In this episode of the Agentic Shift podcast, we talk to Jesse Pujii, co-founder of Ampush and Gateway X, and the first person to be on two episodes of this podcast. Jesse tells us about the long and twisted path he took to eventually selling Ampush to Tinuiti, including several different business pivots, taking minority investment from Red Ventures, firing himself as CEO, hiring and then firing an investment banker, and working through the most challenging negotiating points to get the final deal done. He also shares what he’s been doing post-acquisition. Enjoy the show.
In this episode of the Agentic Shift podcast, we talk to Jesse Pujii, co-founder of Ampush and Gateway X, and the first person to be on two episodes of this podcast. Jesse tells us about the long and twisted path he took to eventually selling Ampush to Tinuiti, including several different business pivots, taking minority investment from Red Ventures, firing himself as CEO, hiring and then firing an investment banker, and working through the most challenging negotiating points to get the final deal done. He also shares what he’s been doing post-acquisition. Enjoy the show.
00:24
David Rodnitzky
Jesse, thank you for joining us today on the Agentic Shift podcast.
00:28
Jesse Pujji
I'm glad to be here, David. It's good to see you.
00:31
David Rodnitzky
Good to see you, too. And I believe you are officially the first person to have been on two different episodes of the podcast. So you are royalty around here.
00:40
Jesse Pujji
All right, thank you.
00:43
David Rodnitzky
So the first time we talked to you about the growth of Ampush, the agency that you founded with a couple of your Wharton colleagues. And this time, we want to talk about the m a side of things, because you were able to have a successful exit of Ampush. But before we start talking about the exit, maybe give everyone a recap of what Ampush was doing, how you got started, and how you got to the point at which you were considering an exit.
01:09
Jesse Pujji
Yeah, sure. Ampush went through a variety of different cycles, I would say, which was worth maybe hitting on each of them a little bit. We started the company in late 2009, early 2010, thought of it as a tech business, and started spending some time doing performance marketing and digital through that. In our first year or so, we discovered Facebook ads, which were this new thing at the time. They were on the right rail and you could really hyper target them. We started doing a bunch of that, and maybe 18 months into starting the business, Facebook called us one day and said, who the hell are you guys? You're one of our top 100 global advertisers. Come meet us. So we go in to meet Facebook, have all these ideas for their ads management platform.
01:47
Jesse Pujji
And back then, if you can imagine, you have to make each ad one at a time in the interface. You may remember that. David, you and I are the only two people who remember that. And we said, no, we should automate that and make it really easy. They said, oh, glad you're thinking that way. We're looking for partners to join our API program and become a most favored nation company. Why don't you guys do that? So we actually jumped at that opportunity. We became one of the first kind of companies to have API access, built software in their platform, and obviously services. And over time, we actually divested the performance marketing business. So we ran a process for that, which we could talk a little bit about, but we sold that business off.
02:20
Jesse Pujji
That was like the lead gen business, and went all in on the social business and really grew it super fast. And from 2012 to 2000, and we had customers, our clients were like Uber, Dollar, Shave Club, Hulu, American Express, a lot of really good logos, because in that time, no one knew how to do direct response on social and were one of the few companies who did. And so the company grew like crazy, and someone at some point, had made an offer to buy the whole company. Early on, we thought, that's a great offer, but we're going to grow it really fast and big, and then you're going to make an even bigger offer in a few years. And there was a time when Marin software and rocket fuel were multibillion dollar businesses that then cratered 95% down.
02:58
Jesse Pujji
And somehow that's when we chose to go run our process. And some of it was just based on our own personal energy. And so at that time, in 2015, we actually ran a process, which was really an M&A process, but we ultimately didn't get a number we liked, and we could talk a lot about that. And we sold a minority interest to this really interesting business called Red Ventures. And Red Ventures really plugged in and helped us make the business much more profitable. At that time, we did the deal with them. We were probably growing 100% a year, but not making much on the bottom line. And fast forward a few years, were growing at 30, 40% a year, but were also having doing 30% margins.
03:31
Jesse Pujji
The business was booming and growing, and we worked through this model that they had that was very performance oriented and very transparent of make it more digestible by our world of direct to consumer. So, anyway, so we got to about ten years in, were trying to build this holding company. So we bought this, and it's called my subscription addiction. It was like a content business. We had invested in startups. We were doing all these different things, and it became clear that for me to do that, I could not run the day to day of Ampush anymore. I also wanted to move back to my hometown of St. Louis. And so in 2020, we actually decided in 2019, and ended up doing this in the middle of COVID but I was going to move to become executive chairman.
04:10
Jesse Pujji
We put John Oberlander to be our CEO. He had run our New York office for many years. And went off to kind of, let's go keep building this HoldCo. When Nik and I had a little bit of break, I'd say it was also the middle of COVID between us. I'd say Nik and Red Ventures. There just wasn't that appetite to go build the HoldCo anymore. It just dissipated that year of 2020. And so by the end of that year, it was like, we're not going to do the HoldCo anymore. And so everyone kind of said, okay, we're just going to relax. And then I started working on some basically my own stuff that evolved in the way that I was envisioning back then independently. And I'd say maybe two years forward or a year and a half forward.
04:48
Jesse Pujji
John was sort of like, hey, guys, you told me I was going to be part of this HoldCo, and you never built a HoldCo. Like, what the heck? He was nicer than that, but he was just like, what are we doing with this thing? And he has a team that's grinding all the time, wants to get it done. And I think went around the table and just said, the right thing to do is let's look for the right home for the business. And I think it was really driven by the people. I'd say more than anything, John wanted to win. He had some folks who had been very loyal to him for many years. They wanted to win. And I think I would say at the time, I would describe myself as indifferent. Having done the transaction, I'm really happy we did it.
05:20
Jesse Pujji
But at the time, I was like, oh, fine, you want to sell, John, let's sell it. If you don't want to sell, that's fine. Also, whatever you want to do, you're the CEO. I've got your back. What do you want? So that's the approach we took. Also, not a great time to be selling a business. But in early 22, we started having conversation with bankers. A lot of them were afraid we actually got turned down during that process by a few notable bankers. And I think, not that they thought were bad. They just said, hey, I don't think we can get you a deal that you will take. They were a mixture of both. We need to get you a deal, and we have to convince you to take it. And we're not sure we can do both those things.
05:53
Jesse Pujji
So we ended up working with PALAZZO partners, who did a great job. We really grinded and we got the business ready. The business model we had done, which we can talk more about, was pretty volatile. Like, the business had great EBITDA, it just had very volatile EBITDA. So John had spent a lot of time changing the nature of our relationships and structure. So there was a little bit more consistent growth we could show. And so I think by q three of that year, we got out and started talking with people. Everyone knew who were, so it wasn't like needing to get to know people. So it was a little bit more matching than I think the normal process is. It's like, okay, this is a very sophisticated, tech enabled, paid social agency. Who needs it?
06:34
Jesse Pujji
And I'd say that John talked to 25 or 30 people. Me and Nik were in the background the whole time until the actual closing of the transaction, which we can talk about. And then went through the process, and I'd say the folks at tenuity were both really great and really aggressive. This made sense for them. They needed this kind of capability more than anyone else in the process. And so it was a fast deal. We got to terms by November 1. I think we started talking with companies in August, and the transaction was closed by January 4. So it was fast as these things go. But it did take the whole year of 2022, even in a fast process, to get it all done.
07:09
Jesse Pujji
So that's kind of the story from beginnings all the way through the transaction, with lots of interesting puts and takes throughout.
07:16
David Rodnitzky
Yeah, there's a lot to unbundle there. So I guess my first question would be, you said, I think in 2015, you ran a process to try to sell, and that was when Red Ventures ended up taking a piece of the business. Is that right? Did I get that timing right?
07:32
Jesse Pujji
Correct.
07:33
David Rodnitzky
And you said that before Red Ventures took the business a stake, you were growing, but not very profitable. So talk about from an M&A perspective, knowing what you know now, if you came across a young agency that said, hey, we're growing 100% a year and our EBITDA is 2%, what would you say to them?
07:50
Jesse Pujji
I smack them across the face a couple of times and say, don't do it. Don't do it. Honestly, for revisionist history, this stuff myself. And I was talking to Nik the other day about it. And you remember this because you and I have been friends for so long. To be clear, the reason weren't making a lot of EBITDA is because were making a huge technology investment. And also, to be clear, I didn't think were an agency. I would never refer to us that way. I was like, we're a social ads platform. That's what we are. And that was our vision. And look, sometimes I revision history, and I say, we should have never done that. We should have pocketed the EBITDA. We would have had freaking. I can tell you the math. We were spending 500,000-600,000 a month on engineering, right?
08:28
Jesse Pujji
So we would have had an insane EBITDA, even if that was fifty k a month or something. And you knew this because we used to compare notes all the time, right?
08:34
David Rodnitzky
I remember going to your office, and you had these, like, 20 foot long tvs with amazing real time dashboards. I don't know what was going on, but I was like, this is really cool.
08:43
Jesse Pujji
Yeah. And I think we could have got those dashboards for less. But the bet we made that was wrong. We bet stone always win. And you remember this is, we bet that there would be the need for a social DSP, that there would need to be a platform that you could buy across. Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and that one platform would do that. It turned out that Facebook was so much bigger than all these other guys, and then keeping up with them was hard enough. So basically, our bet was wrong. I think had three of these guys emerged to be the same size, Ampush would have been gone in a very different trajectory as a company. It would have turned more techy over have, but it didn't. That's just not what happened. Right. And so it really just became a Facebook tech enabled agency.
09:20
Jesse Pujji
And so, yeah, we probably, I would tell them a, make sure you're making that bet very intentionally, and you know when you'll stop making that bet, what you'll need to see, because I don't think we did that. I think we just started spending money on engineering and just forgot about it. I think I would say to the young founder, figure out what you want. If you're trying to grow this thing, profit to, then exit it, then do that. And that's like, EBITDA is ultimately going to be the thing that has probably going to drive that. Yeah. I wouldn't call it a total mistake or regret. I think it was a bet that went wrong that we probably should have rejiggered sooner. And honestly, we could have rejiggered it in 2014 and then gone out to the market with meaningful EBITDA.
10:01
Jesse Pujji
We were a young guy, I was 30, 31. I don't know that I had the courage to blow up engineering team at that point. That was part of what was happening, too, is you have to actually, you say it's the bet, but then there's a bunch of human beings there working for you and you have to solve for that. So it was a little bit of a mix of things.
10:15
David Rodnitzky
I think this is a really important lesson for young agency owners, and that is the difference between a tech enabled agency and a service enabled tech company. Because I think what you're saying is you were building a service enabled tech company, and if you were successful at that, then you're absolutely right. EBITDA doesn't matter. You could have gotten 100 times revenue and sold for $250,000,000 but if you are really an agency that happens to have technology to make your agency better, building an API to Facebook does not make you a tech company. It makes you an agency that's tech enabled. Then at the end of the day, all that matters is really the EBITDA. And you can argue that the tech should help you accelerate your EBITDA, so you should be able to do more with less.
11:01
Jesse Pujji
Yeah, totally. And I think that's right. And I think what I would, just to put a finer point on it, I think we made the bet to be a service enabled tech company, and we should have been more clear sooner with ourselves. That was not where the world was going to go. We didn't re up on our strategy and go, wait a second now, guys. Facebook's so much bigger. Do we really think these other things are going to work? No, they're not. Let's stop pursuing that strategy. Let's make a shift. Now, Red Ventures did help us make that shift. Rick comes in and he goes, what the hell? Are you guys spending all this money? That was valuable, right? He challenged us in smart ways. He goes, no, you're not that. You're just a great services business.
11:33
Jesse Pujji
Just be that and be a very profitable one. And so we did have to have the reckoning. It was with his help and his mentorship, we did that.
11:41
David Rodnitzky
Yeah, that's great. He's obviously an amazing mentor, I'm sure give his track record.
11:47
Jesse Pujji
Yeah, I'm a good mentee, too, because I'm never defensive. Whatever he tells me to do. Not that I do it necessarily, but I listen and I don't take it personal. I'm like, well, what can I learn from this? So it's a good relationship.
11:59
David Rodnitzky
Yeah, that's great. So each of these times that you sold, did you run a formal process? Did you send out 30 confidential information memorandums? Or was it more of a selective approach?
12:12
Jesse Pujji
Yeah, it's a great question. Yeah, I think the first time we ran the process, or we ran a process was to sell the lead gen business in 2012, and then a lot of people wanted to buy the social business as well. That ended up yielding a weird transaction a little bit later, which I could spend time on, if you're curious. And we had bankers doing them. This awesome guy, Mike Lyon, when we ran the 2015 process, we did hire bankers. I don't want to say who, but we ended up firing them midway through the process. And what I would tell you is, I think I'll always sell a company with bankers, but it's really important to understand what they're supposed to do. And the most important thing they can do is help you organize yourself and organize the process.
12:50
Jesse Pujji
And this is why we fired this group is like, later on, we found out they were understaffed and they had a bunch of issues going on. They were missing deadlines. They were like, hey, we're going to do this. And this time, then they wouldn't follow up with someone. And if there's one thing value add from the bankers you want them doing, it's like everything is tight. Everything happens on time. They are the crazy quarterbacks managing every aspect of the process, because, you know and I know the difference between timing two guys at the same time to get an offer at the same time could be the difference of 20% premium in the ultimate transaction that takes place. So, in their case, they weren't doing that, and were midway through it, and we had to blow them out. We didn't hire anyone new.
13:25
Jesse Pujji
We just kept doing it ourselves and kind of amped up on our own resources. That was what they call a busted process. It was a pretty busted process. And then, yeah, when we worked with PALAZZO, they were great. I think the two most important things they did were they kept everything organized initially, and then when it came to closing time, like actually getting the deal done, they really kept everyone moving and following up every day. What needs to get done? What needs to get done. We close the thing in 60. I wouldn't call it a huge process. It wasn't like cold calling 100 things and sending out sims, but I think probably sending out 30 to 50 sims, 20 management meetings, eight to ten double clicks, three to four LOI, like the standard funnel. That seems to happen in every M&A process.
14:09
David Rodnitzky
Yeah, I think the expression time kills deals is relevant here. And if you don't, if your deal festers for 60, 90 days, people start to wonder if there's something wrong with.
14:18
Jesse Pujji
The company and the bankers aren't the ones who are on top of it. If I'm more on top of follow ups than they are, and in those moments, I can be very intense, but if I'm more on top of it than they are, then that's an immediate Red flag. That's a huge problem as far as I'm concerned. I think the other thing I would tell agency owner, in our example, this was just an interesting experience. John went out and shopped the deal as the CEO, and he had his management team in know. Nik and Jesse were the founders, and were unimportant. To the deal. And I think that was like an interesting experience. At some point it felt overall it was a good thing. I think for anyone who owns an agency to know that they could orient that way.
14:55
Jesse Pujji
And I'm sure you did a version of this too, David, but I think there's a few things that were interesting about that. I think one is we really had built a culture that lived beyond would. The first thing I would tell any agent is the owner. We invested in people culture training. John had been with us a long time. A lot of the people in the team had been with us a long time. So there was a real culture. And the company continued to work for multiple years after. I was not involved in the day to day. And I would meet with John, I would talk to him every other week and I would meet with him maybe once, excuse me, once every eight weeks. And then we'd do some board meetings or whatever. So we had some infrastructure in place.
15:29
Jesse Pujji
But no, he ran it with everyone else, so it ran without us. I think that was important. But in the deal were just not on any slides or in any chart and no one really gave a shit about us, which was like surprising given, you know, this. I ran and built the business for a decade and so it was just interesting to know as an agency owner, I think if you build a business like that and then you pull yourself out of the process, the buyer didn't seem to care.
15:50
David Rodnitzky
Yeah, I think there's two really important things about that statement. Number one is that I think enterprise value can be negatively impacted if it feels like the founders are the epicenter of the business. So looking at your business and they're like, who runs the American Express account? Oh, that's Jesse. Who's in charge of the tech roadmap? Oh, that's Jesse. Who's in charge of hiring. And that's Jesse. And then they don't want to buy a company. That's one person. They want to buy a company. And so that is one advantage to not being involved. But the second one I think is it gives you as a founder optionality, which is you can decide, you can try to convince the founders, the buyers, that you're really important and stay, or you can walk away. But you can't walk away.
16:34
David Rodnitzky
If two months before the sales process you start extracting yourself from the business, it's really probably a six to twelve month process, minimum, to convince a buyer that you're.
16:42
Jesse Pujji
Yeah, and I would argue a multi year process because I hired John in 2011. John worked with me for a really long time. And he played every role as an example. But my point is, were very serious about talent constantly in the business, right? And I think biggest mistake I see agency owners make is they don't take talent development seriously enough and then they pay the price for it. The other thing we did, by the way, in the process, just like a funny story, was just an example. This is a good litmus test. We would lean into some of the most junior people being in the diligence meetings, because what we realized is that when you met our person, who you said, oh, this person's a year and a half in, and this person's three years in, and they were ballers.
17:21
Jesse Pujji
Like, they were impressive. Then all of a sudden, all the fear the buyer has just disappears. They go, whoa, I've met someone who's only worked there for a year and a half, and they could command it as well as Jesse could command, or John could command it. And I think that was the flip of that. If you're an agency owner and you're afraid to put in your next level, even in the meeting, your VPs or your directors, like, good luck, it's going to come out at some point and you're either going to get the deal is going to fall through or you're not going to get the right price. Know something's going to happen if it's just you.
17:49
David Rodnitzky
The challenge of that, though, is I like to use this expression from YPO. When they talk about forums and YPO, they say, tell no one nothing, never. And when it comes to selling a business, the rule of thumb is tell as few people as possible, because you get some junior media buyer who maybe doesn't have a huge stake in the transaction, who is pitch talking to potential acquirers. They may go out to lunch and tell five other junior buyers something's happening. I don't know. I don't know if I like these. And that causes potential employee attrition. And then if clients find out, it can make clients nervous. So how did you get these junior people involved, but make sure that they're also being very confidential about it?
18:27
Jesse Pujji
Yeah, I think we framed it as, like, the company is exploring different partnerships, like, different unique partnerships. And we kept the meetings pretty one way. In other words, the person would come in, share what they were working on with Instacart or whoever, and then they would be gone. And it was enough, I think, that it gave the buyer a flavor for the talent level. And then when were in deep diligence, then we felt pretty comfortable opening up the kimono even more and sharing, which, by the way, that's a really weird phrase, opening the kimono.
18:56
David Rodnitzky
Yeah, it is a weird phrase. I'm sure that samurai significance that we don't understand. Yeah. What I used to tell the team, I'd say, look, you're going to see people coming into the office in suits, and some of them are lawyers, some of them are investment bankers. Some might want to buy us, some might want to be bought by us. And at the end of the day, we're going to talk to all these people, and there's three things we're always going to take care of. Employees, clients, and shareholders, and we won't do anything if it doesn't meet those three criteria.
19:24
Jesse Pujji
Yeah, I think what you just said is owning it. That's how we are, too. I think, again, if you use the YPO phrase, then you just can or dies in the company. And to your point, yeah, we're going to be people all the time. We're business people. That's what business people do. As long as we're going to take care and prioritize and tell you guys what you need to know. When I think it's.
19:44
David Rodnitzky
To just, I want to go back to the first investment bank you worked with that didn't work out, and you said basically they were too busy. In hindsight, were there any warning signs that you might have seen that they weren't going to be the right fit for you?
20:05
Jesse Pujji
I think chemistry with the person is really important. So I think that was one thing. Looking back, I don't think I had chemistry with the person. I want them to get me, and I get them, and there's an understanding and a relationship there. And even that relationship with them felt very transactional. I think that was part of it. I think there were probably a few signs early on during the courting process of rescheduling meetings or things that just felt a little unprofessional that could have, if we had our antenna up, we could have picked up on. And then I think very early into it, they had irate, MVP, like, mid level employee who was really standoffish and mean to us, almost like treated us, why am I here?
20:46
Jesse Pujji
And I think that much earlier in the process, we could have cut them, and before we even went to market, we could have snuffed it out if we had been paying attention to how she was behaving. Just asked them questions and gotten curious, like, why is she acting like this?
21:00
David Rodnitzky
That's good. That makes sense. You said the process with Tinuiti was very fast. What do you think drove that? Was it just mutual. Mutual excitement on both sides, or was there anything that the bank, you said the bankers just kept everyone moving, but is there anything in particular that sort of really drove the speed?
21:23
Jesse Pujji
I think there's this adage out there in the market, get to know people all the time. Don't make it the first time you've ever met them. I had met Zach multiple years. I'd met the folks at New Mountain. The partner on the deal is like kind of a mutual, we have lots of mutual friends. So him and I got to know each other so weren't an unknown commodity. And I think the other thing that's really valuable, this happened with Red Ventures, too, by the way. It's really, I think it's really interesting to meet people, show them where you are two or three years, and then in two or three years, they come back and they see that you did what you said you would do, or that you talked a big game, and they go back, wait, oh, did it actually happen or not?
21:57
Jesse Pujji
And so in both the case of Red Ventures and annuity, that versions of that had happened. I think in 2019, I met Zach and Kyle, and I was like, we're going to be this HoldCo, and I'm going to get. Stopping the CEO. We didn't know John of the time, but were like, we're going to do. And then we hadn't really talked to them in two or three years. And then they like, oh, all those things you said, wow, there's just so much credibility to doing what you say you will do, or even some version of it. So I think that just helped the process go think. I think John has a very good nose for people and knows for what he wants. And I don't think were not.
22:34
Jesse Pujji
I think the traditional board, we're not private equity owners, where we have our own LPs to solve for. We wanted the team to choose the thing that made sense for them. Like, within reason, obviously, if there was a 50% premium, we might have said, hey, John, let's go with this. But within ten to 20% premium or discount, were not putting pressure on John. We said, we want you to make the choice. Right. We want this to feel good for you guys. So was there a private equity guy who was offering a little bit more believe, but was John excited and signed up for that? No, he wasn't. So I think that's the other thing that led it. We were able to go fast because there wasn't a lot conflicting misalignment, basically, or conflicting sort of vantage points.
23:13
Jesse Pujji
And I think that was unique in our dynamic. I think that's not normal. Red Ventures, we had tapped out. Like, Red Ventures was going to make the same no matter what. So they said, do whatever. And it was really, did Nik and I want another million or two, or do we want John and the team to be happy? And so we chose John and team to be happy. So I think that also let us cut pretty aggressive to the chase.
23:34
David Rodnitzky
That makes sense. Were there any, you recall, like, any sticking points, any major sort of legal or negotiated terms that you sort of were as ones that there was a lot of back and forth discussion on between you and tenuity?
23:50
Jesse Pujji
Yeah, there were a handful that came up. I will say again, them and new mountain were incredible. Like, I've dealt with. When we sold off the lead gen division of Ampush, I dealt with a buyer who fucking reneged at every turn in the thing. And it was infuriating and frustrating. And then later on, they got the company embroiled in a lawsuit. That pulled us into a lawsuit. And I learned this really tough lesson of who you sell to is just as important as who you buy. Integrity matters. And I would say these guys were just high integrity. Red Ventures was like that, too. You can tell they hit on deadlines. An issue comes up, people hop on the phone, they solve for it. It's just a different.
24:24
Jesse Pujji
And these guys, everything that came up in that first time we sold the Legion business, these guys were terrible. Yeah, I get pissed off just thinking about it, but.
24:34
David Rodnitzky
Sorry, I'm ptsding you.
24:36
Jesse Pujji
No, they reneged a week before, okay? Our board said no. Anyway, I'm contrasting that because of how dishonest and scummy those people were relative to at every turn. These guys were awesome. One other interesting thing that came up, and I'll answer your specific question. I was joking, I think, with John and Nik, as we got towards the close, I'm like, the bankers and the lawyers, I'm like, this is a little bit of an off color analogy. I'm like. But I was like, does this remind you of the strip club? A little. Like, for us, this is like a once in a unique experience where we're going through this. And for them, this is just another day at the office. And so it was, one thing that's interesting with the bankers and the lawyers was I wasn't anticipating this.
25:12
Jesse Pujji
As soon as the deal got into LOI they kept coming to Nik and I as owners for everything. And John sort of, his role changed, and he picked the lawyers and the bankers. And so one learning I had in it was, next time, if I'm the majority owner, we need to pick the lawyers and bankers, because nothing wrong with them. But it was just a strange dynamic where he had chosen these people, and then as soon as it closed, all the authority sits with the actual ownership, and they're probably used to doing that in private equity deals and all these other things. In this case, it was like a weird founder thing. It just caused a very strange dynamic where John was really not involved at that point. He wasn't a formal owner, like a majority owner of the company.
25:47
Jesse Pujji
So that was just an interesting dynamic that we had to navigate around. And then in terms of things that came up, I think a non compete for me and Nik was really important to the buyer. And then for us, obviously, I'm 39, I plan on starting lots of companies and being in the world, so we don't have any intention to compete with them, or I don't want to start another tech enabled paid social agency. So we really had to massage the definition and carve out certain things and just get really clear with them on what would be okay and what wouldn't be okay. Visa vis competing with Ampush as a business. So that was a big one that came back and forth.
26:24
Jesse Pujji
There was a little bit of the holdbacks and stuff that went back and forth on a little bit, how much money to hold in escrow, how to deal with the balance sheet. That's kind of stuff we could talk about, if you're curious. What were some other big ones that went back and forth? Honestly, it was a pretty clean situation in terms of all the indemnifications and all that stuff. They're pros. They clearly are pros. They know how to do this. They know how to move through it. I think that the non compete was probably the moment, the one sticking out. The biggest that came up a lot was because we had been around so long, and because at one point we thought were a tech startup, and we had so many different forms of employee incentive compensation.
27:01
Jesse Pujji
And so we had stockholders, we had stock options. We had these things called sars, which are stock appreciation rights.
27:10
David Rodnitzky
Phantom Equity.
27:11
Jesse Pujji
Phantom Equity. We had bonus plan agreements with people based on the. We had all these things, and their lawyers were just nervous about that. And very unfamiliar from my story is they were unfamiliar with all these different way things and how to treat them. And so there was a ton of back and forth that we had to manage through. And then we also had this weird balance sheet thing because we own this other business. We had investments, so there was some messiness that we had to clean up there. So there was plenty on the list to handle. But those are some of the highlights.
27:41
David Rodnitzky
Yeah, that's great. When you were talking about non competes, I have a family member who named his company after himself. The company was his name, and he sold. He had an exit, and the non compete said, you can't compete in this business. And he tried to start a business, another business, using his name. And they said, no, your name is ours. We own it. You cannot operate under your own name anymore. And he couldn't make sense. He had a lot of.
28:09
Jesse Pujji
I guess I was a little sad. Ampush is the first two letters are our last names. Chris Amos, Jesse Pujji, Nik Shah. So I was a little sad to lose that, because it's been the name of a thing the three of us would do forever. But maybe they'll sell it back to us at some point to start, like, a VC or family office thing.
28:24
David Rodnitzky
I never registered the domain name rodnitsky.com because I thought, who would possibly want this? But it turns out there's a Brazilian law firm called rodnitzky.com. Go figure. I think I know the answer to this question, but did you have any remorse?
28:37
Jesse Pujji
Sellers?
28:37
David Rodnitzky
Remorse? Did you have any things of, oh, I wish, maybe I should have kept going at the business. Maybe we should have done it for ten more years. Anything like that?
28:50
Jesse Pujji
No. The week we sold, it was more emotional than I expected. There was a lot of sadness in just man, this is other than my marriage, it's like the thing I've worked on and concentrated on the most in my life. And I think that week, a lot of tears were shed. There was a lot of letting go of, wow, it really isn't ours anymore. I've been telling a lot of people, if you'd asked me pre selling it, I would have said, I'm fine. I told you that earlier. It's good. And then I realized after it was done, how much I was still holding, how much ram I had running in the background for it, even though I wasn't day to day on it. And I think getting that cleared was really powerful for me and valuable.
29:30
Jesse Pujji
There's another thing that happens, that all these people, all these former employees and clients, and all these congratulations, and that was so heartwarming, it really lifted me up, and it was like, wow, we did something. I think the last thing was just like I thought this when I was younger, and then I told myself it wasn't true, and I think it's more true. There is something different in your career as an entrepreneur, of saying, I am a successfully exited entrepreneur, not even about the money or whatever. There's something about it if people treat you differently and they're willing. So I think that has been a valuable career thing for me in the last year or so. People come to work for you. Hey, he's sold a company for tens of millions of. That's a real thing. He's done it.
30:10
Jesse Pujji
And even though I had a company running for so long that could have been sold, it just different than having done so, I wouldn't say there was any buyer's remorse. I think the remorse I felt when I left as CEO and started working on some of these new things in the venture studio, Gateway X, was like, I think I stayed as the CEO for Ampush too long, and I think I should have transitioned out sooner. And I think if I had I transitioned out sooner, I could have maybe actually built the HoldCo dream that I originally wanted. That's unrelated to the transaction, because as I got into this seat, where I wasn't encumbered by all the inertia of Ampush, that business, I've been able to create lots of interesting companies and do that, which is what I wanted to do.
30:50
Jesse Pujji
So I think there could have been a version where it looked more like Red Ventures over time, but I think I would have had to get out of that seat way earlier. But there was that thing with John. I was like, man, why didn't we have you doing this two years ago? And of course, Rick had told me to do that two years prior, and I didn't listen to him, but we should have done that.
31:06
David Rodnitzky
Yeah, no, I'm in the same boat. I think we saw our EBITDA go up many fold when we finally brought in a new CEO in, and I was probably a year beyond my shelf date, so to speak, running the company. I also think, though, going to seller's remorse, I think it sounds like you had some, but not much. But I think for a lot of people, I often tell people that selling your business is trading your identity and purpose for cash, and for a lot of people, that's a bad deal.
31:31
Jesse Pujji
Yeah, totally.
31:32
David Rodnitzky
You don't have a lot of cash, but now, suddenly, you don't know what your purpose in life is. I think that's somewhat what happened tony Shea. There's people like that where it's like, totally just never able to.
31:42
Jesse Pujji
Yeah, I think it can be. To me, the lesson may be a different lesson, though, which is try to find purpose and identity beyond your company.
31:51
David Rodnitzky
Yes, that, too.
31:54
Jesse Pujji
If you get too identified with your company, you're more than just a CEO and a founder. You're also probably a husband and a dad and a mom or whatever. And. Or you're a human and you're you. And there's more to you than that. And it is hard, don't get me wrong, but I've spent a lot of time with a coach and all this really trying to choose every day to do these things, not do them because they are who I am. There's a nuance there that I think is important. Yeah.
32:19
David Rodnitzky
And I think that I see this all the time. You used to be in Silicon Valley, so you know that entrepreneurs who have kids, there are going to be times when you have to sacrifice what's best for the company for your kids. And there are going to be some times where you would love to be at your kids recital and you have to go do something for the business. But you have to create a balance. If you go all in on the entrepreneurial side, you may have a successful business and you will also be divorced and your kids won't know your face. So that's not a good trade off.
32:46
Jesse Pujji
Totally. Yeah. That balance is super hard and super important.
32:49
David Rodnitzky
Yeah. So I want to just ask, also, just tell us what you're working on now, because I know you've had a great amount of success post Ampush and would just love to hear what your top businesses that you're currently working on are.
33:03
Jesse Pujji
Yeah. So you've known me a long time, and I'm an entrepreneurial guy. I got a lot of ideas. And I think for ten years, I had a lot of fun helping uber scale and grow and helping dollar shave club scale and grow. And I think some people do that and they're like, they got the media working and their business is working. They're happy and they're fine. I was like, damn, I want to work on other ideas. Look at all these cool ideas that we're scaling with customer acquisition. And so towards the end of my tenure, I started putting the pieces in my mind together of this idea of, we know this really critical skill set of customer acquisition. And then I really understand the challenges marketers have in general. These are two things I understand probably in top 5% in the world.
33:38
Jesse Pujji
What if I started a venture studio that could allow me to basically just take those insights and infuse them into different businesses that we then launch and we should have an unfair advantage in launching them. And that was the strategy thesis. And then the personal thesis was like, I love the entrepreneurial process and I love coaching and teaching others. So the studio model was great. I'm not going to be the CEO of any of these. I'm kind of chairman and co founder. I fund them, I give them the infrastructure, I teach. And then we have CEOs running each individual business. And so they've been a little bit all over the map, honestly. The first one is called growth assistant. And at Ampush we use offshore people as a part to help grow the business and scale it.
34:15
Jesse Pujji
And I kept getting ping from former employees going, hey, I'm working as the head of growth at such and such brand. Can I use the offshore team? I'm like, well, you can't use Ampush's, but is there nobody that does this? And the answer was no. And so went out and started this. It's intended for startups mostly in house, but also now agencies are using it too. We will get them really high quality offshore marketing talent at obviously a fraction of the cost. And they can have them do the daily reporting and design iterations and all the kind of work that sort of the US employees don't like doing. And it helps with employee retention a bunch. And it's gone from zero two and a half years ago to now 400 people in the Philippines across 125 customers.
34:51
Jesse Pujji
We launched a F to C brand called Unbloat. And over 10 million in ARR. We launched a d to C brand called Unbloat. We found that the term bloating is searched more often than erectile dysfunction. And we wanted to build something that would solve it. And also I wanted to prove that I was good enough at Facebook that I could even in the face of all these industry headwinds, I could launch a brand on Facebook. And it took us a little bit more time than I was expecting, but we're now at first order. Profitability, 3 million in sales. It's cash flow positive. It's right around EBITDA break even.
35:21
David Rodnitzky
Like, not intended to treat, cure or prevent any disease.
35:26
Jesse Pujji
Go to the website unbloat me. No, it actually works, dude. It's a good product. It's a very good product. And the problem is very real and it's similar to erectile dysfunction. It's a very emotionally challenging type problem for a woman who, especially a woman who feels bloated. We launched a SaaS business that tries to convert your kind of ecom experience into more like a TikTok and Instagram experience. And I think thesis is right there. But we haven't found the killer product. Like, we tried stories and that was okay. We're not kind of micro stores and landing pages, we're experimenting with that one. We launched another business that's a tech enabled consulting firm for private equity. I haven't told you about this one yet, David, but we go in and we will audit.
36:04
Jesse Pujji
If they're going to due diligence on a deal, we'll come in and audit all of the stuff that they're doing and how good they are at Facebook, how good they are at search. And then as a part of this, I started building a public persona on Twitter and LinkedIn in. And so that's where that one came from. And then as a part of this, I started building a public Persona on Twitter and LinkedIn in. And I really am passionate about this sort of concept of bootstrapping an ambitious company. Right? So there's always, I can be venture funded or I can be a mom and pop. But I think you and me and lots of other people go, no way. I can be profitable and grow to be a big business that's meaningful. How come nobody gives those people any resources or any knowledge?
36:38
Jesse Pujji
And so we're launching a content community business called Bootstrap giants that's going to have the courses and community to support people building profitable, ambitious companies. That one's called bootstrap giants. So that's the fifth. Yeah, it's really. It's a lot of fun. It's very energizing. It's not without its own challenges, of course, and we've already made a bazillion mistakes, but I'm having a blast. And I will say the agency orientation has helped me a lot because I'm really good at flexing in and flexing out of situations. And sometimes I have to go deep and I have to get really involved, and then other times I just don't talk to someone for two. And I was telling you at the top of the hour, that's what you do in an agency.
37:14
Jesse Pujji
You have all these important clients, you can't deal with all them all the time, and you learn how to flex in and out. I learned a lot watching Rick do it. He's probably the master, but I will. It's taught me a lot. Maybe there's a good twitter thread here, like what I learned for running a HoldCo. From running an agency for ten years, because I think it's very similar talent, super important. There's a lot of very similar learnings, I think.
37:34
David Rodnitzky
Yeah, I found that running an agency. I looked back at my choices in life. I was an editor of my college newspaper and then I went to law school and then I did an agency. But if you think about all these things, whether it's journalism, law agency, you have to be an expert at a lot of things. You have to be able to learn very quickly, become enough of an expert to make a decision and then learn whatever the next client that comes in. You have to be an expert in their business as well. I totally agree with that. That's a very diverse portfolio. I haven't heard private equity, loading seas and whatever the other. I already forgot one of your businesses. Oh, you're a bootstrapping giant. Sorry, that's the other one. Yeah, you're covering a lot of bases there. But you know what?
38:20
David Rodnitzky
I know that you have always been someone whose brain is operating about 50% faster than the average guy. I do remember when we first met when you were just out of Goldman and you were just going to conquer the world because you just didn't want to sleep. So I'm not surprised that you're having your second and third set of success. Congratulations.
38:38
Jesse Pujji
Thank you, David. Yeah, no, it's having a blast. I'm still ambitious, just maybe in a more patient way.
38:45
David Rodnitzky
That's the strength to strength book. Right? It's like when you're young you have raw brain power and when you're older you have wisdom them. So you're somewhere in between.
38:52
Jesse Pujji
Yep.
38:53
David Rodnitzky
Jesse, thank you for taking the time. It was really great to hear your story. And again, congratulations on all the successes. And we'll have to find a way to have you on for a third time to keep your crown. Most frequented guests on the show.
39:07
Jesse Pujji
I'm in. See you, David.
39:10
David Rodnitzky
Thank you.