Negotiating Against Andrew Wilkinson

Nick shares the story of how he ended up negotiating to buy a company against a much more experienced acquirer.

"Originally there was a $47,000,000 offer from Andrew, but the business kept growing over the next six months as we got this deal done. It became a $52,000,000 purchase acquisition price.

Let me be clear - early on it felt like me and Andrew negotiating against each other. Holy shit, I'm negotiating against a titan. This guy's bought 40 companies, I've bought zero. A publicly traded business, a billionaire on paper for a while, a great friend of ours.

Then Andrew thought about some AI risk he saw, maybe some headwinds, and he said, 'You know what Nick, maybe we'll do this together.' It was kind of a conversation throughout. It wasn't as if we had any animosity between each other.

I was going to raise $20,000,000 to buy about 40% of the company from Marshall. I realized that if I go out and raise $20,000,000 to buy this company, I'm only entitled to a 20% carry on top once everybody gets their money back. My ownership would go from about 12% to about 20%. I'd have to raise $20,000,000, put my name on the line, take all this risk, do all this work.

Very quickly I realized - I can't do this deal. It would be foolish for me to do this. So I went back to Marshall and said, 'Hey, I need to buy more of the company.' This is where we got creative and I carved out an 18% seller note directly from Marshall to me."