Steve McLaughlin

So, interestingly enough, I mentioned at the beginning, we generally are on the sell side.

On this one, it was not unusual.

We were on the buy side.

So, we actually got hired by BlackRock as an advisor.

So, we got paid an advisory fee for advising them on how to do the deal, what to pay, how to think about it, how to structure the compensation and other things like that.

So, and what was going on with the other deals in the industry.

So, we were their advisor.

So-

We, like I said, normally are on the sell side, but we've been hired by BlackRock on the buy side, Google, Google Capital, Ally Bank, CIBC, Nomura, some very large FIs, financial institutions have brought us on their team to learn how to buy these sort of startup companies.

It's tricky.

Sure.

I mean, generally, we give advice for doing large transactions.

So someone calls us up, they want to raise $100 million or $200 million or they want to sell for a billion or they want to buy a company for $150 or $200 million or whatever the number is.

We're basically paid on success.

It's some sort of commission, usually on a percentage basis of the value of the deal.

Sometimes it's related to how high the deal is.

The percentage can go up and up and up as we have more value.

So we're in there putting presentations together, doing market research, contacting buyers, developing valuation thesis, work on these deals, and essentially putting buyers and sellers together and trying to make a market for these companies.

Sometimes we get hired by the seller, and there's just one buyer, and we're going to talk to that one buyer.

Sometimes we go out to 50 buyers.