, it's still working. And we've been asking for these things for the last six months, which understandably. I would be annoyed with. But I'm, I'm happy to say that we're gonna be able to turn those things around and, and actually distribute updates.

Speaker: Yeah. It's crazy how long it's taken to get here.

So we closed like October 31st. . And now we're in February. And basically every day since then, we've been pushing Salesforce to be like, give us access, transition this, give us access. And it's just [00:17:00]been getting like tossed around their organization and people making excuses and saying, everything's gonna take eight weeks basically.

, So we signed all legal with them within like a few weeks and then b basically since then we've been waiting on them to transition everything. We just now got access to kind of everything we need to help out. . But yet that delay was just staggering. I haven't encountered these like big legacy, software companies really before, and it's just shocking how slowly they seem to move.

Brent Sanders: Well, I mean, if you think about it, like it's a, it's a big company, but B it's like, well, how do we handle this situation? There's no SOP for, bankruptcies like this. I mean, I suppose they happen, but they're probably so rare, and it's like, well, is this. Like, and I, going back to AWS, it's like I totally get why they didn't give us access to anything.

Like I can, you know what, if there are medical records in that account, like they don't know what's in there and, and I would assume the same disposition goes for any one of these. , Like Salesforce where it's like, well, we don't know what we're giving you. Are we gonna get sued because we gave you access to something even there, even though there are [00:18:00] legal docs.

So it's, it's understandably a difficult thing to, to process a request there. That being said, it's been a long road and, and, uh, I'm glad to see it over with.

Colin Keeley: Yeah, I mean, I don't know how much we wanna pile on Salesforce, but the legal aspect is sorted within weeks. Yeah. And then it's just like, it's something technically on their backend where they would actually give me updates of, like, the technical side is half transitioned over.

I don't even know what that means. , But it was basically moving, it's, it's like a, they have like an app store equivalent to like Shopify or, uh, apple would've something like that. But we needed the shop, the, the listings, which there are three of 'em, transition from one account to our account.

And legally everyone knew like what this was supposed to be done, but for whatever reason, technically on the backend, it was like impossibly difficult for them. Yeah. And I talked to everyone I could. They're like, talk to these people. This is who's in charge. They just wouldn't reply to email for like many days at a time.

And so you could kind of map out their org chart and we had connections to kind of the [00:19:00] top of Salesforce, effectively some of the top executives. And you could effectively like shame the lower level people and to like. Okay. I gotta bring in your boss to get some kind of reply here.

Brent Sanders: Yeah.

Speaker: And that was the only thing I found successful of like actually getting responses to things.

Brent Sanders: Yeah. Brutal. Brutal. Do we want to talk about like, now that things are restored, what the plan is on operations and how we want to, run the business?

Speaker: Yeah, I think that would probably be the most helpful. , , so the venture debt was what got the company in trouble among other, crazy spending things. , So we came to deal terms where the debt provider, we basically gave them cash and some upside. So they have some equity in the business and that's so there's no more debt going forward. , But they share, if we do well, they do well. And then going forward, it's just like.

Our first step that I tried to do as much as we could when it was clear that we were gonna get the business is like reassure customers. Like there's a long term, safe home for this business, it's gonna continue. , Then we transitioned [00:20:00] everything and then, as soon as we close, we basically have tried to meet with every single customer as much as possible, and learn about the business as much as possible.

Brent Sanders: Yeah. Yeah. And I've been in a handful of those calls and they've been. , They've been a lot better. I was expecting to get beat up, frankly, and people have been pretty understanding. That being said, , it's a hard place to be when you know, you, you're, you were paying somebody and then they said we're closing, and then someone else says, wait, we're opening again.

And I guess it's good news if you really do rely on the product. So I guess the folks that have decided to meet with us, we appreciate the. The sort of loyalty, but it's also I think, hey, this, this demonstrates that there are some killer features here. There's something to be sort of run with that, we want to maintain,

we always, we talked about this in past podcasts. We always ask people, when we do an acquisition, what's the most annoying thing about X product? What, what can we do to improve it? Would you like to, how often would you recommend it to a friend? Try to get a sense for what the current user base is like.

[00:21:00] And so that was definitely a testament to, okay, they definitely would recommend it, but obviously it's in a weird spot. , The strategy moving forward, which has been tough is like having those calls and saying, yes, I, we can make those fixes and fix those bugs and, and make some of these updates that are being requested.

It's tough when you don't have control of the, the Salesforce account, so now that that's in place, it's like, okay, we can actually be accountable to some deadlines. I, I look forward to showing people sort of how we roll, where it's like, okay, we're used to, , tighter timelines and, and, and releasing products that are highly configurable and understand risk of change and all that stuff.

And so that'll be a fun thing to, that I look forward to doing. But then it's also how do we filter the feedback? I mean, we're meeting with everybody and everybody's got something that's, Hey, we really need you to. The mobile view's messed up. Can you, can you just fix that? And so one strategy that I, I would like to see us apply here is like setting up a customer advisory board.

So we've talked about [00:22:00] this in, in past podcasts related to other businesses where we get together, like the 12 top customers that we. They're aligned that also want to share their thoughts and are, are, we think are a good fit for steering the effective like roadmap for the business and building in public with them, right?

And so giving them the ability on a quarterly basis to share their feedback, for us to share our roadmap, get their feedback on it, and understand what are we gonna prioritize for a second, third, and so on. So I think that's like the, the place I'd like to see us be in about 90 days from now is like being able to have that first meeting.

And subsequently be able to release a first patch from us. Like, Hey, we haven't released anything in six months, probably even longer. I think generally during the, before the bankruptcy, they were trying to sell the business, right? And so during that time, I would imagine they were not pushing updates, they were not, focusing on engineering.

That's probably the last thing they want to deal with is disrupting anything. , I think it'll be a, an [00:23:00] interesting. A point for us to differentiate ourselves from the prior ownership, or at least just because of the health of the business. But furthermore, just to like show this, that, that it is a healthy business again.

And every single customer, we're trying to look at this as like, Hey, we wanna win your business back. We've effectively assumed we've lost it and we still don't know what it's gonna look like in the future. Right? We don't know. How many are gonna stay with us? I mean, the sense is, is that, some people have already churned, they got that email that we're closing and they picked something else.

Others though, do seem to want to stick around, but we need to go through , the sort of trust building exercise as well as like, these are large organizations. , We should at least be able to restore the growth rate that was there before.

Speaker: Yeah. I would say kind of the overarching thing here is like going to every customer and doing customer success. Like what do you, what do we have to do to make you successful?

, And then wait, we could say all the nice words we want, but I think it's just action and like showing that we're gonna make them [00:24:00] successful. , You kind of touched on it, but normally with acquisitions we have kind of three basic questions we ask and it's like, what is the most annoying thing about X or whatever the acquisition is.

I like that it's kind of playful and shows we're human and like kind of dives into little things that we could quick kind of fixedly if. Quick fix kind of quickly, , and like shows easy wins and, makes people happy. And then it's like, what features would you most like to see added? I think there's a lot of ones that, for years now people have been like, can you add these things?

A lot of like, AI just make things easier, was a big part that they just for whatever reason, didn't get to. , And then how likely are you to recommend, X to a colleague or friend? Just like a basic net promoter score to get started? I would. Guarantee every company that we've acquired has a way higher net promoter score, like a year after acquisition than they did before.

, I, I don't like to like bash the previous owners, but like there's just a lot of low hanging fruit, a lot of basic things, and we have the benefit of just coming in with kind of fresh eyes and experience in other businesses that are, [00:25:00] it's helpful to bring over. And,

Brent Sanders: and I would say like a dis, and again, I don't know, sadly, I don't know enough about how things were run in the past.

I mean, I'm learning every day. We've brought the the old dev team on, and we have a sense from them how things were run. They sound like they were largely reactive. They were just kind of, for the last year, trying to just keep things as they are, don't disrupt anything. And it's not necessarily. A bad thing, it depends on, but it reflects the health of the business and that's what I'd say about our prior acquisitions as well is like.

We come with fresh eyes, but also like infrastructure. Like a lot of the prior owners were burnt out on , the way things were working. Right. And things were generally jammed for whatever reason, because maybe they didn't have the proper support apparatus. Maybe, their dev team was playing support and playing.

, Whack-a-mole with bugs rather than, running a roadmap. And so I think that's where we're hoping to differentiate is to provide a little bit more of a product based, , I don't [00:26:00] want to say, I, we're right. There's like these mo molds that you'd fit into. It's product based, it's sales based.

It, I don't know what it's gonna be yet because we're, again, we're still kind of learning what it is, but I, I know at the, at the start, we have to show. A certain ability to execute and willingness to listen and adapt because we're kind of in the hole, right? We're like, we need to regain your trust.

And so we need to show not only change, but also safe change. And this is a legacy code code base. It's been around for a long time. It has a lot of lines of code. And so I think the, the real test for us is this like 90 day period of like pushing the first update, gaining confidence, gaining trust, responding quickly to, that, low lift, high impact stuff and then working backwards.

And that's where, on a 90 day basis, I think we can do it. And then the next 90, 180 days, we should really be looking at, okay, how do we shape a roadmap that's. Where we want to take [00:27:00] the company and, and in concert with that, restoring a, a growth trajectory that, who's to say we, we can't, this business was already in a place where, uh, it was growing rapidly.

Again, it may not be doubling every year, but like 20, 30% growth, if we can get back to where it was organically. , I'm confident that like we can grow it even further.

Speaker: Yeah. No, one of the competitors is like 15 million in a RR. It's a mix of software and services, but it's a growing market. Like I, I don't see any reason we shouldn't get there as well.

. I think you just have to win back trust. And like the biggest thing there is just being super responsive right now. So meeting with every customer, we set up a phone line, , try to reply to every email as quickly as possible. I think that just, shows that we care and just showing that you care goes a long way.

. I would say, yeah, growing 20 to 50% a year, year over year, like that adds up. It compounds very quickly. And you don't have to do crazy things to do that. You just listen to customers and it's already providing a lot of value. It's like, how do we provide more value to [00:28:00] you? , And you don't have to.

Weird stuff. Like five years ago, I think this was related to fundraising, they switched from using a.com to a ai. And so I think it was just like, we'll slap AI on this and we'll be able to raise it on that next round of funding. , So we, we move back to the.com. We don't have to do crazy stuff or like upsells that don't really solve problems or anything like that.

It's like purely focused on existing customers and adding value to their lives.

Brent Sanders: Yeah, I mean, I think we are gonna be driven by what our customers are going to be. If they want to stay, they're gonna tell us why they're gonna stay. And I think that's what our plan is, is really double down on those features and those aspects of the product.

, That deliver value. And so anything that doesn't suit that, I mean, I, I know everybody uses it differently. That's, not unique to prolific. It's every, every software product sort of has a different way of, of being utilized. But I, I definitely think, one, we have to learn all of those different ways and then b, just cultivate those, those aspects and [00:29:00] dive further into 'em.

Right. So if it's. Simple as surfacing data in better places. And that's been like, largely the feedback we've been getting is like styling, or when I'm presenting there's this weird glitch and again, they feel like they're not that hard to solve for. Then again, there's, there's other things that, um, we have heard that are, more data model centric where, hey, we're gonna have to rethink this a little bit and make sure it works for everybody.

Right. That's the big thing is that, everybody has custom models and it, it can be customized, like Salesforce, it can be customized and built in different ways, so not disrupting, , how that works is, is probably the biggest objective.

Speaker: , So I guess where we stand today, , we have plenty of cash in the door, no debt on the business, a CEO and a tech team in place.

We're. Got access to just about everything. The only thing we actually lost was like marketing materials. Yeah. Which can re bilt. So that's not a huge deal. , But yeah, we're basically off to the races. Nothing kind of standing in the way anymore.

Brent Sanders: [00:30:00] It's exciting. So, uh, I guess we should probably regroup in like a couple months and provide an update.

'cause it'll be interesting to see how it, how it evolves. My hope is, is that, we do expect, we know there's churn, there's some number of customers that are, have already said, hey. You guys aren't around. We, we chose something else. We went a different direction. But if a, if we can preserve the ones that have stayed and then b, win back those that have left would be a, a big win.

That's, that's really the objective I think.

Speaker: I think. Yeah. I. I have a lot of friends that I told about this acquisition and the swings week to week have been pretty fun. So I think continuing to record these podcasts and updates will be interesting to everybody, , as they're basically rebuilding a business, not from scratch, but you know, we're pretty close to it.

Yeah. So we'll definitely do that. Anything else you wanna talk about here?

Brent Sanders: No, no. Stay tuned.

Speaker: Uh, how about on the personal side? We haven't had a podcast in six months. Any other updates? I got one funny one, otherwise,

Brent Sanders: yeah, tons of updates on the personal side. I mean, it's [00:31:00] snowy and snowy and snowy here in Cleveland, so we've been having a blast.

The kids are super into ice skating. This has been the thing that we've been doing. Really ever since like the Christmas break is our local ice rink was open every day during like when school was out, , for open skate for two hours. And my son, who's six, went from not wanting to skate at all to now he is a, a total pro.

He's got a hockey helmet. Hockey gloves, and. , My daughter as Welsh, they're both looping around the rink on their own and that's actually been, , something I look forward to every weekend. So now once the holidays are over, they just have open skate on the weekends and we do every Saturday and Sunday.

And I even got out on the ice. I was never a big hockey. Or ice skater, I could ski, but I've, I've gotten my, myself stable and I'm, I'm able to, to cruise around with them. So that's been the big update in the Sanders house is we're all, we're all ice skating.

Huh? You've got some announcements, don't you? .

Colin Keeley: So my kind [00:32:00] of funny one, it's not like Cleveland at all. It's like 70 and sunny here. , 'Cause I'm in Austin, but I went to the playground,, by our house. So I drove over there, parked the car, went to the playground.

My son was, , wanted a snack. So we walked, I walked back to the car to get one, and when I got back to the car, there were cops there. And so apparently in like the 15 minutes we were at the playground. Some kid went and grabbed the rock and threw it over and over again at my car, um, and caused like $7,000 in damages.

And so I thought it was, it's a Tesla so it was like, well it's gotta be some crazy anti Elon person. But no, it was like some 10-year-old kid and I got photos of it. , And so. Did a police report and everything. I posted it to Nextdoor and then immediately on Nextdoor, a bunch of people replied like, oh yeah, this is the kid.

Um, he goes to the school and, known with a bunch of behavior issues.

Speaker: , And so the dad eventually reached out to me and he is like. Uh, that's my son. Please take the photos down, which I did. And [00:33:00] then he's like, it's not my responsibility.

He was supposed to be watched by a therapist and he fled the therapist and escaped. And so apparently they were doing therapy in the park. This kid escaped and just, went to town on my car. Um, but it turns out glass is easy to repair, uh, damage, like as if you threw a baseball at the side of a car.

Not easy to repair. So. You have to go to Tesla collision, which is different than Tesla normal. So it's a few hours to fix the glass. No big deal. It's two to three weeks to fix the metal because of all the Tesla sensors, all the metal just has to be replaced and repainted. Um, so losing my car for two to three weeks and then.

I was trying to be like, you should pay for this. This is your family that, caused the damage to my car and, and basically gave up on that. He's blaming the therapist and so in theory it goes to his insurance or the therapist's insurance and they cover it, but, , everyone's just not replying to me for whatever reason.

So I'm going through my insurance, which will increase my insurance for like five years probably. , [00:34:00] So not ideal, but. Everything will get paid for minus my deductible and they're gonna try to subjugate it's called. So go find the responsible party who caused the vandalism and get them to pay. And I guess if they get paid, maybe my insurance doesn't go up quite as much, but uh, maybe my deductible comes back, but maybe not.

So that's my, uh, little update.

Brent Sanders: Brutal.

Speaker: I will just close it out, I guess. Um, I don't know what's going on, but I can't hear you Brent. So, uh, take care. Until next time, we'll do more updates soon.

Brent Sanders: Cool. Thanks everybody.

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