In this episode of the Entrepreneur Podcast, host Don Williams sits down with Sahil Patel, CEO of Spiralyze, to explore the intersection of A/B Testing, Website Optimization, and the Entrepreneurial Journey. Sahil reveals how his company analyzes A/B Testing for Landing Pages across 34,000 websites, using Data-Driven A/B Testing to fuel SaaS Business Growth and help companies improve Website Performance Analytics.
But success isn’t just about Conversion Rate Optimization—it’s also about navigating the ups and downs of entrepreneurship. Sahil shares his personal journey, from working in Healthcare Software Success to founding, scaling, and exiting his own startup. He discusses leadership, risk-taking, and how making data-driven decisions can turn setbacks into growth opportunities.
Topics Covered:
- Optimizing A/B Testing Strategies for Business Growth
- How A/B Testing Drives Conversions on Landing Pages
- Real-Life Entrepreneurial Lessons from Sahil Patel
- Building a Successful Business Through Data-Driven Decisions
- Navigating the Ups and Downs of Entrepreneurship with A/B Testing
- The role of resilience and adaptability in SaaS Business Growth
- How to scale a startup from concept to acquisition
Whether you’re a startup founder, marketer, or business leader, this episode is packed with valuable insights on leveraging data, refining strategies, and scaling your business with confidence!
Listen now and gain insights from a proven entrepreneur who turned passion into success!
Watch the episode here
A/B Testing Secrets: How to Optimize Your Website & Boost Conversions | Sahil Patel, Spiralyze CEO
Hey, Don Williams here today with special treat. I have Sahil Patel from Spiralyze. Where are you dialing in from, Sahil?
I’m coming in from Atlanta and really glad to be here.
Atlanta, Georgia. So it’s about 10 degrees in Texas today, which is too cold for us in Texas. And I know too cold for you in Atlanta.
Yeah, we’re not quite there, but it’s pretty cold here too.
Yeah, well, it’s coming. I think it’s coming. And so, so thrilled to have you here today. Tell us a little bit about, so I find, I find your company fascinating, but rather than me tell you, me tell everybody what you do, tell us what Spiralyze does and why that’s so mission critical important to their business.
thank you.
Birolize is an A-B testing company. There are 34,000 websites, A-B tests, somewhere on their site. And we scrape all of them. So we find everyone else’s A-B tests. And then we look. We find the best ones, and we run those for our customers.
Birolize is an A-B testing company...We find everyone else's A-B tests. And then we look. We find the best ones, and we run those for our customers. Share on XAnd what do you do with that knowledge?
now how long have you done that?
So Spiral Eyes has been doing this for about 10 years, and I’ve been the CEO for about three years.
Okay, and so how many A, B tests have you analyzed?
How many have we analyzed? Wow, it’s in the hundreds of thousands.
wow, big numbers, statistically relevant, I think we call that.
It’s a big number.
It is, it is for sure.
Yeah, and so if, let me see if I can paraphrase. So you take that information from those hundreds of thousands of individual analysis of A-B tests and then advise your clients on the best way to position their webpages, landing pages, et cetera.
Yeah, and I would maybe even add a little bit to that, is we take that data and then we actually run the A-B tests on our clients’ websites. And so if someone says, Sahil, I’m a cybersecurity company with a seven-day free trial and I’m running it on a paid landing page with traffic coming from
Please.
Google paid search on non-branded keywords.
we’re going to say, here’s the portfolio of 10 A-B tests that you should run on that page based on what has worked for other companies like you on that use case.
I love that.
Because by the way, what works on a paid landing page versus organic versus direct traffic versus some other vertical or something that’s direct to consumer or is a enterprise target versus the SMB, just all those things matter.
All those things matter.
Yeah, imagine if you went to the doctor and you said, hey, here, I got this not feeling good. And the doctor said, yeah, I have some. And I told you, said, Don, here, I got some medicine for you. And you said, oh, Sahil, I never heard of this. Is this new? And I said, yeah, yeah, I, I tried it on my neighbor. Worked pretty well for her. And he said, okay, uh, first of all, you said she, so I’m a guy. Uh, how old are they? And do they have the same symptoms and like,
How’d you get the dosing right? Because I weigh this much. Does she weigh the same amount? And like, I have these other things going on. What about her? Is she the same things going on? That, sadly, is what a lot of people do with their website. Is they base on anecdotes. They base it on gut. But there’s something wrong with gut. Like someone who really knows what they’re doing probably has great gut instinct. But I wouldn’t take that medicine based on gut instinct. Right now, if I instead said, hey, Don,
The FDA reviewed the clinical trial of this drug. We had 10,000 people take it. 5,000 got the placebo, 5,000 got it. And we looked at it based on gender, age, and people who have similar characteristics to you. It turns out age didn’t really matter, but maybe your weight does, because that’s how we get the dosing right. And that’s why I’m telling you I want you take five milligrams a day for two weeks. You might feel…
I love that, so.
I guarantee to make you better, but your odds are much, better.
Yeah, so take the data, do the analysis, make a recommendation, then do A-B testing on the recommendation to be positive that we’re dialed in.
Yes, because the goal isn’t
Yeah, because it’s not about finding one A-B test that wins. It’s run a portfolio of test ideas, high performing, high probability test ideas. And somewhere in those 10, you’re going to find the one that’s optimal for your audience, your website.
Okay, love that. Think I’ve got it. I bet the audience has got it. Sounds very cool. Let’s jump into your story. So I’m going to take you all the way back to young Sawhill. So like five to 18. So yeah, the childhood home in which you were raised and that’s different for all kinds of different people. But in your home, was there an adult who was an entrepreneur who set an entrepreneurial example in your home?
Okay.
5 to 18.
There was probably not in the traditional sense. My dad worked at GE, big company. In fact, he was probably one of the last generation of people who worked for one company his entire life. He went to RPI, which is a small engineering college in upstate New York. That’s where I did most of my growing up. And after he graduated from RPI, he worked, I think he reported like the following Monday to GE.
and I was there for 40 years.
Okay, yeah that doesn’t happen anymore and now G doesn’t want to have anybody like that anymore
Okay, that doesn’t happen anymore. Now, what I will say, what I will say, I do consider him an entrepreneur because I think every immigrant is an entrepreneur. The idea of leaving where you live and going and doing something new with many unknowns, with resources that you don’t control, I think is a true story of entrepreneurship.
Every immigrant is an entrepreneur...leaving where you live and going and doing something new with many unknowns...is a true story of entrepreneurship. Share on Xtakes all kinds of forms to do that. entrepreneurship takes all kinds of forms. But he and my mom did that in the late 60s. And yeah, I think that’s the American dream. It’s a great American story.
But, the loser.
Yeah. So one of the common definitions is the entrepreneur jumps out of the plane, figures out how to build the parachute on the way down. And certainly somebody who is an immigrant from another country to the United States, they have no idea the parachutes they’re going to need. They are jumping out of, they are jumping, well, neither does the entrepreneur, truthfully. And so.
I don’t always have a parachute, first of all. Yeah.
They are jumping out of the plane and, hey, we’re going to figure it out. And I think the root commonality with entrepreneurs is just problem solvers. We have a goal. We’re going somewhere. We’re trying to go somewhere. We think we’re going somewhere. We don’t know exactly how it’s going to work out, but we’re going and we’ll figure it out along the way. so certainly somebody coming from another country to the US is the same thing. You know, even if they have family and even if they have some people to kind of
Entrepreneurs just problem solvers. We have a goal...We don't know exactly how it's going to work out, but we're going and we'll figure it out along the way. Share on XYou nailed it.
you know, help with a softer landing. Many of whom do not though. Many of whom do not. Okay. So, so love that. So at, let’s, let’s fast forward to 18. You get out of high school and then you hitchhike across Europe for two years. You live in the jungle in Uganda. What do you do?
I wish that was the case. I graduated, and would say most immigrant families, first of all, back in 1996, taking a gap year really wasn’t a thing as much back then. But also, my parents did a lot, sacrificed a lot. brother and I have had a great life thanks to them. And it was definitely like, you’re going to go to college.
like you’re going to college and you’re going like the month, not literally the Monday after graduation. So it was, I graduated, I worked at a, I was working in a movie theater in my senior year of high school. I worked there that summer and then like many students that go to a traditional four year college, which not the only way to do it, but it’s the way I did it. That August I went to, I moved to Atlanta, which is coincidentally, maybe not so coincidentally, but that’s where I live now.
You are right.
was that 35, 37 years ago I went to college. But I came here in 1996. The Olympics were going on. They were just about wrapping up when I got here in Atlanta. It was incredible. And I’d grown up in small towns. I grew up in Schenectady, New York, and then grown up in Montgomery, Ohio. And I definitely wanted to do a bigger city experience. for anyone who’s out there who’s been to Atlanta, first time you drive down Atlanta and you see a highway with six lanes on each side.
It’s like, like in Ohio, the biggest, I think the biggest highway, at least back then was like two lanes. That was a big deal. Two lanes on each side, maybe with an exit ramp. Six lanes on each side, 12 lanes of highway. And it was really exciting and it was very different. I had grown up, I’ll say this, in Ohio, I growing up in middle school and high school.
Yeah, it was the black pop.
And I would say that’s what’s home, kind of hometown in Cincinnati, my hometown. Still have a lot of friends there. Not a very diverse place. so, I mean, Atlanta was as different as could be. It’s a big city. There’s lots of people of all walks of life. Lots of immigrants also, just lots of everything. And it was really exciting, and I was glad to be there. And I’m really fortunate I got into Emory, which is a great school.
Great school.
And that’s where I started. That’s where I went to college and where I graduated. I had a great experience.
Yeah, love that. I have a good friend in Oklahoma City who his parents immigrated and they were entrepreneurs. owned a non-branded motel, not really a hotel.
Yeah, that’s very common in Indian families, particularly a lot of people come. In fact, they in some parts of sometimes they used to call the hotels Patel motels because there were so many Patels in the motel business. And we have we have family that’s been in the motel business.
Their last name is not Patel, but Pich is Indian descent. his, I always thought it was hilarious. His parents told him, you will be a doctor, you will be an engineer, or you will be a disappointment. And that was the three options. And he…
Yeah, there you go.
Hahaha!
It wasn’t a totally different message from my parents.
Yeah, and so he’s none of those. Actually, he’s neither doctor nor engineer nor disappointment. He went into IT as an active duty enlisted man in the Army.
Okay, great. Great thing. dad was drafted in the army and served during Vietnam, which during those times was pretty common.
Yeah, so he built a big IT company and sold it and he flies around his helicopter now, but he’s neither a doctor or engineer and he’s certainly not a disappointment. So love that. Okay, so you moved to Atlanta, you went to Emory, you got your degree in art appreciation.
Good for him.
In business, undergrad business. It was a business degree.
Okay, business great. Good, good, And so after you graduated, did you start a company? Did you get a J-O-B?
I got a J-O-B. You know, at that time, and I was lucky, I graduated during pretty good economic times.
MY GOD
If you, the only people that were doing like the startup thing, we were in Silicon Valley. This isn’t Stanford. This isn’t Silicon Alley up at MIT. In Atlanta at least, if you weren’t working in a kind of a well-known company, it was kind of weird. Like in my class, maybe a handful of people were doing it and usually assume like, they didn’t have their act together. They don’t know how to interview.
So they’re working at some startup. Now, that was starting to shift a little bit because there were some startups. This was the dawn of the internet age. This was about two years before the internet bubble burst. In reality, it actually always starting to burst. We just didn’t know it. So I did the big company thing. And certainly, my mindset was you get a job at a well-known company with a nice paycheck.
validation for your brand, think, especially in an immigrant family. I worked at a great company called Booz Allen Hamilton. It’s now changed, but it was one of the big consulting companies at the time that went around, recruited on college campuses. And I worked there, had a great experience for three years, learned a lot, met a lot of other smart people. And then one of the things that those companies do really well is keep people moving on their career, send them to business school.
When I got there, as I was getting there, the crop of people that had worked there, gone to business school, finished and came back, were just returning. So those were people, I don’t know, like five years older than I was. And it was the first time I ever met someone that went to a big pedigree school.
I had never met anyone that went to Harvard, just in small town Ohio. It’s weird to even go out to school out of state. Back then, was kind of an odd thing. I think there was one person from my high school that applied to Harvard. They didn’t get in, not because they weren’t smart. It just wasn’t a common thing. Again, if you grew up in Palo Alto, you grew up in Manhattan, there’s people everywhere. For most part, it’s not the norm.
And I was like, I was like, huh. That person worked here and went there, and I work here. Maybe I can go there. And it just goes to show you what’s possible when you have exposure to people that can show you the way. Now, they do some other things, big companies. And this is why the pendulum is swung. Startups are cool, and big companies are
stodgy and uncool. But I will say, big companies, they do good job training you. They also help you out. So for example, they would make sure everyone took a GMAT prep class. In fact, they had a Kaplan person that came to the building that would teach class. Now, it wasn’t totally altruistic. They did it so you could go downstairs, take your class, and then come back to your desk and keep working at 8 o’clock. But those kinds of things.
They help, and they show you what’s possible. And that’s what I did. I applied to few business schools. I got into Harvard, and I went to Harvard. So I did three years consulting, then went to HBS. When I got out, I wanted to do something else. Consulting was great, but it’s not where I want to spend my life. And I worked at a health care software company. Now, during that time period,
I had met my now wife and we’d gotten engaged. then so my plan was, I was like, OK, I’ll finish up here. She was working on her PhD at Emory. I was like, I’ll look for job in Atlanta so we can, we’ve been long distance for two years, we be in Atlanta. I graduated, we got married two weeks after graduation, my graduation. And then a couple of weeks later, started my first post-MBA job.
I’m doing merger and acquisition work at a healthcare tech company. And I stayed there for five years. It was a great experience. It was a great experience. Great grocery, it’s a company called Metassets. Incredible CEO, John Bartis. Incredible people there. The guy that hired me, Neil Hahn, he’s now the CEO of Roper, large, very successful company. And I learned a ton. M &A is a great way to learn a business. And then along the way, that company was really interesting.
had an IPO. I didn’t have anything to do with that. But I was along for the ride. And I think there’s something to be said. Sometimes if you’re in the right place at the right time, you can see some things. And I had some sense for, hey, this is pretty unique. I was like 28, 29 at the time. Certainly had no grasp for really how rare that was to have a front row seat to an IPO. I don’t know if it ever happened the rest of my career. Probably not.
And IPOs have become more rare over time. There’s just far fewer companies doing IPOs these days. And so that was incredible learning for me, especially to go from being on the inside and seeing how a company evolves from pre-IPO to filing pre-IPO, IPO, post-IPO, what that’s like. Some of it’s good. Some of it’s not as good. I say that generally speaking. That wasn’t true specific to Metassets.
I think you hit on a really good principle. You met some people who had different experiences. You got to see that and you assimilated that, hey, maybe I could do that. And so went to Harvard and then in this job, same thing. You’re exposed to people who have different skill sets and maybe are.
somewhat of a mentor, even if they’re an accidental mentor, just their example is mentoring. And I think many entrepreneurs benefit from that. And it’s why we do the show, frankly, so that people can learn from other proven entrepreneurs and hopefully gain something they can bring back to their own journey and be successful.
You nailed it. And so during that time, five years in Metassets, I eventually went from doing the finance job, M &A, into sales. And I learned a ton. Incredible sales leader, Rand Ballard. And he was leading a sales team of about 120 national sales reps. And so I saw what an at-scale sales organization was like. And
That was really the foundation for my career in entrepreneurship. Because after that, then I went to a smaller company. I was there for about a little bit less than a year and then started my first company, which is called ER Express. It’s a patient scheduling digital registration. And I ran that for 10 years, sold it to Constellation, which is a large publicly traded company based in Canada.
similar to it’s a holding company similar to Berkshire Hathaway. It’s kind of like the Canadian Berkshire Hathaway. But it’s a vertical, so all they do is software. But you know, not to gloss over those 10 years, when you start a company, most of your job is selling because you’re pre-revenue, no customers. We had built a little product, then you go and sell. In those early days, we’d build a few features. I’d then hit the road. It was hospital sales, so I’d go. Of course, I knew a little bit about that because I’d been at Met Assets.
I’m not watching someone doing and doing yourself two different things. But I knew some things, I knew a few things enough to get started. And the people that provided the seed investment in that business were well-versed in health care. So they were helping me out. They made introductions. They had a Rolodex that was tremendously helpful. And yeah, I’d sell one deal. And then I’d
you.
go fly there. Well, I’d come back to Atlanta and I’d tell the engineers, hey, we need to add a couple of things. This is what they want. Then I’d fly back out a couple of weeks later and do the implementation and the training of the staff. And then I’d do that again. And the business plan called for 25 customers in the first 12 months. And at the end of the first year, we had three customers, none of whom were paying.
customers. Boy, that’s entrepreneurship. But my investors were patient. They’re like, hey, someone’s using it.
Keep doing it. Let’s not turn out the lights just yet. And every day I was convinced they were just going to walk into my office and be like, hey, Sahil, it’s been an interesting thing, but you’re not making any money and you’re sure spending it pretty quickly. But by the second year, we had some customers and a little bit of money coming in. And then year three and four, started really reaching some scale. And then the usual ups and downs.
of entrepreneurship. Some peaks, lots of valleys, mostly valleys. But the valleys make you appreciate the peaks. then, yeah, year 10, it was a cold email from someone at Constellation saying, hey, we might be interested in buying your company. That was the gist of it. And almost a year to the day, we closed the transaction.
That’s amazing. know, something you brought up that I love is many times in entrepreneurship, we see the person who didn’t finish college, they started the business in their garage, you know, they never really had a JOP. Okay. and, and that’s in the public’s mind, but there are so many great companies and great entrepreneurs where they…
Got an undergrad, they got an MBA, they got a PhD, they went to work in corporate. They learned like real disciplines and real skills. And then they become an entrepreneur in their forties. Okay. And, and the fastest, biggest exit of anybody I’ve ever interviewed, he did a hundred million dollar from, from startup to a hundred million dollar exit in like 20 months. And, but he was a Silicon Valley HP guy, very bright.
Amazing.
And, and a couple nice market conditions to help that happen. But if he hadn’t done his part, the market conditions would have been irrelevant. and so I love that. And I’m always encouraging. I think Colonel Sanders was in his sixties when, when he opened the first Kentucky fried chicken. And so I’m like, man, I don’t, I don’t know when it’s too late, but I know today is a good day to start.
Yes, it’s a great story!
Okay. Whatever today is, this is a good day to start. And even if it’s go out and win, I don’t know if you can actually call them customers when they don’t pay. I think we call them those users, but I love your optimism. But, but sometimes that’s the way it goes. I’ve got to get the friction from the reality of the market to figure out how to refine the product to where people will pay.
And you and your investors and the relation, I’m sure the relationship between the two gave them maybe not comfort, but not an inordinate amount of unease to where they want to pull the plug.
Well, but let’s dive into some real talk here, because it wasn’t all roses. We did it. We got to year five. We were making some money. We had reached some scale. And to me, that was the time to say, OK, we’ve kind of wandered in the wilderness.
By the way, that’s what you get when you have a first time CEO. Make no mistake. It wasn’t the market. It wasn’t even a It was me. I made just about every mistake known and demanded. I invented some new ones. And then I was like, OK, we have this SaaS business that makes some money. Now’s the time. Now let’s put some fuel in the tank. And they were like, no. Now’s the time where we harvest the business for profit. And I was like, guys.
No, that’s… And we were at a crossroads. We spent two years at a crossroads. And we kind of wasted two years, the two best years of the business, unfortunately. And when it was over, neither of us were really happy. so… And credit to them, they kind of saw the light that this wasn’t going to end well.
and they offered to do a MBO, management buyout. And so me and my vice president’s partners, the management team, we bought them out of the equity table. We put a senior note on the balance sheet and we had controlled the business again. And we were making a calculated bet that if we executed our strategy, and those were some really hard times, really stressful times. I thought I was gonna lose the business multiple times.
Like any negotiation, got pretty tense at the end. But we got there. We got their credit to both sides. And we then executed a growth strategy, eight quarters in a row showed growth. I would say not spectacular growth, but solid double digit growth. Never got it to that kind of triple digit promised land that we hoped to, but it still really good and we were making money. And then the pandemic hit.
And if you’re selling software to hospitals and you have a pandemic, it’s not a great, let me tell you, that’s not a great place to be. So the first thing I have is sales kind of evaporated. Then some of the termination letters started coming, because I had CEOs telling me, hospital sales, you guys are great, but my board is telling me if I’m not spending money on ventilators and masks, it’s got to go. And so it wiped out two years of growth.
And we were, you know, kind of our backs were to the wall. And there was, you know, there was no backstop to the business. There was no funder, none of myself. And it’s not like we had the personal deep pockets to put money in the business. Like if we were losing money, we had some cash in the bank, but that was going to go pretty quickly. That’s, that’s real life. And many others during that time had it as bad, much worse, probably as well.
The PPP was a lifeline, really helped.
And what it was designed for. Something that you can look back on the government doing and say, that actually was pretty successful. Yeah. Sure.
Yeah, I think that’s what it was designed for.
spectacularly successful. And there’s real cost to it. know there’s, you know, with the benefit of kind of Monday morning quarterbacking it, there probably some things that could have been better. There’s clearly some people that got it, probably should not have gotten it. But I think the overall effect of keeping businesses alive, I look at it as success. Certainly, my personal anecdote is it was successful. We did that. And
we were in kind of survival mode.
And we’d meet every day. And once a week, we’d look at the cash balance. we did some things to cut, but there was only so much we could cut.
about a few months in. This is August of 2020.
It was the value. didn’t know it was. You never know really where the bottom is until later. But we were losing money. was probably about six months of cash left. the head of sales said, hey, there’s a veterinary hospital that says they want to buy. There was almost no sales. I don’t care what they do.
No. Later. Yeah.
They’re willing to pay like we’ll take. And I said, okay, that’s great. I said, they understand this is not like our market. do urgent care. We do ER. We’ve never done veterinary care. I kind of get within. He goes, no, look, they’re getting sick. If think about it, what happened? A bunch of people bought pets during the pandemic. Pets need care. You go to the pet ER. If you think it’s bad to wait in the car with an adult or a kid, it’s not fun. Think about having a sick dog in the backseat.
And he said they kind of see he’s like, yeah, they stumbled on this and they’re just getting slammed. And they said they’re willing to try anything. And what they told us, we told them, we hey, look, we get where you’re coming from. You know where we’re coming from. You understand, like, this is kind of an unknown, but we’re willing to give a shot. said, yeah, we get it if you can get us live by Thanksgiving.
we’re willing to give it a shot. We’re desperate. I was like, OK, we got a couple of months. We got to modify some of the workflows. We’ll make it work. And they said, want to tell you, if this works, we’re part of a chain, a national chain of veterinary ERs. So there’s people right behind us in line that are going to be very interested in watching this. So no pressure. But in some sense, what did we have to lose?
Yeah, that’s such a common trait in successful entrepreneurs is you’re selling something for whatever reason, it’s not going the way you want it to go. A prospective buyer comes into your life and says, I would buy this other thing. It’s kind of like what you do, but it’s not exactly like what you do, but I would buy that.
And it’s so common that the successful entrepreneur says, yes, we can do that. Okay. And then they build it and modify it to fit, that buyer. and yeah, truthfully, it’s so much easier to sell people what they want to buy than to convince them to buy whatever you want to sell. And so.
Yeah, any do by hook or crook. Often by crook.
Many times people, as they design their product, service or experience, they just don’t talk to enough customers to find out what does the customer really want. Because truthfully, that’s all that matters is what does the customer want? How cool it can be, all the features, that makes no difference.
So we did that. We got them live by Thanksgiving. And it really worked. Didn’t work perfectly. But it solved a big pain point for them. And then sure enough, the other hospitals that were part of their chain said, hey, we have the same pain point. Can we try it? And it led to a lot of growth. That ended up becoming a third of our business was veterinary acute care.
Sometimes you have to be in the right place at the right time and just stay in it long enough to do that. It’s so hard to say. mean, it’s hard to be prescriptive about that. How do you know when to hold them and when to fold them, like the great song says? And I think if you looked at it on paper, you probably, and even the Sahel of today, if you didn’t know the end to the story,
probably go back until the saw hill of 2018, 2019, it’s probably time to fold them. Like this isn’t a business that’s, you know, the financials are okay. The ROI on this is okay. But I guess I didn’t know better. So we did that. We found a buyer or a buyer found us.
And again, you some some real talk I think people talk, you know, very few businesses make it to year 10 Very few businesses get to an egg, you know, even fewer get to an exit And the exit we got was I would call it was okay. It was I’d call it a base hit and it’s very tempting to Because you know really the only people that know the terms usually are the the buyer and seller But you know, I think the
beauty of, Don, of what you do, of sharing here, is to people to share what really happened. It was not a home run. First off, if was a home run, I probably wouldn’t be here on this podcast. I’d be on a beach somewhere. I’m still working for a living, so take that as your first signal.
on the podcast from the beach. Yeah, I get it.
You
But we found a buyer, and it was a great outcome from the sense that it was a permanent home. was a Constellation is a really cool company for those who’ve never heard of it. Many people in America have not heard of it. It’s like the Italian, British or half, or the Italian, Canadian, British or half way. And they never sell a company. So they buy companies with fundamentally sound and they run it for the long term. And they’ve, don’t know how many hundreds of companies they’ve bought. They’ve sold one. And it was very early on before they kind of figured out the model. And they said in retrospect, they,
Hmm.
regret it. And so I knew I was finding a long-term home for the customers of VR Express. That was the thing I cared about the most. And number two, for the employees of VR Express. And I knew not everyone would stay. But if they wanted to, there was a place for them. And I thought that was really good. And the financial outcome for our seed investors, it was OK.
Love.
I don’t think it’s not the thing they were going to go tell their LPs, like, we got this great outcome. If anything, they probably just kind of shuffled it under a rug and said, we got something from it. And for me and my partners, was OK. We needed to keep working. And I think that’s like people should know that. That’s an outcome. You can work for 10 years.
Let me talk.
Yeah.
And sometimes you have nothing to show. Sometimes you have very little. One thing I learned is to take the long view. I learned a lot from it. And I also did it at an age. I’m 46. So I 42 or 43 when I sold it. I was at a place where I said, I’m young enough that I’m going to do this at least one more time. I’m going to take all the things I did wrong the first time around.
and try and fix a couple of them the second time around.
Wow. I love that. And I’m a big fan of bass hits. You know, what makes the news and what gets lit up is the home runs and the moon shots and the, my gosh, know, Shahar’s story where you did the a hundred million dollar exit and, 20 months, but, um, a really wise friend of mine told me early on in my career, Don, you’ll never go broke taking a profit.
And so sometimes, you know, a hit is pretty good. Okay. And leaves you in the game to play again. so, you know, it just, everybody’s not going to have that moon shot. And the people who do don’t typically have them repeatedly. You know, we can.
Yeah. That’s a good, you put it really well.
Pretty rare.
because there’s some external factors they didn’t control that helped that. okay, let me, and thank you so much for sharing. So I’m going to ask you a tough question. As you look back across your entrepreneurial career, I’m looking for a moment where something happened that when it happened, it’s like, oh, ouch.
Please do.
That hurts. I don’t want to go home and tell my wife about that. I’m not sure how we’re going to get past this. And every entrepreneur has more than a couple of those. But do you have one where it literally hurt, but maybe today? Looking back with the beauty of perspective and time, can say, you know, actually,
yeah.
That was probably a good thing, but it hurt like heck at the time.
Yeah, and so many I mean I’ll give you a visual it was It was the day before My second daughter was born this is 2018 And we knew the day because we were just the way life worked out we were having we were having a kid in our 40s
So it was a, what’s considered a higher risk pregnancy. So it was a scheduled C-section. So it was the day before and we’re like, hey, let’s, get, we already had one kid, we’re like, hey, let’s go to lunch. Cause we’re not going to do that for like a long time.
And I was in the midst of negotiating this management buyout of ER Express. We were going to move our seed investors out of the equity cap table, senior note. And after a lot of back and forth, it looked like it wasn’t going to happen. And by the way, if it didn’t happen, the business was probably over. There wasn’t really a plan B or a good plan B. And after a lot of back and forth, it looked like it wasn’t going to happen.
You know, that had been building for, I don’t know, a week or two. had TMJ, which comes from clenching your teeth at night. Cause I was, that’s how was manifesting that the anxiety just like I didn’t even know I was doing this clenching my teeth at night and rubbing it’s called Bruxing rubbing, rubbing my molars together. Um, and I, you know, somewhere as we were walking, I got an email on my phone and I was just like, ah, I think this is it. And I was just so.
So was stressed that I just stopped and I just threw up my entire lunch on the railroad tracks by our house, walking into downtown Decatur. That’s part of the land where I live. And I just dry heaved for like, I don’t know. And Kate is like, are you OK? And I was like, I will be.
Bye.
And there was no, I mean, I don’t know. I didn’t have any plan. There was no strategy. There was nothing. I was just like, go to sleep tonight and wake up tomorrow. It’s going be new day. We ended up, as you know, we ended up working it out and finishing the transaction. And it was unfortunate because I think my
seed investors who I have lot of respect for.
I think we got the best possible outcome for everyone, it just wasn’t, you know, it’s not the, no one starts a business with that in mind and no one puts money and they were the first dollar in, they were the riskiest dollars in with writing that as the outcome. So that was pretty, I wouldn’t want anyone to be in a place where they felt like that. And I hope not to be there again, but you get through it.
I think these, everyone has these, whatever your job is, there’s moments like that and you, when you’re on the other side of it, then you’re like, okay, I can get through that. Life threw it at me and I threw it back.
Yeah, absolutely. And I think everybody’s been in a corner like that where they didn’t know the outcome. And it looks like the outcome that we’re going to get is not pleasant or favorable. And so we’re going to have to figure out how to learn to live through that. And that’s never fun. OK, thank you for sharing that. All right.
Now, now it’s not.
Yeah, I think the reality is for entrepreneurs, you live in the valley more than you live in the peak. And I think there’s a skill of just learning to live in the valley, which sounds really negative, but I really mean that in a positive way. I think that’s part of the skill being an entrepreneur is you learn to live in the valley and be like, like, there’s some people that they get on a rocket ship and it’s just, everything’s up and to the right. And if that’s you, man, that’s…
True.
Excellent. I hope that for everyone.
Yeah. I hope that for everyone too, but I don’t actually know anybody who that’s been their path. It’s typically one step up, two steps back, a loop to loop, listening to the right, under the water, three turns, you know. But the interesting thing about the peaks and the valleys is this, even though you may have to live through the valley, the right peak, the right peak.
will erase the pain of all the valleys. so I found that interesting. Jalen Hurts, winning quarterback for the Philadelphia Eagles in the Super Bowl a week or two ago, he did a quote, and I love this quote. He said, the joy of winning does not erase my pain of when I lost the Super Bowl. And I was like,
Okay. That’s pretty stellar. And I hope that you, you know, switch that to where the joy of winning does you raise the pain. But entrepreneurs, we certainly do experience some discomfort and hoping, planning, praying for the win. Okay. So now that’s all you can do. Yeah. Sometimes all you can do is what you can do is merely put one foot in front of the other.
Sometimes that’s all you can do.
and go ahead. Okay, so now I’m going to look into your brain.
a piece of wisdom, something that you hold dear, that you’ve learned along your path, that if I could see into your brain, you’d be like, Don, you want to know this.
Well, I want to try and give you something maybe unique or you won’t maybe you haven’t heard from all the other folks You’ve and you’ve interviewed lots of great people on the show I’ll tell you a thing I learned along the way And I would say builds on the city of you learn to live in the valleys if you do entrepreneurship and it’s many different forms is You know know when to get professional help and all its forms
And I definitely had that moment, again, on the first company I started, where I’d just been living in the Valley. It was just, it had sapped my enthusiasm for everything. It just felt like everything I touched turned to ash. And I just didn’t have any enthusiasm for anything. And it was all toiled, no joy. And it had spilled into my home life, my marriage, my kids, everything. And…
At one point, finally might, and I don’t even remember the exact what spurred it, but my wife asked me about something. I I think it was like going to the movies and I was just like, I don’t care what movie we see. I didn’t care about anything. And she’s like, hey, hang on a sec. And she just realized like something was, and she’s like, something’s not right. Like you need to, you need to talk to someone.
We can do it together, do it yourself, but it needs to happen. Now, back stories. My wife’s a clinical psychologist by training. So she knew what she was talking about, and I knew that. And I was lucky that I had her, lucky that I have her in all regards, particularly in that. And we did that, and it was really helpful. And I would tell that to everyone, do it if you need it, and the best time to do it is before you need it.
I love that. And my personal belief is this, if you’re that person like I was who said, I’ll never need that, maybe that’s an indicator of actual need. I’m just saying. I’m not diagnosing or casting my viewpoint on other people, but in my case, I believe that to be true. Okay, so last question.
Yeah.
going to put you into a time machine. Going to send you all the way back to 20 year old Sahil. You’re going to get 60 seconds to share something that you know now that you wish you’d known then and wish you’d listened to then that would have sped you on your path
Let’s do it.
Okay, so I’m a junior in college. Got it.
Ease your journey. So into the time machine you go, all the way back, Sahil. Meet 20 year old Sahil. What do you say?
Your parents know what they’re talking about more than you think they do.
Spend time with your grandmother.
I believe my grandmother lived to 99, but you know, time, now it feels like that was short.
Wherever you go, make sure you’re doing at least one thing that kind of breaks you out of your comfort zone regularly.
love
You know, my personal belief on comfort zones, the physics of comfort zones is I stay in my comfort zone because it’s comfortable. Everybody does. It’s comfortable. I like it here, but the good stuff is on the outside. And the funny thing about comfort zone physics is when I step out of my comfort zone, my comfort zone grows. And I step out and it grows and it grows.
Yeah.
Yeah, I like that. That’s really good.
And at this point in my life, I’m running out of my comfort zone every day. And guess what? It doesn’t all work out because that’s how the area around your comfort zone is. It doesn’t all work out. Okay. But you live, learn and on you go. Sahil, my distinct pleasure to share this time with you today. And thank you so much for being on The Proven Entrepreneurship.
Yeah, well put.
Thank you for having me. This is great. An hour went by quickly. That was great. It was great. Let’s pause and let
I’m to stop it.
