SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
How He Grew $5m Agency and Why He Exited for EBITDA Multiple Last Year
07 May 2021
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Do you know what the revenue was when you won the award? I don't know if I had. Did you know a range?
I think it was about two and a half, I think.
Two and a half million, something like that.
Yeah.
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And you'll get interviews three weeks earlier from founders, thinkers, and people I find interesting. Like Eric Wan, 18 months before he took Zoom public. We got to grow faster. Minimum is 100% over the past several years. Or bootstrap founders like Vivek of QuestionPro. When I started the company, it was not cool to raise.
Or Looker CEO Frank Bean before Google acquired his company for $2.6 billion.
We want to see a real pervasive data culture, and then the rest flows behind that.
If you'd like to subscribe, go to getlatka.com. There, you'll find a private RSS feed that you can add to your favorite podcast listening tool, along with other subscriber-only content. I'll see you next time. Hello, everyone. My guest today is Michel Van Velde. He's the founder, CEO, and brand strategist of creative and digital agency OneShoe.
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Chapter 2: What inspired the founding of OneShoe and its initial challenges?
In 2012, I decided to join a competition for the fastest growing company in the Netherlands and in Europe. We became number 25 in terms of fastest growing companies in the Netherlands.
What did you do in 2012?
Well, the thing was, open source at the time was a major draw for us. We used Drupal, which is an open source content management framework to build websites with. Now it's a digital experience platform. At the time, it was a content management framework. And it got a lot of attention in the news because I was playing the news. I was creating a lot of free publicity around Drupal.
And that brought in a... I mean a ton of work, specifically from the pharmaceutical industry and the educational industry. That's where a lot of our profit came from.
I'm trying to calculate your growth rate. From $500,000 in 2007 to what you did in 2012?
When I won the award, I think it was about 200% or 300% growth.
From what though? So like, are we talking like 10 million in revenue?
No, no, no. That's from 2009 to 2012. That's, yeah.
Okay. I don't know what revenue was in 2009, so I can't calculate what 200% growth is.
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Chapter 3: How did OneShoe grow its revenue from $300k to $2.5 million?
Were you able to tie it to bottom-line profit or top-line revenue?
It was a mixture.
You can only multiply one thing. So what were they multiplying the multiple against, top line or profit?
Profit.
Okay, got it. Got it. And they would maybe give you a higher multiple if they saw your top line growth was higher or lower is what you're saying? Yes. Yeah, interesting. Okay. And why was this? I mean, you've been doing this for, I guess, what, 12 years, 13 years at that point? I mean, it's a big decision to work for somebody else.
I know. The interesting bit is I grew the agency organically and I was not able to offer both PHP, .NET, Java, multiple content management systems, high-end. We do a lot of campaigns, for example, but we are not serving every single market. We've been focusing on fast-moving consumer goods and the healthcare industry, so several verticals.
But becoming part of the Interactive Group gave me the possibility to serve all markets with all kinds of technology and serving all clients. from low-end to high-end global clients.
Makes a lot of sense. Very good. Let's wrap up here with the famous five, Mike. Number one, favorite business book.
Favorite business book. Well, the interesting bit is it's not a business book. It's a book which I advise to every single entrepreneur. It's called I'm Okay, You're Okay. It's a book about transactional analysis on how to communicate effectively. That's been serving me a lot in terms of negotiation but also internally with my colleagues.
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