Pixel Union $7M Exit

Andrew Wilkinson shares the story of how he sold his Shopify theme business, Pixel Union, which started from a chance meeting at a conference.

"I met Toby from Shopify and Harley in 2010 at a conference. At the time Shopify was pretty small and they asked if we'd make some templates for their store. I tried to get them to pay me, but they said 'No, this is gonna be like the iPhone App Store.' I thought we were doing them a favor.

We put up a bunch of themes in their store and started making $10-20,000 a month basically immediately. This was around 2010-2011. I ended up getting an offer to sell that business for $7 million - $3 million upfront, $1.5 million earn out, and the rest in stock in the new business.

I remember going to the ATM on the day it closed in a strip mall and checking my balance. I saw $3.1 million on the screen and thought 'I'm done, I'm rich, I'm good forever.' That was a big mindset shift - suddenly I had more money than I could use to incubate businesses. I still owned 20% of it and kept getting dividends from the business after the sale."