In this high-energy episode of the Unicorn Leaders podcast, Fahd sits down with serial entrepreneur and author Adrian Salamunovic for a raw, real, and wisdom-packed conversation on what it takes to build—and exit—category-defining companies. Adrian shares the behind-the-scenes journey from selling his first business at 21 to founding DNA11 and CanvasPop, exiting for 30x EBITDA, and now launching The Exit podcast and founder community. Together, they unpack what founders get wrong about scaling, the psychology behind great leadership, and why the smartest move isn’t always about being the smartest person in the room. From hiring to vision, from mental stamina to co-founder breakups, this episode is a tactical masterclass in how to build a business worth buying—without losing yourself along the way.
Episode Mentions
- The Play Bigger Book: https://www.playbigger.com/book
- Join Adrian’s community for exited founders: The Exit Group - https://www.theexit.group/?fbclid=PAZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAack5M_B93ea5JJQkDPVRxjRi--i_RbpbaO00u2Eoq3QD5XL_JlAUQCtStee7Q_aem_OTsbTW-XT_JHFe1HQ40haQ
- Where to find Adrian: clarity.fm/adrian-salamunovic
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
SPEAKER_02 (00:00):
A weird moment for me is when I stopped chasing
money.
I said, you know what?
If this thing fails, I canalways move back into my mom's
house.
I won't be homeless.
Like that's the mentality level.
I can return the lease, the car.
I'm willing to give it all upbecause now I'm chasing my
passion.
I'm chasing something that Iknow needs to exist in the
world, right?
(00:20):
And so it's really funny.
And I've had this happen to meseveral times in my life is when
I stopped chasing the dollars,just the dollars where the
opportunity is and chase whatI'm passionate about.
Real magic.
begins to happen.
I see a lot of founders buildingthis company.
They're like, I'm going to buildthis, then I'm going to flip it
to somebody, right?
You've got to build it for thelong term.
But building your business sothat it can be sold, which means
(00:41):
your finances are clean, youhave a clear market proposition,
that you as the founder canleave the business and it can
still run, those fundamentalsare all critical towards
building a great businessanyway.
For example, having SOPs, havinga proper systems operating
procedures and are using EOS orwhatever system you choose is
going to make your business runbetter regardless of whether you
(01:03):
sell it.
So your company from day oneshould be built so that it can
sell, but you don't necessarilybuild it so that its main reason
of existing is to flip it orsell it.
SPEAKER_01 (01:15):
Hello and welcome back Unicorn Leaders to our
Unicorn Leadership Podcast wherethis season we're unpacking the
David versus Goliath of teams.
What is it that makes thesesmall but mighty teams overcome
the odds?
And I'm really excited for ourguest today.
Our guest today is anacquaintance, is a friend,
someone I've known for a littlebit of time.
I've been watching their amazingwork.
(01:36):
They've been around theentrepreneurship community for a
little while.
Adrian, I should have asked youbefore this, but how do I say
your last name?
SPEAKER_02 (01:44):
Nobody gets it right.
Don't worry.
Don't even feel bad.
It's Salamunavik.
It's the way it looks, but
SPEAKER_01 (01:50):
it's long.
I love that.
You've got that ambiguous lookto you.
Anywhere you go, they'll thinkyou're a local.
Every joke offends me, prettymuch.
Adrian, you're a serialentrepreneur.
You've built a few companies.
List them off the top a littlebit.
What are some of the companynames?
SPEAKER_02 (02:09):
I've been an entrepreneur since I was 16
years old.
I started to one of the firstweb development companies in
Canada back in 1996.
I'm kind of dating myself rightnow, but I've been in the game
for a long time.
More recently, I started acompany called DNA11 that was 14
years ago.
It's a company that made artworkfrom people's DNA, one of the
most personalized consumergenomics companies in the world.
(02:32):
Spun that out to createCanvasPop.
Only took 11, 12, 13 years, andwe were able to sell it to a
private equity firm.
We had an exit a few years ago.
And I've been involved withcompanies like MyFacts.com that
I helped build the brand, createthe company.
That sold for$220 million.
I was part of the build team,the initial team, but I was not
(02:53):
a founder of that company.
But I learned a lot in thatjourney.
And then more recently, I'm theco-founder of Millions.co, which
is a social commerce platformfor professional athletes, which
I co-founded with my friend MattWhitaker and the voice of the
Octagon, Bruce Buffer, asco-founders.
Tremendously cool company.
And now I'm working on the exitgroup and And that's probably
(03:15):
what we're going to spend mostof our time talking about today.
SPEAKER_01 (03:17):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Adrian, you've got a wealth ofexperience and some really cool.
I mean, the fact that you'veworked in all of these different
companies, you've lived severallifetimes through.
You've been the David in aGoliath of an industry, right?
What is it that allowed you tobuild these small but mighty
teams that either eventuallyexited or created a huge impact?
Now, in addition to that, you'realso a bestselling author.
(03:38):
So let's start at the beginningof the journey.
Adrian, give me a little bit ofbackground, who you are.
We grew up in And what's yourorigin story, the path into
entrepreneurship for you?
SPEAKER_02 (03:49):
Yeah, I mean, I started off as a D-level student
and maintained D-level studentstatus right through to high
school until business classeswere introduced.
And then I finally foundsomething that fascinated and
interested me, which was theworld of business, and then
started getting A's.
So just for the last couple ofyears of high school, I joined
Junior Achievers, which is anamazing program that's still
(04:11):
around.
That's awesome.
So my first business was withJunior Achievers.
Junior Achievers.
We learned how to set up acompany, set up a cap table.
I mean, it's incredibleeducation for a 16, well, no,
maybe 17-year-old to be doing inhigh school for credits, right,
after a program.
And so I'm a huge, huge advocateof Junior Achiever and a huge
advocate of us introducingentrepreneurship to students as
(04:33):
young as possible.
Entrepreneurs are the backboneof every economy.
We need more founders.
We need more entrepreneurs inCanada, the United States, here
in Mexico, where I am at themoment.
Entrepreneurs are amazing forthe economy.
So I'll start off with that.
But I wasn't being taughtentrepreneurship until grade 12,
where I took an entrepreneurshipclass.
I was hooked.
(04:54):
I did JA.
I was hooked and started myfirst company out of high
school.
And that company actually endedup being acquired.
At the age of 21, I ended upselling that company to Nova
Networks in Ottawa, Canada,where I grew up.
And so I had my firstacquisition at the age of 21.
What was the company?
It was called MediaWave, and itwas Nova Networks that acquired
(05:14):
It's a small amount of money,but when you're 21 years old and
most of your friends are workingat Subway and you sell your
first, it was a web developmentcompany, you know, you sell it.
It wasn't, it was enough moneyto buy a, foolishly buy a BMW
off the lot.
And then there wasn't a lot ofmoney left over.
Very immature, right?
When you're 21 years old.
(05:34):
But that was the beginning of myfirst acquisition.
I went on to build a bunch ofdifferent companies after that.
And, you know, just keptbuilding companies.
jumping into consulting andadvisory work, getting inspired,
launching another company, had awhole bunch of failures.
I started one of the firstmobile app companies in 1999,
2000 called Ventrata.
(05:57):
We raised money for it.
Believe it or not, we werebuilding apps for the research
and motion BlackBerry, which isa whole other story.
We were way too early in thatspace.
And we had to shut that companydown right after 9-11.
And so I got a front seat tofailure very early, success and
failure very And so that taughtme what to do and what not to
do.
And I vowed never to have tobankrupt another company again.
(06:20):
And then from there, went on tobuild CanvasPop, DNA11, PopKey,
which is one of the first GIFkeyboards out there.
A ton of different businesses.
Some did really great and othersflatlined.
This is life, you know?
Yeah,
SPEAKER_01 (06:32):
yeah, yeah, yeah.
But you continue to take shots.
You continue to take shots.
You continue to step up to theplate.
You continue to swing.
And I think that's what's reallycool.
Now, there's somethinginteresting about when you start
at that young of an age.
I've often said thatentrepreneurs have to have a
level of delusion.
You sort of have to bedelusional enough to go, I'm
going to take on the Goliath.
And when you're a teenager, yousort of feel like you're
(06:54):
invincible.
So getting teenagers involved inentrepreneurship means they
often have that, just the rightamount of delusion to be like, I
can do that.
I can try that.
Because what got you started?
Where comes the self-belief togo, I'm going to enter this
industry and I'm going to, at 21years old, try and build this
(07:14):
company where I've got peoplethat have way more money, have
way more experience, are betterin every way, but I'm going to
compete against them.
SPEAKER_02 (07:21):
Well, you said it right.
It's a combination of insanity,a little bit of delusion with
some naivety, kind of in theperfect soup, right?
And you know what?
For me, it started with myparents, especially my mother,
who never let me know that Iwasn't a top percentile, a
person on the IQ graph, right?
She always told me I was agenius.
She told me I'm creative.
She just convinced me that I wassomebody that could do anything
(07:44):
And so that's self-belief.
And to me, I get emotional whenI think about it, but I want
every kid to have a parent likethat.
Not everybody has that.
A parent that can encourage.
And when the school system'stelling you you're low IQ,
you're not smart, you needmedication.
They wanted to put me on ADDmedication when I was a kid.
My mom said, no way.
We got to keep this guy on thecreative and always boosting me
(08:05):
up.
So I thank my mother first andforemost for giving me that
confidence to believe in myself.
And then after that, you justgot to almost just, you got to
believe in yourself firstbecause no one's going to do it
for you.
And so it's really, reallyimportant to just stay, I want
to say, stay naive, stay, alwayssee the positivity and see the
possibility that if you believein anything enough, you can do
(08:26):
anything.
And I've done it.
I've seen it firsthand that whenyou believe in what you're doing
enough, others will be attractedto it.
Others will see it.
And eventually the market willsee it and sky's the limit.
UNKNOWN (08:37):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (08:37):
Yeah.
Now, Adrian, strategically, soemotionally, I think that's
important.
Strategically, when you're theunderdog, when you're the David
and the Goliath, when you're ayoung startup founder trying to
compete in an industry, what didyou do?
Where do you
SPEAKER_02 (08:53):
focus?
Yeah, well, there's really twoparts to the strategy.
The first one, and this is theone a lot of people mess up, is
just think big.
If you're going to do something,dream big, think big, create a
big, ambitious goal, and startwithout and work backwards.
A lot of entrepreneurs start inthe comfort zone and they say,
okay, well, I'm going to build abusiness that does a million
(09:13):
dollars a year.
Well, guess what?
If that's your goal, you'regoing to probably maybe hit a
million dollars a year.
You might fall short and hit$800,000 a year.
Nice little business.
There's nothing wrong with that.
But what if you say, I'm goingto build a billion dollar
company, right?
Or a hundred million dollarcompany.
If you get really uncomfortable,if you say you're going to do a
hundred million dollar companyand after eight years you hit 80
(09:35):
million, it's still anincredibly a successful company,
right?
So the first rule is think big,think as big as you can get, and
surround yourself with peoplethat think big, mentors,
advisors, read biographies ifyou don't have access to those,
and just expand your horizon.
That's
SPEAKER_01 (09:51):
number one.
How do you think thinking bigshifts someone's decision
making?
How does it change your decisionmaking when you're actually
thinking at that level versusthe decisions you would make if
you were thinking just amillion?
SPEAKER_02 (10:01):
Well, that's the second part of the equation is
also think not just big, butthink long term, right?
Think big and long So when youcombine those two forces, your
decision-making is going to bemore of a path towards success,
right?
So, for example, you're going toinvest in hiring the right
people that can carry you longerterm.
You're going to invest in theright technology that's going to
(10:22):
reduce your costs and make yourcompany perform better on the
long term.
And so just by having those twofilters, thinking big and also
thinking long term, you're goingto be setting yourself up for a
better trajectory.
So in every decision, who youbank with, who your lawyer is,
is, who your accountant is, whoyou hire, who you fire, which is
also important.
So those are the two mainfilters that a lot of early
(10:44):
stage founders, I think, need tospend more time thinking about.
SPEAKER_01 (10:48):
Yeah.
And so in your initialcompanies, you got some
traction, you got some wins, andthen DNA11 becomes the sort of
really anchor moment for you inyour entrepreneurial journey.
Tell me a little bit about howdid you come up with DNA11?
What was your moments there ofcreation and brilliance?
SPEAKER_02 (11:05):
Well, I think really interesting breakthrough moment
for me with DNA 11 was I hadbeen, you know, I was in my
early 30s by the time I launchedthat.
I had spent my life as a high,high level advisor to a lot of
big companies, started a fewcompanies at that point.
And I was feeling quite frankly,quite lost.
And so I leaned into what mypassion was at the time, which
was creativity and art.
(11:27):
And a weird moment for me iswhen I stopped chasing money.
I said, you know what, if thisthing fails, I can always move
back into my mom's house.
I won't be homeless.
Like that's the mentality level.
I can return the lease the car Ican I'm willing to give it all
up because now I'm chasing mypassion I'm chasing something
that I know I know needs toexist in the world right and so
(11:48):
it's really funny and I've hadthis happen to me several times
in my life is when I stoppedchasing the dollars just the
dollars where the opportunity isand chase what I'm passionate
about real magic begins tohappen so that was the first
thing I did was I stoppedchasing money and went after a
big exciting vision somethingthat got me up in the morning
that I knew the world needed andthen that was the beginning of
DNA 11.
(12:08):
That was the biggest shift thathappened to me.
SPEAKER_01 (12:11):
I really like that.
That's interesting because,again, I keep trying to tie some
of these themes back into thewhole David versus Goliath.
It's like the Goliaths arechasing money.
They're chasing capitalefficiency, return on
investment, investor money.
Like they're chasing this verynumerical efficiency driven sort
of thing.
But what you're saying whenyou're starting off, if you
(12:31):
don't chase the money, but youchase the idea, you chase the
creativity, you chase thepassion, it allows you to make
different type of bets.
SPEAKER_02 (12:36):
Different types of bets.
And the other advantage you haveas a small team is nimbleness.
You know, your competitor couldbe the Titanic and you can be
like a race boat or a jet ski,right?
You can maneuver more quickly.
And with the advent of AI, weall know that the efficiencies
that we're going to see asstartups over the next five
years is going to be absolutelyincredible.
So it's never been a better timeto be a startup ever in the
(12:58):
history of mankind than now,right?
Truly, yeah.
So that's one, is you canoutmaneuver the Goliaths, but
yes, you can outpassion them.
You're a small team, you'reinteracting hopefully as the
founder, you're interacting withcustomers every day, you're able
to see things in the market,change direction, innovate,
(13:19):
launch new products at muchfaster speeds than your large
entrenched competitors can do.
And so there are some reallyhuge advantages to being a
startup and being more efficientand more nimble.
Yeah.
It's an amazing time to be astartup founder.
SPEAKER_01 (13:34):
So, so here you are, you're willing to chase passion.
How do you go to DNA art?
How does that, how does that,like, where's the story that
brings that up to the forefront
SPEAKER_02 (13:44):
for you?
I think when you hang out withdifferent people and there's a
lesson to be learned here withall sorts of founders is is hang
out with scientists, hang outwith artists, hang out with
musicians, hang out withpodcasters, hang out with
authors.
Because in that mix of having acommunity of different mindsets,
that's where the real magichappens with connecting the dots
and ideas that would normallynever be connected.
(14:05):
In our case, we took the idea ofpersonalization, which was
trending very much in the early2000s, and the idea of art, and
we added a layer of consumergenomics.
We launched before 23andMe did.
So we were very early in thespace of consumer genomics.
And by connecting these thingsthat seem to have no obvious
connection, we were able tocreate something super
(14:27):
innovative.
As Seth Godin would call it, apurple cow.
Something that was so uniquethat people couldn't help but
just talk about it.
And it was the world's mostpersonalized art made from a
sample of your DNA.
And that took off.
That got attention.
And we're still, even back then,we're in an attention economy.
We've got a ton of PR, a ton ofbuzz, and the company took off
(14:47):
from there.
It's sometimes the craziestideas are between the folds and
connecting things that wouldotherwise never obviously be
connected.
And that happens by expandingyour network and hanging out
with different people that think
SPEAKER_01 (14:59):
differently, right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
I love it.
I mean, in many ways you sort ofsaid, I don't even want to fight
a Goliath.
I'm going to find, we're goingto find something so different
and so unique
SPEAKER_02 (15:08):
that there's no, there was no one.
There's a great book called playbigger, fantastic book, but in
play bigger, it's about creatingcategory Kings, creating your
own category.
Salesforce.com did this in asense, right?
There was no, they created theterm, the cloud, right?
CRM.
They had a big thing saying no,you know, no software, no to
(15:28):
software, yes to the cloud.
And they were one of the firstpioneers in the SaaS world by
bringing CRM from enterpriseinto the cloud.
They had a clear enemy at thetime, which was all the other
existing CRM players.
And then they disrupted thespace by creating their own
category and becoming a categoryking.
And that's what the book PlayBiggers about ahead recommend
(15:50):
that any startup founder readthat book to understand what
it's like from the gate tounderstand what new market
you're going to create in a newposition.
It makes you way more powerful.
SPEAKER_01 (15:59):
Definitely add that to the show notes and link out
to it because I think that's areally good tool, a really good
call out there.
So you're building DNA11, you'rehaving fun with it, you're doing
some crazy marketing things withit, unconventional.
What are some of the things thatyou do with it?
What are some of the lessons youtake away from it?
Where's your journey throughoutDNA11?
Well,
SPEAKER_02 (16:20):
D&A 11 was very, very hyper, hyper niche, right?
As narrow as it gets.
So something funny happened.
We ramped up to a milliondollars in revenue in our first
year, but then we stayed at amillion dollars a year.
We were seven or eight people,and we were just...
really hustling hard, workinghuge.
I remember working 12, 15-hourdays.
(16:40):
No matter how hard we worked, itwould only convert an X
percentage, and only so manypeople would want to buy a piece
of art from Personalized DNA.
So I learned a couple lessons.
One of them is TAM does matter,total addressable market.
At some point, you can dominatea niche, get traction, but you
need to find larger, more openmarkets to go after.
So that was the first thing westarted doing.
It's like, okay, we've got thistechnology.
(17:02):
We've got these printers.
We've got this website.
What else do we do with it.
But the second thing we did iswe didn't know what we didn't
know.
We were too deep in the forest.
And so what we did, and this wasa groundbreaking moment, and I
think this is so critical foreverybody listening to think
about this, is we hired anexecutive coach.
That man's name was CameronHarold, which was a former CEO
of 1-800-GOT-JUNK.
(17:23):
And he helped change our livesbecause he was able to take
myself and my co-founder at thetime and get us to look in the
mirror and see all the thingsthat we were doing that we
didn't know we were doingincorrectly.
So he helped us scale thebusiness.
So Those two things, identifyinga larger market once we already
had traction and hiring anexecutive coach were absolute
game changers for us and helpingus take the company to the next
(17:46):
level, which then we launchedCanvasPop, which is the company
we recently sold for over 30times EBITDA multiples to a
private equity firm.
30
SPEAKER_01 (17:55):
times EBITDA multiples.
Congratulations.
SPEAKER_02 (17:59):
Yeah.
An absolute outlier.
They did a tremendous job in thesales process, which is one of
the reasons I'm so passionateabout exiting.
If you exit right, you can takea business that maybe
historically has three to fivetimes EBITDA multiples, which is
what we're seeing in typicale-commerce companies and
especially services businesses.
(18:19):
We were able to get 30 timesmultiples, and there's a lot of
reasons for that.
But yeah, there's a lot.
to be said about having theright strategy and the right
positioning before you sell yourbusiness.
Yeah,
SPEAKER_01 (18:30):
yeah.
There's two things that come tomind here, Adrian, as you're
saying this.
One, I think I love that yougive the call out to your
executive coach because theyallow you to pull you out of the
day-to-day.
You're so close.
We're fish in water.
We're so close to our ownproblems that we can't always
see it.
And sometimes you just needsomeone to pull you out and you
go, oh my God, I know this,right?
Like, oh my God, I see it.
But I just couldn't get myselfjust away from it to look at it
(18:53):
in the right way.
I had a personal moment withthat recently We hired an agency
to help us with a few things.
And even just like one of theirexecutives helping us, I was
like, oh my God, I know this.
But the way you, yeah, youpulled me out of where I was
stuck and I just needed that newinsight.
It was powerful.
Now, Adrian, I've admiredsomething that you've done here
that I think is key for ourentrepreneurs to also
(19:13):
understand.
You've also built with sale inmind, exit in mind.
So when you scale leadership, alot of founders are the
bottlenecks in their ownorganization, their own
companies.
And so even if they want to oneday try trying to sell their
company, they're sort of tooentrenched.
They haven't built a scalableteam or process or systems.
But being the serialentrepreneur that you were, you
probably learned that lessonearly on, like how to build to
(19:36):
sell.
What are the elements ofleadership or team and process
that makes my company sellable?
Any thoughts on that as yourecently went through the
CanvasPop shift and any thoughtsthat you took from DNA11 to
CanvasPop that helped youunderstand how to make it more
sellable with your executivecoach?
SPEAKER_02 (19:53):
Yeah, I think it's important to make a distinction
that you You want to build yourcompany so that it can be sold,
but you don't want to build itto sell it.
In other words, I see a lot offounders building this company.
They're like, I'm going to buildthis, then I'm going to flip it
to somebody, right?
You've got to build it for thelong term.
But building your business sothat it can be sold, which means
your finances are clean, youhave a clear market proposition,
(20:15):
that you as the founder canleave the business and it can
still run, those fundamentalsare all critical towards
building a great businessanyway.
For example, having SOPs, havinga proper systems operating
procedures and are using EOS orwhatever system you choose is
going to make your business runbetter regardless of whether you
sell it.
So your company from day oneshould be built so that it can
(20:37):
sell, but you don't necessarilybuild it so that its main reason
of existing is to flip it orsell it.
So there's a distinction there.
And so understanding that andbuilding your company in such a
way that it can be sold is justgoing to make your company run
better regardless.
And ultimately what you want todo is create a company that you
don't even want to sell.
It's generating so much profit.
(20:58):
You enjoy the culture, thecompany is running so great that
you don't even want to sell it.
But if you do feel like you needto sell it, which are common
reasons are burnout, you've hita plateau, you don't know where
to go with it, or the offers,your company is so great that
the offers start coming in thedoor.
Great companies are bought, notsold.
So that's a great situation tobe in, that you're in a position
that you can sell it.
(21:19):
And to be honest, we had to do alot of work, especially my
former co-founder, to preparethe company to be able to be
sold because we had built it forso many years in operations mode
and cash flow mode that when itcame time to sell, we had to
take a step back, we had toclean up the finances, even get
rid of employees.
It was a painful process.
(21:39):
And by the way, myself included,I was fired from my own
business.
We had two co-founders makingfairly large salaries that were
replicated.
And so there wasn't a need tohave two co-founders doing the
same thing, but it was the bestthing that ever happened.
So you just got to build abusiness so that it can be sold.
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (21:58):
Yeah.
And now, you know, you touchedon a few things here that I
like.
As a founder, some of thestrengths that you have early on
that allow you to be scrappy andto build are some of the same
disadvantages as you scale,because you're sort of so good
at being scrappy and nimble andrunning and have high intensity
and go, go, go, that when you'rebuilding something that is more
(22:19):
scalable, that's shifting, it'smoving away from just the
explore product market fits, butthe scale, what were some of
those lids for you?
What were some areas that youhit your head a few too many
times because of your own actualstrength that you were so good
at the early stages that nearthe end it was a lot harder for
you.
Yeah, I mean, everything.
SPEAKER_02 (22:39):
So every single stage of the business was a new
lid or a new ceiling.
And so as a founder, you've gotto decide, am I going to learn
this and become good atsomething?
Or am I going to find the rightpeople to replace these roles?
So at the beginning, if it'sjust you and your co-founder,
you're each wearing four or fivehats.
And it's imperative, and this isthe lesson I've learned this
(23:02):
late in my career, is it'simperative that you bring in the
people where your weaknessesare.
You hire those people as soon aspossible.
as soon as you have market fit,of course, and bringing those
people in to take over thoseroles so that you as a founder
can focus on what you'renaturally gifted at, what
everybody tells you you're greatat, what you feel you're great
at.
Because otherwise you're goingto burn out.
(23:23):
You're going to hit a bunch ofceilings.
You're going to slow down yourown growth.
You're going to get in your ownway.
And so recognizing yourstrengths and weaknesses is
absolutely paramount to anyfounder and replacing yourself
as quickly as possible withpeople that are smarter than
you, more experienced than youis the key to hyperscale and to
growth without a doubt.
And so for me, honestly, I don'tlove managing people.
(23:45):
And how do you grow a companywhen you don't love managing
people?
Well, the answer is bring in aco-founder that is far into
operations, understands how tohire, fire, scale.
That's something I wish I didway, way, way sooner all my
businesses.
Myself as a founder, I recognizemy strengths on the outside of
the circle, promoting,marketing, raising capital,
(24:06):
everything on the outside.
On the inside, operations,finance, et cetera.
It's not that I'm weak.
I know how to do these things,but I don't enjoy it, and I'm
not the best at it.
So why not find people that wantto join your team who are good
at those trades?
SPEAKER_01 (24:21):
Yeah.
So identify your zone of genius.
Identify the things that youlove, that you enjoy, and kind
of double down on them becauseyou're going to be phenomenal at
those and build a team aroundthat.
Yeah.
Too many people
SPEAKER_02 (24:31):
try to hammer through this and say, well, I'm
not good at finance, so I'mgoing to learn finance.
I'm going to take a course atHarvard on finance.
It's like, no, you're not goodat numbers.
Don't force yourself.
There's a lot of people outthere, CFAs and CFOs that would
love to come work with you whowill be ready that very quickly
to help you scale.
I've even met founders thatdecided to learn how to code,
(24:53):
right?
It's admirable to want to learna new skill, but at what cost,
right?
Like it really depends whereyour priorities are.
If growth is it, find peoplesmarter than you, hire them,
bring them in or partner withthem as soon as possible.
SPEAKER_01 (25:06):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I think you said it at one pointin in one of our pre-interview
series.
At 10 people, chaos is afeature.
At 100, it's a liability.
So as you start to scale that,where's your skill set in
managing all those people?
And what skill do you want tocontinue to actually grow?
So should founders develop theirmanagement skills?
(25:27):
You know, should they develop?
What sort of, like you'resaying, okay, some of them want
to build projects.
They want to learn to code.
But what skills do they have tolearn?
What skills are still optionalthat you can replace out?
Would you say every skill ishireable Or is there stuff that
you say, you know what, as afounder, no matter what, you
should still...
SPEAKER_02 (25:44):
Well, I think as a founder, you should have the
fundamentals of financeunderstood, right?
Because you're going to comeacross that.
You want to be able to talk toyour CFO or your accountant in
an intelligent way.
You can't just say, I'm not anumbers guy.
I don't understand finance.
I'm not even going to look atit.
So I think every great founderor let's talk about a CEO should
(26:05):
definitely understand finance.
A CEO definitely needs tounderstand hiring because all
Ultimately, a CEO's job is toraise money, if you're in a
venture environment, and hirepeople, right?
And then the vision part issomething you can't outsource.
That's your job as a CEO.
You have to have that vision,create that culture, and set
your sights on your North Starand go, right?
(26:27):
And so that's the one thingthat, look, if you don't have
vision and you don't have that,you can't really run a company.
But other than that, I sayunderstand finance as much as
you're comfortableunderstanding.
at least literate when it comesto finance and understand how to
hire and fire because that'swhat you're going to be doing
for the next decade.
So you might as well developthose skills.
SPEAKER_01 (26:49):
Yeah.
Yeah.
How do you hold people to acertain standard?
I think that's the hire and firething.
It's like, you know, can you setpace and hold standard to your
team, right?
SPEAKER_02 (26:58):
Yeah.
Yeah.
And setting pace is so critical,right?
And so one of the other mistakesthat I made in my career was how
do you hold pace?
I mean, building a business is amarathon and I would argue an
ultra marathon and not a sprint.
So I always talk about themarathon mentality.
And the biggest thing I seefounders, because I'm involved
with a lot of very successfulexited and pre-exited founders.
(27:20):
The thing that I see is thatfounders often let go of their
mental health and their physicalhealth and push that to a later
date.
They're like, when I sell orwhen I get to this level, then
I'll take care of my fitness.
Then I'll take care of my mentalhealth.
The reality is if you want torun a marathon, you need to be
in great shape.
So it starts with physicality.
taking care of your body, eatingright, sleeping right.
(27:43):
Without that, you have nothing.
And then beyond that is gettingyour mind game right, because
this is a marathon.
And if you're only prepared fora sprint, you're going to burn
out.
I've experienced burnout.
I've had business partners ofmine experience chronic burnout,
and it's an absolute killer.
And so the first thing I wouldsay to any founder is get ready
(28:03):
for an ultra marathon.
If you finish it in a marathonpace, great, but this is not a
sprint.
It's an ultra marathon, prepareyour body and your mind because
this is going to be a long trip.
UNKNOWN (28:13):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (28:14):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I love that.
It's an ultra marathon.
You got to pace yourself.
We got to take care of ourhealth.
We got to take care of our, youknow, and that's part of it.
Like got to take care of theculture and the team.
So sometimes when we talk aboutculture to some founders, you
know, let's just, we're justbuilding five.
We're just building.
I go, but culture is the, is themental health of the team.
Culture is the, it's the workoutof the team.
(28:35):
Does the team haverelationships?
Cause we've got to keep workingwith them for a long time.
And so if we don't take care ofthose little things, those
interactions, then, you know, I,I, We've seen a lot of founding
teams fall apart and dysfunctionat that level.
SPEAKER_02 (28:48):
Yeah, and if you as a founder are out of shape,
you're tired, you're notpresent, they're looking up to
you as a leader.
And so it's imperative that theleader of the company lead by
example.
And you're not doing it out ofvanity.
You're doing it because you wantto have the energy.
You want to lead by example.
And a leader needs to be thereboth 100% as much as they can
(29:10):
with their health and with theirmindset.
And so that's what I encouragefounders to do is focus on those
two and the rest will take careof itself.
SPEAKER_01 (29:17):
Yeah,
SPEAKER_02 (29:17):
I love that.
SPEAKER_01 (29:18):
Good.
So, Adrian, you're now DNA11 toCanvasPop.
You grew the team, grew thecompany, fired yourself even to
get ready for exiting.
You established this amazingexit.
And then you go off and say, I'mbuilding millions of dollars.
That's it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And then you also now build thisnetwork for exiting and helping
(29:40):
founders exit.
That's it.
So you've gone through somecrazy entrepreneurial journeys.
You found some great success,but then you dive right back
into the game and you playagain.
Tell me a little bit about whatthat takes, what that looks
like.
How are you playing the gamenow, the fourth or fifth time,
maybe differently than the firstfew times you played the game?
SPEAKER_02 (29:59):
That's a great question.
I tried to take time off, right?
And I actually took probably toomuch time off.
A lot of my founder friends.
One mistake a lot of exitedfounders do is they can't sit
still and they get right backinto the next startup within
months.
And I don't recommend that.
If you're going to sell yourbusiness, have a significant
liquidity event, I alwaysrecommend you take at least six
months off.
(30:19):
Go do some things for yourself.
You know, life's long.
Enjoy it.
Prepare for the next thing.
I took a little bit too muchtime off.
I moved here to Tulum, Mexico,sat on the beach.
SPEAKER_01 (30:30):
Your tan looks great.
SPEAKER_02 (30:32):
My tan started, maybe got a little too much sun
and just really just was lostfor a while, but I use that time
to try to figure out what'snext.
And so a little bit different onthis is I do believe your pain
is, is going to be something youwant to lean into to create
your, like your, your, the bestway to describe it is if you
have something that's created alot of pain in your life, that
(30:52):
could be your purpose, right?
So your pain is your purpose.
And in this case, when I wasgoing through the exit process,
there was very few people that Icould talk to.
If being a founder is lonely,being an exiting or exited
founders, even lonelier, quitehonestly.
And And so I wanted to createsomething, a platform, where
founders that are about to exitor thinking about exiting can
(31:13):
join other exited founders on apeer-to-peer network and get
battle-tested advice from otherfounders that have exited BIC,
right?
The way we say it is you want toidentify the landmines and avoid
those and find the gold minesand dig for those, right?
And so sometimes advice from theright people at the right time
can create not 1x, not 2x, not5x, not 10x, but a 100x multiple
(31:35):
And so I wanted to create acommunity and I wanted to create
a place where we could connectpost-exited founders with
pre-exited founders.
And that's what the exit groupis.
We meet with foundersone-on-one.
We also have a community.
We also have free content withour podcast series that's
(31:57):
launching.
And so my mission is to make theexiting process as painless and
as fun as possible and asprofitable as possible.
Founder to founder.
founder.
SPEAKER_01 (32:06):
And that's what we're doing.
SPEAKER_02 (32:07):
That's really cool.
SPEAKER_01 (32:08):
That's really cool.
And how's it been going?
What are some of the currentsuccesses?
What are you enjoying about it?
What's difficult about it?
SPEAKER_02 (32:16):
Well, we're in the process of launching it right
now.
So what I did is I got rightdown to business, started
recording over 14 hours ofpodcast content.
We've interviewed Mark McCloud,former CFO of Shopify, one of
the former Shopify founders,Daniel Wynan, who's a good
friend of mine, Neil Patel.
We have founders that haveexited for over billions of
(32:36):
dollars and some that haveexited for$20 million.
But what we're doing is we'regetting those insights and
sharing them for free with theworld.
The other thing we do, we have afew hundred signups even before
we've launched all word ofmouth.
So people putting up their handand saying, I'm interested in
being part of this.
And now we're in the process ofjust rolling it out.
We're going to do a slow roll.
The idea is to just create thiscommunity, one applicant at a
(32:57):
time.
It's quality over quantity.
And we're really looking forfounders that are looking to
exit the next year to two yearswho are going to value being
part of this now.
And we know and we're extremelyconfident that we can create
massive value for these foundersat this critical time.
So
SPEAKER_01 (33:12):
that's our
SPEAKER_02 (33:14):
mission.
SPEAKER_01 (33:24):
when you're working with these founders, it's a
peer-to-peer group, right?
So they're learning from eachother.
What are some of the learningsyou learned with CanvasPop as
you went to 30 EBIT?
What were some of the lessonsyou're hoping to pass on to the
founders more than the like, youknow, get your books right, get
your lawyers right, get, youknow, okay, we know that.
(33:45):
What were some insights in goingthrough that exit process
emotionally as a founder afterspending years building the
company?
SPEAKER_02 (33:52):
Yeah, we could do a two-hour podcast just on this.
subject, but there's a fewthings that come to mind.
I mean, the first one is exitingis not something you want to do
in 60 days, right?
You don't want to be reactive tothe exit.
If you think an exit is coming,it's something you want to
typically start mentally andalso physically as a company
preparing for about two yearsbefore the actual event happens.
(34:14):
There's a ton of stuff that canbe done in that window that is
going to make that exit so muchmore successful for you as a
founder, right?
The first thing we do isidentify levers within the this
thing business without changinganything.
It's like, what are some thingsthat we can change today that's
going to have much larger impactby the time you're ready to
exit, right?
So those are all the technicalthings.
You can launch new productcategories.
(34:36):
You can identify new productcategories and not even launch
them, but just say, look, if wedid this, then we think revenue
can do this.
So there's a bunch of levers andthose levers are absolutely
critical.
And so we help to identify andprioritize those.
So that's one thing.
The other thing is justpreparing the founder himself or
herself for what What's going tobe on the other end?
A lot of founders don't eventhink about what post-exit life
(35:00):
is going to be like.
What do you want to do when youexit with all that money, right?
Have a clarity of what you wantto do.
Some people want to travel, butthen what do you do after you're
done traveling?
So we encourage founders tostart dreaming and thinking
about what's next.
Maybe it's a not-for-profit.
Maybe it's you're going to writea book.
Maybe you're going to create afoundation.
Whatever it is, start dreamingand thinking about that now and
(35:21):
even start laying down some ofthat early stage groundwork, not
waiting until after the exit todo that.
So those are some of the thingsthat we do.
And there's a whole bunch ofother stuff.
And the list is very long, butthere's a bunch of tactical
stuff around taxes, trusts.
I mean, there's so much stuff.
And that's why it takes twoyears to do it.
You want to do it slowly in afun and interactive way with
(35:41):
people who have been there anddone it.
SPEAKER_01 (35:43):
It's fantastic.
That's fantastic.
Well, Adrian, you've shared aton of really good insights and
ideas to our founders here.
Let's summarize some of it.
If you were talking to yourTwitter 27-year-old founder self
and you go, hey, let's go forcoffee.
I want to share with you some ofthe shit that we're going to go
through, some of the stuff thatwe're going to have.
(36:05):
What are some wisdom you want tobestow?
And what are some things thatyou might actually not want to
tell them to let them experienceit for themselves?
SPEAKER_02 (36:13):
Yeah, that's excellent.
Yeah, there are certain thingsthat you just, I do it all the
time when I go, they're going tohave to see what I'm talking
about to understand it, right?
An example is money doesn't makeyou happy.
That's just something you've gotto do and make a lot of money
and then go, see, you got fiveextra zeros in your account or
seven extra zeros, 10 extrazeros.
(36:33):
It doesn't make a difference.
That is one of those examples oflike, you hear people say it,
money doesn't make you happy.
And until it happens to you, youwon't understand it.
So, but on this- Because what'sthe internet response?
I'll cry in my Lamborghini,right?
Cry in my Lamborghini.
So I understand that.
But ultimately, that's one ofthe things you have to just
experience for yourself.
The other ones are fundamentals.
(36:54):
I mean, one, be...
really put a lot of thoughtabout who you partner with,
right?
A co-founder, it's a marriage,man.
And so you better understand whothey are, like really know who
they are, understand how theyreact when things go downhill as
well as uphill, right?
Because everybody's amazing whenthings are going this way.
It's when shit hits the fan,what are they like?
(37:15):
And that takes time tounderstand.
So there's a bunch of rules thatI have around co-founders.
One of them is date for sixmonths.
Like don't just get into bed andsay, okay, we're going to split
50-50.
It's like spend six monthsbuilding, working together,
understanding your strengthsbefore you commit equity, right?
If you're going to commitequity, also use vesting
schedules, like make sure youhave vesting both for yourself
(37:36):
and for your co-founder.
So if one of them decides thisis not for them, they don't walk
away with 50% or whatever amountof equity in the business.
So I see that a lot.
The third one is don't try toreinvent the wheel when it comes
to things like finance captables and founder agreements
and things like that.
This is not the area you want tobe innovating in.
There's amazing books, amazinglawyers, amazing advice.
around creating cap tables andpartnership agreements.
(37:59):
Don't get cute.
Don't get creative.
Follow the advice that's outthere.
It could end up saving you, andlisten carefully, hundreds of
millions of dollars or millionsof dollars.
It could cost you millions ofdollars if you do it
incorrectly.
So those are some of thefundamentals.
I would say also that vision isvery important.
So with that in mind, when youfind a great founder, and as you
build your team, make sure youhave a cohesive vision.
(38:21):
Think big, as we talked aboutearlier.
So have a big vision that peopleget excited about.
Don't be afraid to think.
big, bring in mentors.
The number one thing I would sayactually is if you're an early
stage founder, even late stagefounder is find advisors, find
the best mentors.
Don't listen to everybody.
But if you find that 1% ofperson that knows it has been,
can help you see around acorner, value that, bring that
(38:44):
on board, having a properadvisory board, a mentor that
you can lay on, that you cantalk to is absolutely critical
to hitting new levels, right?
So those are the things I wouldsay.
I'd say find find mentors, findadvisors, join a community of
very like-minded people.
Try to be the dumbest person inthe room in those communities
and grow with those communities.
(39:05):
Those are some major cheat codesthat I would tell 27-year-old
Adrian.
Yeah,
SPEAKER_01 (39:09):
I love that.
I love that.
Well, folks, this was fun.
Adrian, this was fun.
You gave us a lot to play with.
I'm taking notes and ideas.
You've spurred my owninspiration here and thinking
about my team too.
So this has been a pleasure.
Thank you for joining us on ourUnicorn Leadership Podcast and
any last thoughts for ouraudience hey you know what keep
SPEAKER_02 (39:30):
building keep creating keep thinking big and
just have fun it's a ultramarathon and anything is
possible with the right teamwith the right vision so you
know let's have fun with thisand keep going
SPEAKER_01 (39:41):
let's
SPEAKER_02 (39:41):
have fun
SPEAKER_01 (39:42):
let's keep playing the game and we'll run that
ultra marathon that's awesomethank you Adrian and folks
that's a wrap you made it to theend send us in any questions
that you have any questions youmight want to ask Adrian we can
throw it his way Adrian where dopeople find you LinkedIn
Instagram And what's the bestway to connect with you?
So I'm
SPEAKER_02 (39:57):
on clarity.fm.
If you go to clarity.fm,Adrian-Salmanovic, my last name,
will include a link.
I'm available and love givingfounders advice.
I've given literally hundredsand hundreds of founders advice
on there.
Some of them I ended uppartnering with.
Some I ended up investing into.
And I'm always down to justconnect with great founders and
give advice.
(40:18):
Come on, Clarity, and just askme anything.
I'm happy to help.
Fantastic.
A weird moment for me is when I stopped chasing
money.
I said, you know what?
If this thing fails, I canalways move back into my mom's
house.
I won't be homeless.
Like that's the mentality level.
I can return the lease, the car.
I'm willing to give it all upbecause now I'm chasing my
passion.
I'm chasing something that Iknow needs to exist in the
world, right?
(00:20):
And so it's really funny.
And I've had this happen to meseveral times in my life is when
I stopped chasing the dollars,just the dollars where the
opportunity is and chase whatI'm passionate about.
Real magic.
begins to happen.
I see a lot of founders buildingthis company.
They're like, I'm going to buildthis, then I'm going to flip it
to somebody, right?
You've got to build it for thelong term.
But building your business sothat it can be sold, which means
(00:41):
your finances are clean, youhave a clear market proposition,
that you as the founder canleave the business and it can
still run, those fundamentalsare all critical towards
building a great businessanyway.
For example, having SOPs, havinga proper systems operating
procedures and are using EOS orwhatever system you choose is
going to make your business runbetter regardless of whether you
(01:03):
sell it.
So your company from day oneshould be built so that it can
sell, but you don't necessarilybuild it so that its main reason
of existing is to flip it orsell it.
SPEAKER_01 (01:15):
Hello and welcome back Unicorn Leaders to our
Unicorn Leadership Podcast wherethis season we're unpacking the
David versus Goliath of teams.
What is it that makes thesesmall but mighty teams overcome
the odds?
And I'm really excited for ourguest today.
Our guest today is anacquaintance, is a friend,
someone I've known for a littlebit of time.
I've been watching their amazingwork.
(01:36):
They've been around theentrepreneurship community for a
little while.
Adrian, I should have asked youbefore this, but how do I say
your last name?
SPEAKER_02 (01:44):
Nobody gets it right.
Don't worry.
Don't even feel bad.
It's Salamunavik.
It's the way it looks, but
SPEAKER_01 (01:50):
it's long.
I love that.
You've got that ambiguous lookto you.
Anywhere you go, they'll thinkyou're a local.
Every joke offends me, prettymuch.
Adrian, you're a serialentrepreneur.
You've built a few companies.
List them off the top a littlebit.
What are some of the companynames?
SPEAKER_02 (02:09):
I've been an entrepreneur since I was 16
years old.
I started to one of the firstweb development companies in
Canada back in 1996.
I'm kind of dating myself rightnow, but I've been in the game
for a long time.
More recently, I started acompany called DNA11 that was 14
years ago.
It's a company that made artworkfrom people's DNA, one of the
most personalized consumergenomics companies in the world.
(02:32):
Spun that out to createCanvasPop.
Only took 11, 12, 13 years, andwe were able to sell it to a
private equity firm.
We had an exit a few years ago.
And I've been involved withcompanies like MyFacts.com that
I helped build the brand, createthe company.
That sold for$220 million.
I was part of the build team,the initial team, but I was not
(02:53):
a founder of that company.
But I learned a lot in thatjourney.
And then more recently, I'm theco-founder of Millions.co, which
is a social commerce platformfor professional athletes, which
I co-founded with my friend MattWhitaker and the voice of the
Octagon, Bruce Buffer, asco-founders.
Tremendously cool company.
And now I'm working on the exitgroup and And that's probably
(03:15):
what we're going to spend mostof our time talking about today.
SPEAKER_01 (03:17):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Adrian, you've got a wealth ofexperience and some really cool.
I mean, the fact that you'veworked in all of these different
companies, you've lived severallifetimes through.
You've been the David in aGoliath of an industry, right?
What is it that allowed you tobuild these small but mighty
teams that either eventuallyexited or created a huge impact?
Now, in addition to that, you'realso a bestselling author.
(03:38):
So let's start at the beginningof the journey.
Adrian, give me a little bit ofbackground, who you are.
We grew up in And what's yourorigin story, the path into
entrepreneurship for you?
SPEAKER_02 (03:49):
Yeah, I mean, I started off as a D-level student
and maintained D-level studentstatus right through to high
school until business classeswere introduced.
And then I finally foundsomething that fascinated and
interested me, which was theworld of business, and then
started getting A's.
So just for the last couple ofyears of high school, I joined
Junior Achievers, which is anamazing program that's still
(04:11):
around.
That's awesome.
So my first business was withJunior Achievers.
Junior Achievers.
We learned how to set up acompany, set up a cap table.
I mean, it's incredibleeducation for a 16, well, no,
maybe 17-year-old to be doing inhigh school for credits, right,
after a program.
And so I'm a huge, huge advocateof Junior Achiever and a huge
advocate of us introducingentrepreneurship to students as
(04:33):
young as possible.
Entrepreneurs are the backboneof every economy.
We need more founders.
We need more entrepreneurs inCanada, the United States, here
in Mexico, where I am at themoment.
Entrepreneurs are amazing forthe economy.
So I'll start off with that.
But I wasn't being taughtentrepreneurship until grade 12,
where I took an entrepreneurshipclass.
I was hooked.
(04:54):
I did JA.
I was hooked and started myfirst company out of high
school.
And that company actually endedup being acquired.
At the age of 21, I ended upselling that company to Nova
Networks in Ottawa, Canada,where I grew up.
And so I had my firstacquisition at the age of 21.
What was the company?
It was called MediaWave, and itwas Nova Networks that acquired
(05:14):
It's a small amount of money,but when you're 21 years old and
most of your friends are workingat Subway and you sell your
first, it was a web developmentcompany, you know, you sell it.
It wasn't, it was enough moneyto buy a, foolishly buy a BMW
off the lot.
And then there wasn't a lot ofmoney left over.
Very immature, right?
When you're 21 years old.
(05:34):
But that was the beginning of myfirst acquisition.
I went on to build a bunch ofdifferent companies after that.
And, you know, just keptbuilding companies.
jumping into consulting andadvisory work, getting inspired,
launching another company, had awhole bunch of failures.
I started one of the firstmobile app companies in 1999,
2000 called Ventrata.
(05:57):
We raised money for it.
Believe it or not, we werebuilding apps for the research
and motion BlackBerry, which isa whole other story.
We were way too early in thatspace.
And we had to shut that companydown right after 9-11.
And so I got a front seat tofailure very early, success and
failure very And so that taughtme what to do and what not to
do.
And I vowed never to have tobankrupt another company again.
(06:20):
And then from there, went on tobuild CanvasPop, DNA11, PopKey,
which is one of the first GIFkeyboards out there.
A ton of different businesses.
Some did really great and othersflatlined.
This is life, you know?
Yeah,
SPEAKER_01 (06:32):
yeah, yeah, yeah.
But you continue to take shots.
You continue to take shots.
You continue to step up to theplate.
You continue to swing.
And I think that's what's reallycool.
Now, there's somethinginteresting about when you start
at that young of an age.
I've often said thatentrepreneurs have to have a
level of delusion.
You sort of have to bedelusional enough to go, I'm
going to take on the Goliath.
And when you're a teenager, yousort of feel like you're
(06:54):
invincible.
So getting teenagers involved inentrepreneurship means they
often have that, just the rightamount of delusion to be like, I
can do that.
I can try that.
Because what got you started?
Where comes the self-belief togo, I'm going to enter this
industry and I'm going to, at 21years old, try and build this
(07:14):
company where I've got peoplethat have way more money, have
way more experience, are betterin every way, but I'm going to
compete against them.
SPEAKER_02 (07:21):
Well, you said it right.
It's a combination of insanity,a little bit of delusion with
some naivety, kind of in theperfect soup, right?
And you know what?
For me, it started with myparents, especially my mother,
who never let me know that Iwasn't a top percentile, a
person on the IQ graph, right?
She always told me I was agenius.
She told me I'm creative.
She just convinced me that I wassomebody that could do anything
(07:44):
And so that's self-belief.
And to me, I get emotional whenI think about it, but I want
every kid to have a parent likethat.
Not everybody has that.
A parent that can encourage.
And when the school system'stelling you you're low IQ,
you're not smart, you needmedication.
They wanted to put me on ADDmedication when I was a kid.
My mom said, no way.
We got to keep this guy on thecreative and always boosting me
(08:05):
up.
So I thank my mother first andforemost for giving me that
confidence to believe in myself.
And then after that, you justgot to almost just, you got to
believe in yourself firstbecause no one's going to do it
for you.
And so it's really, reallyimportant to just stay, I want
to say, stay naive, stay, alwayssee the positivity and see the
possibility that if you believein anything enough, you can do
(08:26):
anything.
And I've done it.
I've seen it firsthand that whenyou believe in what you're doing
enough, others will be attractedto it.
Others will see it.
And eventually the market willsee it and sky's the limit.
UNKNOWN (08:37):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (08:37):
Yeah.
Now, Adrian, strategically, soemotionally, I think that's
important.
Strategically, when you're theunderdog, when you're the David
and the Goliath, when you're ayoung startup founder trying to
compete in an industry, what didyou do?
Where do you
SPEAKER_02 (08:53):
focus?
Yeah, well, there's really twoparts to the strategy.
The first one, and this is theone a lot of people mess up, is
just think big.
If you're going to do something,dream big, think big, create a
big, ambitious goal, and startwithout and work backwards.
A lot of entrepreneurs start inthe comfort zone and they say,
okay, well, I'm going to build abusiness that does a million
(09:13):
dollars a year.
Well, guess what?
If that's your goal, you'regoing to probably maybe hit a
million dollars a year.
You might fall short and hit$800,000 a year.
Nice little business.
There's nothing wrong with that.
But what if you say, I'm goingto build a billion dollar
company, right?
Or a hundred million dollarcompany.
If you get really uncomfortable,if you say you're going to do a
hundred million dollar companyand after eight years you hit 80
(09:35):
million, it's still anincredibly a successful company,
right?
So the first rule is think big,think as big as you can get, and
surround yourself with peoplethat think big, mentors,
advisors, read biographies ifyou don't have access to those,
and just expand your horizon.
That's
SPEAKER_01 (09:51):
number one.
How do you think thinking bigshifts someone's decision
making?
How does it change your decisionmaking when you're actually
thinking at that level versusthe decisions you would make if
you were thinking just amillion?
SPEAKER_02 (10:01):
Well, that's the second part of the equation is
also think not just big, butthink long term, right?
Think big and long So when youcombine those two forces, your
decision-making is going to bemore of a path towards success,
right?
So, for example, you're going toinvest in hiring the right
people that can carry you longerterm.
You're going to invest in theright technology that's going to
(10:22):
reduce your costs and make yourcompany perform better on the
long term.
And so just by having those twofilters, thinking big and also
thinking long term, you're goingto be setting yourself up for a
better trajectory.
So in every decision, who youbank with, who your lawyer is,
is, who your accountant is, whoyou hire, who you fire, which is
also important.
So those are the two mainfilters that a lot of early
(10:44):
stage founders, I think, need tospend more time thinking about.
SPEAKER_01 (10:48):
Yeah.
And so in your initialcompanies, you got some
traction, you got some wins, andthen DNA11 becomes the sort of
really anchor moment for you inyour entrepreneurial journey.
Tell me a little bit about howdid you come up with DNA11?
What was your moments there ofcreation and brilliance?
SPEAKER_02 (11:05):
Well, I think really interesting breakthrough moment
for me with DNA 11 was I hadbeen, you know, I was in my
early 30s by the time I launchedthat.
I had spent my life as a high,high level advisor to a lot of
big companies, started a fewcompanies at that point.
And I was feeling quite frankly,quite lost.
And so I leaned into what mypassion was at the time, which
was creativity and art.
(11:27):
And a weird moment for me iswhen I stopped chasing money.
I said, you know what, if thisthing fails, I can always move
back into my mom's house.
I won't be homeless.
Like that's the mentality level.
I can return the lease the car Ican I'm willing to give it all
up because now I'm chasing mypassion I'm chasing something
that I know I know needs toexist in the world right and so
(11:48):
it's really funny and I've hadthis happen to me several times
in my life is when I stoppedchasing the dollars just the
dollars where the opportunity isand chase what I'm passionate
about real magic begins tohappen so that was the first
thing I did was I stoppedchasing money and went after a
big exciting vision somethingthat got me up in the morning
that I knew the world needed andthen that was the beginning of
DNA 11.
(12:08):
That was the biggest shift thathappened to me.
SPEAKER_01 (12:11):
I really like that.
That's interesting because,again, I keep trying to tie some
of these themes back into thewhole David versus Goliath.
It's like the Goliaths arechasing money.
They're chasing capitalefficiency, return on
investment, investor money.
Like they're chasing this verynumerical efficiency driven sort
of thing.
But what you're saying whenyou're starting off, if you
(12:31):
don't chase the money, but youchase the idea, you chase the
creativity, you chase thepassion, it allows you to make
different type of bets.
SPEAKER_02 (12:36):
Different types of bets.
And the other advantage you haveas a small team is nimbleness.
You know, your competitor couldbe the Titanic and you can be
like a race boat or a jet ski,right?
You can maneuver more quickly.
And with the advent of AI, weall know that the efficiencies
that we're going to see asstartups over the next five
years is going to be absolutelyincredible.
So it's never been a better timeto be a startup ever in the
(12:58):
history of mankind than now,right?
Truly, yeah.
So that's one, is you canoutmaneuver the Goliaths, but
yes, you can outpassion them.
You're a small team, you'reinteracting hopefully as the
founder, you're interacting withcustomers every day, you're able
to see things in the market,change direction, innovate,
(13:19):
launch new products at muchfaster speeds than your large
entrenched competitors can do.
And so there are some reallyhuge advantages to being a
startup and being more efficientand more nimble.
Yeah.
It's an amazing time to be astartup founder.
SPEAKER_01 (13:34):
So, so here you are, you're willing to chase passion.
How do you go to DNA art?
How does that, how does that,like, where's the story that
brings that up to the forefront
SPEAKER_02 (13:44):
for you?
I think when you hang out withdifferent people and there's a
lesson to be learned here withall sorts of founders is is hang
out with scientists, hang outwith artists, hang out with
musicians, hang out withpodcasters, hang out with
authors.
Because in that mix of having acommunity of different mindsets,
that's where the real magichappens with connecting the dots
and ideas that would normallynever be connected.
(14:05):
In our case, we took the idea ofpersonalization, which was
trending very much in the early2000s, and the idea of art, and
we added a layer of consumergenomics.
We launched before 23andMe did.
So we were very early in thespace of consumer genomics.
And by connecting these thingsthat seem to have no obvious
connection, we were able tocreate something super
(14:27):
innovative.
As Seth Godin would call it, apurple cow.
Something that was so uniquethat people couldn't help but
just talk about it.
And it was the world's mostpersonalized art made from a
sample of your DNA.
And that took off.
That got attention.
And we're still, even back then,we're in an attention economy.
We've got a ton of PR, a ton ofbuzz, and the company took off
(14:47):
from there.
It's sometimes the craziestideas are between the folds and
connecting things that wouldotherwise never obviously be
connected.
And that happens by expandingyour network and hanging out
with different people that think
SPEAKER_01 (14:59):
differently, right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
I love it.
I mean, in many ways you sort ofsaid, I don't even want to fight
a Goliath.
I'm going to find, we're goingto find something so different
and so unique
SPEAKER_02 (15:08):
that there's no, there was no one.
There's a great book called playbigger, fantastic book, but in
play bigger, it's about creatingcategory Kings, creating your
own category.
Salesforce.com did this in asense, right?
There was no, they created theterm, the cloud, right?
CRM.
They had a big thing saying no,you know, no software, no to
(15:28):
software, yes to the cloud.
And they were one of the firstpioneers in the SaaS world by
bringing CRM from enterpriseinto the cloud.
They had a clear enemy at thetime, which was all the other
existing CRM players.
And then they disrupted thespace by creating their own
category and becoming a categoryking.
And that's what the book PlayBiggers about ahead recommend
(15:50):
that any startup founder readthat book to understand what
it's like from the gate tounderstand what new market
you're going to create in a newposition.
It makes you way more powerful.
SPEAKER_01 (15:59):
Definitely add that to the show notes and link out
to it because I think that's areally good tool, a really good
call out there.
So you're building DNA11, you'rehaving fun with it, you're doing
some crazy marketing things withit, unconventional.
What are some of the things thatyou do with it?
What are some of the lessons youtake away from it?
Where's your journey throughoutDNA11?
Well,
SPEAKER_02 (16:20):
D&A 11 was very, very hyper, hyper niche, right?
As narrow as it gets.
So something funny happened.
We ramped up to a milliondollars in revenue in our first
year, but then we stayed at amillion dollars a year.
We were seven or eight people,and we were just...
really hustling hard, workinghuge.
I remember working 12, 15-hourdays.
(16:40):
No matter how hard we worked, itwould only convert an X
percentage, and only so manypeople would want to buy a piece
of art from Personalized DNA.
So I learned a couple lessons.
One of them is TAM does matter,total addressable market.
At some point, you can dominatea niche, get traction, but you
need to find larger, more openmarkets to go after.
So that was the first thing westarted doing.
It's like, okay, we've got thistechnology.
(17:02):
We've got these printers.
We've got this website.
What else do we do with it.
But the second thing we did iswe didn't know what we didn't
know.
We were too deep in the forest.
And so what we did, and this wasa groundbreaking moment, and I
think this is so critical foreverybody listening to think
about this, is we hired anexecutive coach.
That man's name was CameronHarold, which was a former CEO
of 1-800-GOT-JUNK.
(17:23):
And he helped change our livesbecause he was able to take
myself and my co-founder at thetime and get us to look in the
mirror and see all the thingsthat we were doing that we
didn't know we were doingincorrectly.
So he helped us scale thebusiness.
So Those two things, identifyinga larger market once we already
had traction and hiring anexecutive coach were absolute
game changers for us and helpingus take the company to the next
(17:46):
level, which then we launchedCanvasPop, which is the company
we recently sold for over 30times EBITDA multiples to a
private equity firm.
30
SPEAKER_01 (17:55):
times EBITDA multiples.
Congratulations.
SPEAKER_02 (17:59):
Yeah.
An absolute outlier.
They did a tremendous job in thesales process, which is one of
the reasons I'm so passionateabout exiting.
If you exit right, you can takea business that maybe
historically has three to fivetimes EBITDA multiples, which is
what we're seeing in typicale-commerce companies and
especially services businesses.
(18:19):
We were able to get 30 timesmultiples, and there's a lot of
reasons for that.
But yeah, there's a lot.
to be said about having theright strategy and the right
positioning before you sell yourbusiness.
Yeah,
SPEAKER_01 (18:30):
yeah.
There's two things that come tomind here, Adrian, as you're
saying this.
One, I think I love that yougive the call out to your
executive coach because theyallow you to pull you out of the
day-to-day.
You're so close.
We're fish in water.
We're so close to our ownproblems that we can't always
see it.
And sometimes you just needsomeone to pull you out and you
go, oh my God, I know this,right?
Like, oh my God, I see it.
But I just couldn't get myselfjust away from it to look at it
(18:53):
in the right way.
I had a personal moment withthat recently We hired an agency
to help us with a few things.
And even just like one of theirexecutives helping us, I was
like, oh my God, I know this.
But the way you, yeah, youpulled me out of where I was
stuck and I just needed that newinsight.
It was powerful.
Now, Adrian, I've admiredsomething that you've done here
that I think is key for ourentrepreneurs to also
(19:13):
understand.
You've also built with sale inmind, exit in mind.
So when you scale leadership, alot of founders are the
bottlenecks in their ownorganization, their own
companies.
And so even if they want to oneday try trying to sell their
company, they're sort of tooentrenched.
They haven't built a scalableteam or process or systems.
But being the serialentrepreneur that you were, you
probably learned that lessonearly on, like how to build to
(19:36):
sell.
What are the elements ofleadership or team and process
that makes my company sellable?
Any thoughts on that as yourecently went through the
CanvasPop shift and any thoughtsthat you took from DNA11 to
CanvasPop that helped youunderstand how to make it more
sellable with your executivecoach?
SPEAKER_02 (19:53):
Yeah, I think it's important to make a distinction
that you You want to build yourcompany so that it can be sold,
but you don't want to build itto sell it.
In other words, I see a lot offounders building this company.
They're like, I'm going to buildthis, then I'm going to flip it
to somebody, right?
You've got to build it for thelong term.
But building your business sothat it can be sold, which means
your finances are clean, youhave a clear market proposition,
(20:15):
that you as the founder canleave the business and it can
still run, those fundamentalsare all critical towards
building a great businessanyway.
For example, having SOPs, havinga proper systems operating
procedures and are using EOS orwhatever system you choose is
going to make your business runbetter regardless of whether you
sell it.
So your company from day oneshould be built so that it can
(20:37):
sell, but you don't necessarilybuild it so that its main reason
of existing is to flip it orsell it.
So there's a distinction there.
And so understanding that andbuilding your company in such a
way that it can be sold is justgoing to make your company run
better regardless.
And ultimately what you want todo is create a company that you
don't even want to sell.
It's generating so much profit.
(20:58):
You enjoy the culture, thecompany is running so great that
you don't even want to sell it.
But if you do feel like you needto sell it, which are common
reasons are burnout, you've hita plateau, you don't know where
to go with it, or the offers,your company is so great that
the offers start coming in thedoor.
Great companies are bought, notsold.
So that's a great situation tobe in, that you're in a position
that you can sell it.
(21:19):
And to be honest, we had to do alot of work, especially my
former co-founder, to preparethe company to be able to be
sold because we had built it forso many years in operations mode
and cash flow mode that when itcame time to sell, we had to
take a step back, we had toclean up the finances, even get
rid of employees.
It was a painful process.
(21:39):
And by the way, myself included,I was fired from my own
business.
We had two co-founders makingfairly large salaries that were
replicated.
And so there wasn't a need tohave two co-founders doing the
same thing, but it was the bestthing that ever happened.
So you just got to build abusiness so that it can be sold.
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (21:58):
Yeah.
And now, you know, you touchedon a few things here that I
like.
As a founder, some of thestrengths that you have early on
that allow you to be scrappy andto build are some of the same
disadvantages as you scale,because you're sort of so good
at being scrappy and nimble andrunning and have high intensity
and go, go, go, that when you'rebuilding something that is more
(22:19):
scalable, that's shifting, it'smoving away from just the
explore product market fits, butthe scale, what were some of
those lids for you?
What were some areas that youhit your head a few too many
times because of your own actualstrength that you were so good
at the early stages that nearthe end it was a lot harder for
you.
Yeah, I mean, everything.
SPEAKER_02 (22:39):
So every single stage of the business was a new
lid or a new ceiling.
And so as a founder, you've gotto decide, am I going to learn
this and become good atsomething?
Or am I going to find the rightpeople to replace these roles?
So at the beginning, if it'sjust you and your co-founder,
you're each wearing four or fivehats.
And it's imperative, and this isthe lesson I've learned this
(23:02):
late in my career, is it'simperative that you bring in the
people where your weaknessesare.
You hire those people as soon aspossible.
as soon as you have market fit,of course, and bringing those
people in to take over thoseroles so that you as a founder
can focus on what you'renaturally gifted at, what
everybody tells you you're greatat, what you feel you're great
at.
Because otherwise you're goingto burn out.
(23:23):
You're going to hit a bunch ofceilings.
You're going to slow down yourown growth.
You're going to get in your ownway.
And so recognizing yourstrengths and weaknesses is
absolutely paramount to anyfounder and replacing yourself
as quickly as possible withpeople that are smarter than
you, more experienced than youis the key to hyperscale and to
growth without a doubt.
And so for me, honestly, I don'tlove managing people.
(23:45):
And how do you grow a companywhen you don't love managing
people?
Well, the answer is bring in aco-founder that is far into
operations, understands how tohire, fire, scale.
That's something I wish I didway, way, way sooner all my
businesses.
Myself as a founder, I recognizemy strengths on the outside of
the circle, promoting,marketing, raising capital,
(24:06):
everything on the outside.
On the inside, operations,finance, et cetera.
It's not that I'm weak.
I know how to do these things,but I don't enjoy it, and I'm
not the best at it.
So why not find people that wantto join your team who are good
at those trades?
SPEAKER_01 (24:21):
Yeah.
So identify your zone of genius.
Identify the things that youlove, that you enjoy, and kind
of double down on them becauseyou're going to be phenomenal at
those and build a team aroundthat.
Yeah.
Too many people
SPEAKER_02 (24:31):
try to hammer through this and say, well, I'm
not good at finance, so I'mgoing to learn finance.
I'm going to take a course atHarvard on finance.
It's like, no, you're not goodat numbers.
Don't force yourself.
There's a lot of people outthere, CFAs and CFOs that would
love to come work with you whowill be ready that very quickly
to help you scale.
I've even met founders thatdecided to learn how to code,
(24:53):
right?
It's admirable to want to learna new skill, but at what cost,
right?
Like it really depends whereyour priorities are.
If growth is it, find peoplesmarter than you, hire them,
bring them in or partner withthem as soon as possible.
SPEAKER_01 (25:06):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I think you said it at one pointin in one of our pre-interview
series.
At 10 people, chaos is afeature.
At 100, it's a liability.
So as you start to scale that,where's your skill set in
managing all those people?
And what skill do you want tocontinue to actually grow?
So should founders develop theirmanagement skills?
(25:27):
You know, should they develop?
What sort of, like you'resaying, okay, some of them want
to build projects.
They want to learn to code.
But what skills do they have tolearn?
What skills are still optionalthat you can replace out?
Would you say every skill ishireable Or is there stuff that
you say, you know what, as afounder, no matter what, you
should still...
SPEAKER_02 (25:44):
Well, I think as a founder, you should have the
fundamentals of financeunderstood, right?
Because you're going to comeacross that.
You want to be able to talk toyour CFO or your accountant in
an intelligent way.
You can't just say, I'm not anumbers guy.
I don't understand finance.
I'm not even going to look atit.
So I think every great founderor let's talk about a CEO should
(26:05):
definitely understand finance.
A CEO definitely needs tounderstand hiring because all
Ultimately, a CEO's job is toraise money, if you're in a
venture environment, and hirepeople, right?
And then the vision part issomething you can't outsource.
That's your job as a CEO.
You have to have that vision,create that culture, and set
your sights on your North Starand go, right?
(26:27):
And so that's the one thingthat, look, if you don't have
vision and you don't have that,you can't really run a company.
But other than that, I sayunderstand finance as much as
you're comfortableunderstanding.
at least literate when it comesto finance and understand how to
hire and fire because that'swhat you're going to be doing
for the next decade.
So you might as well developthose skills.
SPEAKER_01 (26:49):
Yeah.
Yeah.
How do you hold people to acertain standard?
I think that's the hire and firething.
It's like, you know, can you setpace and hold standard to your
team, right?
SPEAKER_02 (26:58):
Yeah.
Yeah.
And setting pace is so critical,right?
And so one of the other mistakesthat I made in my career was how
do you hold pace?
I mean, building a business is amarathon and I would argue an
ultra marathon and not a sprint.
So I always talk about themarathon mentality.
And the biggest thing I seefounders, because I'm involved
with a lot of very successfulexited and pre-exited founders.
(27:20):
The thing that I see is thatfounders often let go of their
mental health and their physicalhealth and push that to a later
date.
They're like, when I sell orwhen I get to this level, then
I'll take care of my fitness.
Then I'll take care of my mentalhealth.
The reality is if you want torun a marathon, you need to be
in great shape.
So it starts with physicality.
taking care of your body, eatingright, sleeping right.
(27:43):
Without that, you have nothing.
And then beyond that is gettingyour mind game right, because
this is a marathon.
And if you're only prepared fora sprint, you're going to burn
out.
I've experienced burnout.
I've had business partners ofmine experience chronic burnout,
and it's an absolute killer.
And so the first thing I wouldsay to any founder is get ready
(28:03):
for an ultra marathon.
If you finish it in a marathonpace, great, but this is not a
sprint.
It's an ultra marathon, prepareyour body and your mind because
this is going to be a long trip.
UNKNOWN (28:13):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (28:14):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I love that.
It's an ultra marathon.
You got to pace yourself.
We got to take care of ourhealth.
We got to take care of our, youknow, and that's part of it.
Like got to take care of theculture and the team.
So sometimes when we talk aboutculture to some founders, you
know, let's just, we're justbuilding five.
We're just building.
I go, but culture is the, is themental health of the team.
Culture is the, it's the workoutof the team.
(28:35):
Does the team haverelationships?
Cause we've got to keep workingwith them for a long time.
And so if we don't take care ofthose little things, those
interactions, then, you know, I,I, We've seen a lot of founding
teams fall apart and dysfunctionat that level.
SPEAKER_02 (28:48):
Yeah, and if you as a founder are out of shape,
you're tired, you're notpresent, they're looking up to
you as a leader.
And so it's imperative that theleader of the company lead by
example.
And you're not doing it out ofvanity.
You're doing it because you wantto have the energy.
You want to lead by example.
And a leader needs to be thereboth 100% as much as they can
(29:10):
with their health and with theirmindset.
And so that's what I encouragefounders to do is focus on those
two and the rest will take careof itself.
SPEAKER_01 (29:17):
Yeah,
SPEAKER_02 (29:17):
I love that.
SPEAKER_01 (29:18):
Good.
So, Adrian, you're now DNA11 toCanvasPop.
You grew the team, grew thecompany, fired yourself even to
get ready for exiting.
You established this amazingexit.
And then you go off and say, I'mbuilding millions of dollars.
That's it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And then you also now build thisnetwork for exiting and helping
(29:40):
founders exit.
That's it.
So you've gone through somecrazy entrepreneurial journeys.
You found some great success,but then you dive right back
into the game and you playagain.
Tell me a little bit about whatthat takes, what that looks
like.
How are you playing the gamenow, the fourth or fifth time,
maybe differently than the firstfew times you played the game?
SPEAKER_02 (29:59):
That's a great question.
I tried to take time off, right?
And I actually took probably toomuch time off.
A lot of my founder friends.
One mistake a lot of exitedfounders do is they can't sit
still and they get right backinto the next startup within
months.
And I don't recommend that.
If you're going to sell yourbusiness, have a significant
liquidity event, I alwaysrecommend you take at least six
months off.
(30:19):
Go do some things for yourself.
You know, life's long.
Enjoy it.
Prepare for the next thing.
I took a little bit too muchtime off.
I moved here to Tulum, Mexico,sat on the beach.
SPEAKER_01 (30:30):
Your tan looks great.
SPEAKER_02 (30:32):
My tan started, maybe got a little too much sun
and just really just was lostfor a while, but I use that time
to try to figure out what'snext.
And so a little bit different onthis is I do believe your pain
is, is going to be something youwant to lean into to create
your, like your, your, the bestway to describe it is if you
have something that's created alot of pain in your life, that
(30:52):
could be your purpose, right?
So your pain is your purpose.
And in this case, when I wasgoing through the exit process,
there was very few people that Icould talk to.
If being a founder is lonely,being an exiting or exited
founders, even lonelier, quitehonestly.
And And so I wanted to createsomething, a platform, where
founders that are about to exitor thinking about exiting can
(31:13):
join other exited founders on apeer-to-peer network and get
battle-tested advice from otherfounders that have exited BIC,
right?
The way we say it is you want toidentify the landmines and avoid
those and find the gold minesand dig for those, right?
And so sometimes advice from theright people at the right time
can create not 1x, not 2x, not5x, not 10x, but a 100x multiple
(31:35):
And so I wanted to create acommunity and I wanted to create
a place where we could connectpost-exited founders with
pre-exited founders.
And that's what the exit groupis.
We meet with foundersone-on-one.
We also have a community.
We also have free content withour podcast series that's
(31:57):
launching.
And so my mission is to make theexiting process as painless and
as fun as possible and asprofitable as possible.
Founder to founder.
founder.
SPEAKER_01 (32:06):
And that's what we're doing.
SPEAKER_02 (32:07):
That's really cool.
SPEAKER_01 (32:08):
That's really cool.
And how's it been going?
What are some of the currentsuccesses?
What are you enjoying about it?
What's difficult about it?
SPEAKER_02 (32:16):
Well, we're in the process of launching it right
now.
So what I did is I got rightdown to business, started
recording over 14 hours ofpodcast content.
We've interviewed Mark McCloud,former CFO of Shopify, one of
the former Shopify founders,Daniel Wynan, who's a good
friend of mine, Neil Patel.
We have founders that haveexited for over billions of
(32:36):
dollars and some that haveexited for$20 million.
But what we're doing is we'regetting those insights and
sharing them for free with theworld.
The other thing we do, we have afew hundred signups even before
we've launched all word ofmouth.
So people putting up their handand saying, I'm interested in
being part of this.
And now we're in the process ofjust rolling it out.
We're going to do a slow roll.
The idea is to just create thiscommunity, one applicant at a
(32:57):
time.
It's quality over quantity.
And we're really looking forfounders that are looking to
exit the next year to two yearswho are going to value being
part of this now.
And we know and we're extremelyconfident that we can create
massive value for these foundersat this critical time.
So
SPEAKER_01 (33:12):
that's our
SPEAKER_02 (33:14):
mission.
SPEAKER_01 (33:24):
when you're working with these founders, it's a
peer-to-peer group, right?
So they're learning from eachother.
What are some of the learningsyou learned with CanvasPop as
you went to 30 EBIT?
What were some of the lessonsyou're hoping to pass on to the
founders more than the like, youknow, get your books right, get
your lawyers right, get, youknow, okay, we know that.
(33:45):
What were some insights in goingthrough that exit process
emotionally as a founder afterspending years building the
company?
SPEAKER_02 (33:52):
Yeah, we could do a two-hour podcast just on this.
subject, but there's a fewthings that come to mind.
I mean, the first one is exitingis not something you want to do
in 60 days, right?
You don't want to be reactive tothe exit.
If you think an exit is coming,it's something you want to
typically start mentally andalso physically as a company
preparing for about two yearsbefore the actual event happens.
(34:14):
There's a ton of stuff that canbe done in that window that is
going to make that exit so muchmore successful for you as a
founder, right?
The first thing we do isidentify levers within the this
thing business without changinganything.
It's like, what are some thingsthat we can change today that's
going to have much larger impactby the time you're ready to
exit, right?
So those are all the technicalthings.
You can launch new productcategories.
(34:36):
You can identify new productcategories and not even launch
them, but just say, look, if wedid this, then we think revenue
can do this.
So there's a bunch of levers andthose levers are absolutely
critical.
And so we help to identify andprioritize those.
So that's one thing.
The other thing is justpreparing the founder himself or
herself for what What's going tobe on the other end?
A lot of founders don't eventhink about what post-exit life
(35:00):
is going to be like.
What do you want to do when youexit with all that money, right?
Have a clarity of what you wantto do.
Some people want to travel, butthen what do you do after you're
done traveling?
So we encourage founders tostart dreaming and thinking
about what's next.
Maybe it's a not-for-profit.
Maybe it's you're going to writea book.
Maybe you're going to create afoundation.
Whatever it is, start dreamingand thinking about that now and
(35:21):
even start laying down some ofthat early stage groundwork, not
waiting until after the exit todo that.
So those are some of the thingsthat we do.
And there's a whole bunch ofother stuff.
And the list is very long, butthere's a bunch of tactical
stuff around taxes, trusts.
I mean, there's so much stuff.
And that's why it takes twoyears to do it.
You want to do it slowly in afun and interactive way with
(35:41):
people who have been there anddone it.
SPEAKER_01 (35:43):
It's fantastic.
That's fantastic.
Well, Adrian, you've shared aton of really good insights and
ideas to our founders here.
Let's summarize some of it.
If you were talking to yourTwitter 27-year-old founder self
and you go, hey, let's go forcoffee.
I want to share with you some ofthe shit that we're going to go
through, some of the stuff thatwe're going to have.
(36:05):
What are some wisdom you want tobestow?
And what are some things thatyou might actually not want to
tell them to let them experienceit for themselves?
SPEAKER_02 (36:13):
Yeah, that's excellent.
Yeah, there are certain thingsthat you just, I do it all the
time when I go, they're going tohave to see what I'm talking
about to understand it, right?
An example is money doesn't makeyou happy.
That's just something you've gotto do and make a lot of money
and then go, see, you got fiveextra zeros in your account or
seven extra zeros, 10 extrazeros.
(36:33):
It doesn't make a difference.
That is one of those examples oflike, you hear people say it,
money doesn't make you happy.
And until it happens to you, youwon't understand it.
So, but on this- Because what'sthe internet response?
I'll cry in my Lamborghini,right?
Cry in my Lamborghini.
So I understand that.
But ultimately, that's one ofthe things you have to just
experience for yourself.
The other ones are fundamentals.
(36:54):
I mean, one, be...
really put a lot of thoughtabout who you partner with,
right?
A co-founder, it's a marriage,man.
And so you better understand whothey are, like really know who
they are, understand how theyreact when things go downhill as
well as uphill, right?
Because everybody's amazing whenthings are going this way.
It's when shit hits the fan,what are they like?
(37:15):
And that takes time tounderstand.
So there's a bunch of rules thatI have around co-founders.
One of them is date for sixmonths.
Like don't just get into bed andsay, okay, we're going to split
50-50.
It's like spend six monthsbuilding, working together,
understanding your strengthsbefore you commit equity, right?
If you're going to commitequity, also use vesting
schedules, like make sure youhave vesting both for yourself
(37:36):
and for your co-founder.
So if one of them decides thisis not for them, they don't walk
away with 50% or whatever amountof equity in the business.
So I see that a lot.
The third one is don't try toreinvent the wheel when it comes
to things like finance captables and founder agreements
and things like that.
This is not the area you want tobe innovating in.
There's amazing books, amazinglawyers, amazing advice.
around creating cap tables andpartnership agreements.
(37:59):
Don't get cute.
Don't get creative.
Follow the advice that's outthere.
It could end up saving you, andlisten carefully, hundreds of
millions of dollars or millionsof dollars.
It could cost you millions ofdollars if you do it
incorrectly.
So those are some of thefundamentals.
I would say also that vision isvery important.
So with that in mind, when youfind a great founder, and as you
build your team, make sure youhave a cohesive vision.
(38:21):
Think big, as we talked aboutearlier.
So have a big vision that peopleget excited about.
Don't be afraid to think.
big, bring in mentors.
The number one thing I would sayactually is if you're an early
stage founder, even late stagefounder is find advisors, find
the best mentors.
Don't listen to everybody.
But if you find that 1% ofperson that knows it has been,
can help you see around acorner, value that, bring that
(38:44):
on board, having a properadvisory board, a mentor that
you can lay on, that you cantalk to is absolutely critical
to hitting new levels, right?
So those are the things I wouldsay.
I'd say find find mentors, findadvisors, join a community of
very like-minded people.
Try to be the dumbest person inthe room in those communities
and grow with those communities.
(39:05):
Those are some major cheat codesthat I would tell 27-year-old
Adrian.
Yeah,
SPEAKER_01 (39:09):
I love that.
I love that.
Well, folks, this was fun.
Adrian, this was fun.
You gave us a lot to play with.
I'm taking notes and ideas.
You've spurred my owninspiration here and thinking
about my team too.
So this has been a pleasure.
Thank you for joining us on ourUnicorn Leadership Podcast and
any last thoughts for ouraudience hey you know what keep
SPEAKER_02 (39:30):
building keep creating keep thinking big and
just have fun it's a ultramarathon and anything is
possible with the right teamwith the right vision so you
know let's have fun with thisand keep going
SPEAKER_01 (39:41):
let's
SPEAKER_02 (39:41):
have fun
SPEAKER_01 (39:42):
let's keep playing the game and we'll run that
ultra marathon that's awesomethank you Adrian and folks
that's a wrap you made it to theend send us in any questions
that you have any questions youmight want to ask Adrian we can
throw it his way Adrian where dopeople find you LinkedIn
Instagram And what's the bestway to connect with you?
So I'm
SPEAKER_02 (39:57):
on clarity.fm.
If you go to clarity.fm,Adrian-Salmanovic, my last name,
will include a link.
I'm available and love givingfounders advice.
I've given literally hundredsand hundreds of founders advice
on there.
Some of them I ended uppartnering with.
Some I ended up investing into.
And I'm always down to justconnect with great founders and
give advice.
(40:18):
Come on, Clarity, and just askme anything.
I'm happy to help.
Fantastic.
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
Ridiculous History
History is beautiful, brutal and, often, ridiculous. Join Ben Bowlin and Noel Brown as they dive into some of the weirdest stories from across the span of human civilization in Ridiculous History, a podcast by iHeartRadio.