The unglamorous reality of building a services business, finding product-market fit in consulting, and navigating an acquisition.
Services Are Different
Building a services company is nothing like building a product company. There are no hockey-stick growth curves. Revenue scales linearly with headcount. Your margins are a function of operational efficiency, not software leverage.
The Exit
After nine years, we found a buyer who valued what we had built — not just the revenue, but the client relationships, the operational systems, and the team. The acquisition process took eight months and taught me more about business than the previous eight years combined.