We Turned $5M Into $419M Buying Cashflow Businesses ft. Jeremy Giffon

All right, I've been chasing this guest today for six months, begging him to come on the podcast because I heard him on a podcast last year and As much as this breaks my heart to say it, that was my favorite business podcast of the year. And it wasn't even our own, but he was so good that I asked him to come on. His name is Jeremy Giffon. He is um He was the first employee at Tiny, which if ever listen to the podcast, we've had Andrew Wilkinson on many, many times. They basically turned five million dollars of starting money. into about five hundred million dollars of equity just by buying businesses that cash flow. So they bought You know, small businesses that cash flowed kept recycling, recycling, recycling over 10 years turned into 500 million. So I wanted to ask him.

Uh, what was it like in the early days? What were those first deals like? He was there before they even had a name, before they were even even called Tiny. So We asked him about his best deals, his worst deals, the weirdest deals he's ever done, negotiating tick tactics he learned. This episode is amazing. It's a ten out of ten for me. Um enjoy this episode with you. What's up, Jeremy? Welcome to the show. We figure we've uh We've had your mentor on enough times now, Andrew, he's probably the the most popular guest on the show. Uh enough of Andrew. We gotta go to his protege. We gotta go to the young gun who was there from the beginning and uh and have you on. Welcome to the welcome to the show, man.

Thanks for having me, guys. Let's put Tiny into context'cause I think maybe somebody listening to this doesn't doesn't actually appreciate what we're talking about, Tiny. T the simple story of Tiny is Um They had a services business, an agency.

And then they had excess profits. And I think you can correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the numbers are something like they took five or six million dollars of initial initial equity. And they put that into tiny and we're like, Okay, we're gonna go try to buy a business with this. And they've ended up turning five or six million of initial startup Capital.

into roughly a five hundred, six hundred million dollar public company where they own, you know, Tiny owns maybe a portfolio of thirty businesses or something like that over over roughly uh ten ish years. Yeah, eight year period. So Kind of amazing. In eight years, turn five million dollars into five hundred million dollars like Okay, I'm r I'm doing round math here, fuzzy fuzzy numbers, but

First of all, is that the is that the right math? Is that the roughly the right story? And um And then, you know, walk us through the beginning days of that because you were there at the very beginning at nineteen, twenty years old. employee kind of number one there. Uh walk us through that. Yeah, so I I knew Andrew because when he was starting Meta Lab and I was working on another startup, um, we shared the same studio apartment. Our office was in a studio apartment.

And uh he was in like the bedroom area and we were in the the kitchen and we would keep a keep a blow up mattress in case the fire guy came around and we would just say oh you know Andrew lives here, but I just have a lot of friends over, uh, you know, working on stuff. Um and yeah, I mean effectively like Meta Lab, the store the short version is Meta Lab. you know, was throwing off a fair amount of free cash flow. I think it was in that range of

you know, low millions a year. And the idea was just to go use that free cash flow to buy buy a business. And, you know, um, that's the thing with agencies, right? Like there's not a lot of reinvestment. So you gotta do something with the cash. And if you're not gonna put in the S P like That's too boring or whatever. Then you gotta figure out something to do with it. Um

And so that's that's kinda what we did. It's funny, like people a lot of people hold codes and stuff are really popular now and people, you know, a lot of people ask how do I build tiny effectively. And the first step is like, well, you know, bootstrap a business that makes millions of dollars of free cash flow and then like get back to me. The the rest is like pretty easy. And that's the first th And you said it took eight years. In reality I think Meta Lab, uh the agency, that was already eight years older. I don't I don't know what it was, but it was probably fifteen, sixteen years old now. So it was a long, a long slog. I mean, Andrew just started really young.

Andrew and Chris and myself, I mean, we were all big users and fans of Dribbble. Um, and uh And we Andrew really had that company in mind for a long time, which I think is another really nice thing to have. Like it's very good to start with a deal, even when like even when you're fundraising or whatever, to to actually have a concrete thing that you want to go do and use that as the jumping off point for, you know, building whatever it is. I think it's always so much better to have that than to kind of be like abstract, Oh, I'm gonna start a funder, I'm gonna start a holding company or whatever.

Um and so it was like Dribble's really cool. Uh, we would love to we would be the right owners for that. uh Andrew New, the co founders there, and maybe we could buy that and that would be a starting off point. And it's all very like real and concrete versus the

we're gonna build a holding company of technology businesses or something like that. Now you're three guys who've never bought a business before. Take me back to you're sitting in the the the kitchen or whatever of your Apartment slash office slash hangout lounge. Uh are you guys like, hey, can we like

By like buying businesses for dummies? Like how did you even figure out How to do it. And also if this was a good idea, because it's a big risk, right? I think you know, probably four or five million bucks of equity went into that deal. That's like kind of like A that's a big deal. That's not like a couple hundred grand uh at that stage. So like What were those conversations like at the beginning, as much as as best as you can remember?

Yeah, I mean it was, you know, like anything There's generally uh one way that you can categorize sellers, it's people who care about what happens to the business after they sell it and people who don't. And um certainly for people who care, it's a lot about it's this huge trust exercise of, you know, are you gonna screw up my baby? Like In their case, they've been working on it for a really long time. Their names were very attached to it. There's a big community. Community businesses are really difficult, you know, the community can really turn on you fast. Um

And so yeah, there's that whole piece. And then mechanically Yeah, it was literally like I don't think we even had a book. We just looked it up online. Like I would literally go on legal depot and like get a L O I off there and edit it and you know. For the first few deals like Uh you know, I was

nineteen twenty and Andrew would be like Can you go get a L O I for this? And I I didn't know what that was. We just go download one and write it up and it's interesting because one thing that we didn't Like this an example of just the benefit of not having a lot of experience. Typically when you do an LOI It's pretty far along in the process. Um, and we would just fire them out'cause we read them. And in an LOI, the only thing that's binding usually is the exclusivity and nothing else, not the price or anything else. And so we thought okay, like this is a

totally non binding things. So let's just like chuck it out there. It's nice to have something on a piece of paper. It's kinda like a term sheet. Um, although even term sheets like um socially are more binding. And we didn't realize that oh and private equity and LOI is like a pretty sturdy commitment or whatever. And you know, th that was for better and for worse. Uh on one hand, it let us move really fast. On the other hand we learned quite quickly that okay, you're not supposed to go back on like what you changed in an L O I and that kind of stuff. And we're And and so there's all those little things where just not being familiar with the process.

really kind of let us move fast, it let us be friendlier. And that was the whole point. Like we had both had these kind of bad experiences with uh With with buyers. Um, and we thought, you know, there's gotta be like a better service to be done there, basically. I had a handyman come over yesterday and he comes to my front door and he's like, Show me what you need done, whatever and I said, Great, that's what I need done. And he goes, Here, before we start, I need you to do something. And he pulls out a notebook and he wrote he writes, My rate is fifty dollars one hour per one hour.

And he hands it to me, he goes, Sign this for me. And I just I go, Okay, cool, I'm aware. Spits in his hand, shakes it. He's like, This is no official And I was like, I I appreciate I I appreciate your style. Yeah, at least at least understandable. So At the time was Dribble like an obviously good business.'Cause it turned out to be An amazing investment, probably like a I don't know, what is it, like a fifty X on your money there, right? Like it's Yeah, more than that. More than a fifty X. Amazing.

What did you guys like try to underwrite the deal where you're like in Excel like dragging some like, you know, ten percent growth, like dragging it over twenty columns, like How did you guys did the deal look like and what what did you expect? Again, it was it was pretty obvious that it was a great business. And I think Andrew's told the story before, but there was some immediate day one levers around like A big part of the business was advertising and we could find better advertising providers and things like that. So there were levers you could pull on day one that were gonna improve the business. Um

But yeah, it just felt like this big opportunity. It was a top one thousand website. It had millions of active users. It was very important, you know, when it launched, like I think I bought my dribble invite on eBay or something like that. It was really hot for a while. And it it was just this kind of like cool thing that didn't really exist, you know, there's not a lot of independent social networks that have millions of users. Um And you know, we we we negotiated a pretty fair

deal I think like you know the the other buffet line as price is my due diligence and That helps a lot. But no, we never thought we never thought any of the deals could be you know, fifty plus X's. Um where always just like, you know, can we make twenty or thirty percent cash per year from this business? And that would be great. And anything after that is just kind of

Kind of upside. Um You know, I I think And and yeah, regarding models, you know, Andrew used to make me do discounted cash flows because it was kind of like the thing that you felt investors ought to do. And then at some point I was like

Here's your spreadsheet, but I'm just making up all the assumptions in the spreadsheet. And I think it was like so many of these things are just like um comfort blankets or whatever. You just like it makes you it's this big scary thing that you're doing and it makes you feel better that you have it. So you can look at it and be like, Yeah, like we've modeled this out, you know, but it's like it's bullshit. You're just you're just making it up. You also had a great quote, you were like uh you you said something to me, you go, the more quantitative analysis, so the more numbers N number a numerical analysis you're doing about a business. the more you're commoditized in your analysis. What does that uh what does that mean? Unpack that one.

Yeah, uh my my favorite anecdote here is in the Facebook IPO, Barclays put out this research report where, you know, they say what they think the business is gonna be worth. And Um the way they do that is through a discount of cash flow and and a part of that calculation is like what is the terminal growth? What is this thing gonna grow at forever. And they put it at three percent, which is what most companies are. And so that got them to a two hundred billion dollar valuation.

Now the next ten years it grew thirty percent a year and it's a two trillion dollar company. And it's just an example of like, you know, you do all this modeling and this research report and you're just so off. Like you you you're an order of magnitude off. And so like what was the point of doing any of that? It would have been better to think really hard about how actually how much can Facebook grow, like just kind of this first principle stuff, right? Of what percentage of the planet could use this, like a lot more basic. Um And yeah, that's a lot of the quantitative stuff. Also, a lot of the quantum stuff is totally commodified, right? So

people like know how to do this. You can learn how to do this in school and therefore maybe it's like a useful table stakes thing. But you're not gonna get any edge that way,'cause everyone can do it. And where the edge is in quantitative stuff is, you know, in the two sigmas and Jane Streets and the MIT Ph, and you're not gonna be doing that either. And so You're not gonna like do a better model on a company than than the next guy and somehow get some edge there. So then when you're looking at a deal, uh when you're trying to for like a small bootstrap business, a business doing anywhere from a million to thirty million in revenue. What are you looking at to spot the opportunity? If it's not the if it I mean, are you

How much do the financials and the the cash flow statements actually even factor into that? Or are you just thinking I can make this bigger? Well, I mean What what part of the numbers actually matter to you. Yeah, it's pretty basic, right? It's like Okay, let's you know, let's make up numbers. It's doing five million dollars a year of revenue, a million dollars of earnings.

And you think, okay, on day one, I could, you know, raise the prices by thirty percent. I could um reduce headcount, I could launch this new product, whatever. Uh would you pay, you know, would you pay a million dollars for that? Yeah, of course. Would you pay three million dollars? Yeah, probably. And then you you can just kinda go and I think where modeling gets important is when you're like at the very edge of that. You're like, would you pay 10 million dollars for that? And then it's like well a lot of things would have to go right, maybe or whatever, but there's some number there. where it's like, Yeah, you know, uh so I'd pay three million dollars for business making a million dollars. And so then the trick becomes, Okay, can you get the business for three million dollars? And that's where it's like, you know, Tiny was in a lot of bids with other

Other folks. And I don't think we are ever the highest actual price. But we often won deals because we could offer other things. So that comes back to like why you on the deal, you know, it's'cause Like a very common thing that would happen is

We'd get pretty far with the seller. And then they'd say, Hey, you know, we like you guys, but we've got this offer for twenty five percent more. So we're gonna go take it. And, you know, very often be like, Great, like go explore that. And then turns out that offer was not as real as you thought, or it was six months. Of whatever. uh there's more debt or they didn't have the financing, and then you actually figure out that oh, there there is like other things in the deal that are important, like the ability to get it done, the ability to be honest, to be trustworthy, to do things fast, like all those other Soft things.

Um and so it's more like Are you able to get a price that's really a no brainer? Or at least that's how I look at it, versus I really think I'm smarter than everyone else, and I can pay slightly more. I mean p that works for people. People do do that, but it's just like a totally different game. I'm always fascinated by What can I learn? You know.

Tiny is a great business, but it was created by people. It was great by Andrew, by Chris, by you. And I'm like, what are how do they think about things? What do they know about what they're doing? What worked for them. What are their ultimately what are their superpowers. And I asked you, what's Chris's superpower? Because forget Andrew. Everybody knows Andrew. He's popular. He's out there. He talks. He's got a big following. Almost nobody knows Chris. I had dinner with Chris and I was like, I fucking love this guy. This guy's he's dynamic, he's really engaging, he asks great questions.

And so I've only known him for a couple hours in my life. You've known him for a lot longer than that. What is Chris's superpower that That he brought to Tiny. I mean Chris's superpower is just being able to Andrew is so high pace and so high energy that Chris is just able to modulate that and kind of be the sober second thought, you know, we're not gonna do this or that's way too much or

Or whatever. Um, you know, a very interesting piece of the tiny partnership, um, at least at the beginning, that I thought was really quite unique and interesting. Is that You know, Chris and Andrew had Tiny as this vehicle that they would share together. But then they could also

do things on their own, you know, investments, businesses. And that actually like I don't even know if it was intentional, but that provides this great release valve of Oh okay, like all the time, you know, Andrew would come up with some

You know, cockamane motion about some restaurant or whatever. And he would just say, Okay, I'm gonna go do that on my own. And Chris could have the same thing. Like Chris was great at investing in public equities and he could go do that on his own. And I um I know that doesn't exactly answer about Chris's superpower, but it is this like interesting structure. I think one thing that can really go wrong in partnerships Is

If it's like you're dedicating your whole life to this thing. and everything you do is gonna be be through it, it can really turn into this prison if you don't share the same taste as as your co-founder. And so having this like release valve. And being aware of that is is really nice. People normally pick partners who are like them, right? But they but Andrew and Chris are not like that. What you know, I guess w is that a What what did you learn from that? Yeah, I mean I I would also say like Andrew is really good at sales and kind of creating this new vision, and then Chris is really good at being kind of the negotiator and actually like

getting a good deal and structuring it well and everything. Um You know, there's all kinds of things about about negotiation. Like w One thing that would be Like structurally another interesting thing is, you know, I would

I would be kind of the the front guy on a lot of deals. And would come back to them. And they would kind of be quarterbacking it. And what was nice is like I would throw out an offer that I thought was really aggressive and it was kind of The most that I could like emotionally stomach. Aggressively high.

Aggressively high. Low. Uh you know, really low. Really low. And so this is I I I wanna be clear, this was back like in the early days when we had no money and we were really trying to like be scrappy. Um, Tiny is not really like this anymore, but And then I would say, Okay, like I've really got this down. Uh, you know, and then they would just look at me and'cause they never talk to the the the seller and just say I think you can do like twenty five percent less. And like sometimes I feel like I want to throw up, you know. Talk through that when you have to present a shit offer to someone. I I imagine some A lot of times, maybe not a lot, ten, fifteen percent of the times they're like, Okay. Yeah, well more than that. And actually what's even rarer is y at least I, I always have this fear that they're just gonna lose it, you know. Like dare you And that almost never happens. It happens sometimes, but it almost never happens. And another nice dynamic there is you can always say, Well, hey, like

I'm on your side. Like I you know, it's the old uh car salesman gamut of like my manager's killing me. It's the same exact setup, right? Um And that's that's super helpful and you know. Uh Chris shared all kinds of tricks with me, like um One great one is it's always best to just kind of when you float an offer to just not say anything else, people will immediately start negotiating against themselves. And so one trick that you can use if you're on I I guess it probably doesn't work on Zoom, but um if you're on just a call is you can like say your offer and then hit mute.

And then you can like be like you can start saying, Oh, you know, whatever, but they'll just hear the science. Silence and um That's a big thing as well, because Oftentimes you just need to let it float and sit out there, but it's like too uncomfortable for you to actually do that. Dude, I've got this friend who works in the CIA. And I was talking to him, um and he has to negotiate with people. You know, basically his job is to

convince people to become spies. So if he goes to the Middle East, he he's has to convince a a guy who's loyal to some country in the Middle East to Be commit treason. And when he like goes to these negotiations his tactic'cause he said the same thing, he goes, I say what I want and what I want to happen and then I shut up. And uh I we we his other coworker was there and he was like who's not uh who's not part of that. He's like, dude, they do this to me all the time just at work. I'll notice they say something and I just want to fill the silence and I wanna keep talking and it because it makes me uncomfortable. And I end up just talking, talking, talking, and they sit back, not saying a thing, and they always get their way.

Yeah, totally. I mean, one one very cynical way of looking at negotiation, um, is that it's just who can bear to be uncomfortable longer. Um and and like that's certainly true. You can do that in a retail setting, you know. Sean does that all the time. Sean, I think we when he negotiates the king of the awkward silence. Yeah, he's the he's very comfortable. Yeah. He's he's the mayor of of that area where he's just uh very comfortable being uncomfortable in the conversation. Jeremy, you you told me something else that Chris taught you that is less about kind of the the kind of the gamesmanship. I think when we when we think about negotiation

We often think about the gamesmanship. What do I say? And I think you already said one interesting is which is A lot of times it's what you don't say. It's to stop talking and let them talk. But another piece you you you had mentioned to me was like It's not you versus them. Can you explain that like how Chris taught you it's not you versus them. the the way that I like to frame it, the more kind of mature, the way that you can really do I think for your entire life and not kind of get, you know, be known as this like bastard who's just relentless to negoti negotiate against. It's kind of I love this idea of in a traditional negotiation, you're sitting across the table from one another.

And the way that I really like to reframe it is um you're both sitting on the same side and what's on the other side of the table is the problem. And the problem can be You want fifty million for the business. I want to pay twenty. But it's still this like, okay. This is a problem. Let's work together to figure this out.

And it's this very subtle thing, but it makes a huge difference. And that's I think that's how you start to unearth. Okay, maybe like it's actually not ca it's cash and something else that's more important for you. Why do you want fifty? What is it that's fifty about so important? And why can I feel like I only can pay twenty or whatever. And that works really well. I use that every day. You can use it in like relationship problems and everything of kind of like making the problem other And then putting it out there and being like, let's work together on solving this thing. And there's just something so much better about that than the kind of like, I'm gonna hit mute and stare at you and like break you, you know? Like, well, uh see, Jeremy, the problem that we're trying to solve is I want the money in your bank account to be in my bank account.

Yeah, exactly. I want that I want that chase of not to say five zero. Yeah. No, it it is true though. Uh uh, you know, one of the things my dad taught me, one of the best things my dad ever taught me is like when you go into a negotiation, It's not the same thing. It's not us versus them. It's he goes, make a table of your needs and your like basically your needs. And then your gives. So like what do you have to offer? And then what do you what do you need back? And then what do they have to offer? What do you need back? And they're never like perfectly symmetrical. It's not like And so, for example, some of the things they need are very easy for me to give, cost me nothing, or I'm totally comfortable giving that. And it's actually their fear or their their big sticking point.

was something that's not so hard for me to to to give on. Or maybe I could go out of my way to give more even than their than their They're expecting in that area. And in this other area. I need something and then they they're happy to give it. And so That's usually the the better way to do it.

My my favorite question is what would need to be true? So it's like okay, you want to sell your business for a hundred million dollars. What would need to be true for me to pay a hundred million dollars for it? And you can just lay it out like what would make this a no-brainer? And you can do that in any situation. And you know, sometimes it's impossible, but oftentimes it's far more possible than you think when everyone actually lays that out. Cause usually there's some sticking point that you don't realize or or you know, it's something that is kind of outside of the scope of things you've already talked about. And I'm always amazed by how much that works. That works like As I've been fundraising, it works there. Like what would need to be true for you to be like, oh, it's easy for to give you money, or um You know, uh

For for a trip. Like what would need to be true for everyone to be excited about going on this trip? Like it's just such a good question and it it really sets that up as like let's collaborate on this. That was my pickup line. What's a guy like me gotta do to be with a girl like you? And then she's like, Do you have a friend? What's his name? You have this other thing on here where you talk about how um What do you say, uh a cult email is the most asymmetrical trade. Um and that you've actually cold emailed a bunch of people. There's one guy in particular who you listed that I want to ask you about, but uh

It sounds like the cold email has done well for you. Explain more. Yeah, I think um it's funny, I've been saying this a lot more like publicly into groups and stuff. Um And it's still like if everyone called email, the arb would go away. But I think it's just too scary or whatever that people don't do it. It's still a huge opportunity. I will say, like, the the addendum to that advice is You gotta have the goods when you show up for the meeting or the call or whatever. I think like

I think I don't know, maybe it's just like anecdotally,'cause I talk about this a lot, I get a lot of cold outreach. And you also like the second part is you gotta be really good when you show when you show up. Um But if you're good. uh when you show up. Like it's just this incredible incredible kind of hidden secret, which is

There's always a scarcity of talent. Like no matter who you are and you know how much money you're worth or whatever. There's a scarcity of really awesome people. Um and so Everyone has an infinite appetite to meet people who are interesting. talented, have a unique view on things, whatever.

And if you can present that, like it you you will really kind of go a long way. And and the downside, I can't even remember. I'm sure I've sent hundreds that have never been responded to. I've never got a bad response. It's usually just no response. And I don't even remember the non responses, but the ones that I've got responses from have been amazing, you know? And so I think um I definitely think more people should do it, especially if you're young or you're a student. That that alone can be enough of a hook.

um that like most people will meet with a student if they seem switched on and and interested and Yeah, I I'm still amazed that people people don't do it, but I've started to see people do it and then they show up and like they don't have anything to say or they don't have questions prepared or whatever, and that can be really bad. We already know your first deal, but that was the first one. But I wanna know first deal, worst deal, best deal, weirdest deal. Ha. It's like the fuck murder Mary apparently uh

Well we did for we did first deal, dribble, which might also be best deal. Uh what's w what's the worst deal that comes to mind? What's the big mistake you made? The worst deal And name names and list their email address and social media handles. Yeah, the the worst deal is actually the one that I can say the least about, which should indicate how bad of a deal it was. The person

was dishonest and I should have known And I didn't, and I ignored it for for greed reasons. Uh,'cause I I was just thought this was such a good deal. I could look past these things. When you say I should have known, I ignored it, what what are some things people could look out for? What what could I learn from that? Yeah, it was it was not this deal, but there was um Uh a friend of mine

uh who buys similar types of companies. did a did a deal where they flew in the uh the founders to meet them in person and the first night the founders wanted to know where they could get drugs. And you know that Is like in and of itself is not A strong signal, but in that context.

In that situation. It's like kinda what more do you need to know? And it turned out that they were doing a bunch of stuff that they didn't disclose or whatever. It's always stuff like that. Like someone who's really flashy is almost always a bad sign. Um All these little things and you know even Like in the case of this deal, I introduced the person to a bunch of different

uh friends and and you know, um experts and they're all like This guy is really something, you know, like you I I don't really know why you're dealing with this person. And it's it is funny how you just get the blinders on when something is so good. And I think we've all all made that mistake. Um And so yeah, that that one it just turned out that there was a bunch of things that we didn't know about and it went very badly and we lost our all our money. It was a really small check. Fortunately, that was like the one upside, but um

That one was was pretty Pretty rough. Um What's the most unique or weird deal? The the best one I mean it's kinda too early to tell. One one one that I really I really really love is this company called Meal I'm it's a um meal planning app.

that tiny bot in twenty eighteen. Meal planning made easy. So four four four and a half million people, it says on the website, use this app and what do you do? You say uh what ingredients you have and it gives you like uh a a bunch of recipes to cook and lines them out for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. But it was just this really awesome app. And it was made by this really amazing technical guy who had just built this really great product. Like I remember the the moment that sold me is like They you know how the iPhone turns off when you put it close to your head. Um he realized that you could use that sensor if your hands are dirty while you're cooking, you could wave your hands over that sensor to like go to the next part of the recipe or stuff.

All just these little things and they have these huge butterfly effects, like Turns out when you do that, Apple thinks that's really cool. And then they feature you in the app store. And like you there's all these small details. Um And we bought that business and it grew a lot. We got all of our money back in the first couple of years. And then this was the only business Tiny has um has sold to date.

that uh We sol we a made two major grocery retailers came along. And I guess like in a boardroom somewhere. They had just decided you know, we need an app. Um, and so they were both became interested. And it was kinda funny'cause um

I you know, the company that I was at before Tiny, we had sold the company to work day. And it was a a a pretty difficult Um uh experience and so I kinda viewed it as like my chance to

get another go at selling a company to a public business and really kind of It was gonna be my turn to like get a good deal. And um and then we sold it. We sold it for, you know, a a huge revenue multiple, made a lot of money, you know, a excess of twenty five times of our money. And um

And it's still today. It's like if you look it up, it's still used. It's this great thing. I think the original team is still there. They were very happy with the outcome. Um, I just love that'cause it was like It was this kind of perfect little situation and this great little Almost like Um

like craft app, like just someone who cared a lot about making great product and and I love those. And the weirdest deal? It was basically this company. A big Fortune five hundred tech company. bought a business and the business had two business units.

And the big Fortune five hundred only wanted one of those units. And um they basically had to divest of it very quickly. And so we were able to buy it for It was doing ten million dollars of recurring revenue and it was shrinking. The business was shrinking because it was built on top of another platform that was becoming less popular over time.

And um and we were basically able to buy it for So little that we borrowed all the money and then paid back the loan in like three or four months. And so we basically got it for free. We were able to we bought this out of the tiny fund and we we w we could write this great update to our investors saying, Hey, uh, you know, we didn't call any capital, but You now own this new business, we're gonna do a distribution soon and It was like small dollars, but it's cool to pay nothing for a business. Um and then the interesting part is like we also got a domain that's probably worth a million or two million dollars, depending on how fast we wanted to sell it.

And so it was kind of this like fun little deal of like can you actually do a business for can you buy a company for no money down? And Um You know, it won't be a business, it will not be a twenty X and it's not gonna grow for ten years, but we'll make many multiples of our money on it. Um and it's fun. Like in the actual fun statement. That like KPMG does. They have to list the cost and so the the accountants

uh list it as like a thirty six dollar cost basis, which is I guess like the actual money that went into the deal. And um those are cool. Like you can be really, really creative. You don't have to put a lot of money down. How do they find you or you them? We in that case we knew a board member. Um and it was the situation where again we made a bid there and they didn't like the bid and they went and tried and chopped it around and turns out like There's a very limited set of buyers for that kind of thing, and especially ones you can do a deal really, really fast. Um

And so it was kind of this we understood why we had the right to win this this deal. We understood that money was not the most important thing here. Um And so we were able to get it for this this great price. That's it for part one. We actually kept talking to Jeremy and it was so good that we're gonna turn it into a two parter. The second part is actually all about

what he would do today. So the first part was kind of like how they how they built Tiny, the deals, the the lessons learned, and that was the past. And now I asked him basically if I was gonna do tiny today, what would I do? What deals would you be looking at? What businesses do you think are great buys? What opportunities do you see? And he tells us the single best investment opportunity he sees today in this next part. Uh enjoy that's coming out tomorrow. Yeah. I feel like I can rule the world, I know I can be what I want to

I put my law in it like a day song On the roadless travel, never looking back

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