When an Agency Merger Falls Apart: Lessons on Reinvention with Tom Snyder | Ep #864

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What would you do if the merger you believed would change everything suddenly collapsed? Agency owners often dream of the big exit: the acquisition, the payday, the validation. But if you've been in this industry long enough, you know the story rarely goes as planned. Today's guest lived through the dot-com boom, a merger gone sideways, a rare "un-merger," and multiple reinventions across three decades.

Today's featured guest is an agency owner who lived through the dot com boom, a merger gone sideways, an unmerger (a rare event), and multiple reinventions over three decades. He'll talk about his journey and the lessons he's gained in resilience, clarity, and what it means to build a business that lasts.

Tom Snyder is the founder and CEO of Trivera, a Milwaukee-based agency that originally launched in 1996 under the name Website Solutions. He got his start back when tables ruled the web, Netscape Navigator was leading the browser war, and you had to explain to clients what the internet even was.

Tom's agency grew quickly through the dot com boom, became part of an early multi-agency rollup, unmerged after the dot com crash, and later rebuilt itself around strategic services, recurring revenue, and emerging technologies. Thirty years later, he has seen nearly every high and low this industry can deliver and has the scars and wisdom to match.

In this episode, we'll discuss:

• The roll up that seemed like a dream and the subsequent meltdown.

• The rare chance to unmerger.

• Learning to adapt to new technologies.

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Sponsors and Resources

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The Early Days of the Web: A Front Row Seat to Digital History

Tom got into websites before most people even understood what a web browser was. He recalls visiting a friend in 1995 who showed him a website for a local jeweler. The fact that someone in Milwaukee could suddenly sell jewelry to anyone in the world blew his mind. That spark soon became Website Solutions, a one-man shop in his duplex basement that grew into a million-dollar agency within three years.

These early days were defined by scrappiness. There were no WordPress installs, no Mailchimp, no Shopify. Agencies wrote their own CMS platforms, email tools, and ecommerce systems.

For years, Trivera worked on project-based engagements. Sell a website. Build it. Launch it. Then hunt for the next one. It created a revenue roller coaster that made it hard to grow.

Then the breakthrough came when someone asked a simple question: Why are you not offering annual retained services?

Once they shifted the model, everything changed. Retainers gave them predictable cash flow, stability during downturns, and the ability to build deeper, longer-term partnerships.

Inside the Dot-Com Boom and the Rollup That Promised Millions

By the late nineties, agency rollups were happening everywhere. Big groups on the West Coast were buying smaller shops at high valuations, promising stock payouts that would m