Thomas

Pretty big business in their ecosystem, a lot of GMV.

So a lot of buyers liked that, particularly those that had fintech or payment experience.

It was a lot of volume.

And ultimately with this business, there was a lot of unexplored opportunity.

A lot of founders do a great job building their business, but they do a terrible job negotiating.

Often the easiest way to grow and improve your business is just to negotiate better terms with existing vendors, suppliers.

Not necessarily team, but anyone you work with, you can negotiate better terms.

And in this case, if we skip ahead six months and now the deal is closed and completed, my understanding is the buyer's about tripled revenue of the business by renegotiating a partnership agreement with Stripe.

So that's what they saw in the business.

You could have 100 negatives, but they knew they could pretty much triple the business, and that's what they've done.

But some buyers would look at that and say, that's a bad thing.

I don't know anything about Stripe.

I don't know anything about payment processing.

Why would I buy this business?

Some of the negative feedback we got...

is I had an entirely international team.

We're obviously all in the US.

Like James mentioned, I'm originally from the UK, hence the English accent, but I moved here to build a business.

80% of acquirers we work with are US-based, so the vast majority of private equity are in the US.

The vast majority of large strategic buyers are in the US.