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From 0 to $200M: Bootstrapped vs Private Equity CEO with Mark Drever

Key Takeaways:

In this episode of the Scale Up Valley podcast, Mark Drever, CEO of Accelerate Solutions, shares his entrepreneurial journey from bootstrapping a business to scaling it through private equity. He discusses the importance of mentorship, the transition from independent business to managing a private equity-backed company, and the critical inflection points in employee growth and leadership. Mark emphasizes the need for strategic planning when considering an exit and the differences between lifestyle and asset-based businesses. In this conversation, Mark Drever shares insights on the dynamics of building and selling businesses, emphasizing the differences between asset-based and lifestyle businesses. He discusses the importance of understanding buyer motivations, maintaining clean operations for easier sales, and the significance of choosing the right partners. Mark also reflects on his experiences with private equity, the necessity of reinvesting for growth, and the ongoing debate about remote work versus in-person collaboration. He concludes with personal advice for balancing career ambitions with life outside of work. Takeaways Mark Drever bootstrapped his business from zero to $50 million. The importance of mentorship in navigating business growth. Transitioning from independent business to private equity requires a shift in mindset. Employee growth brings complexity and necessitates leadership changes. Understanding the difference between lifestyle and asset-based businesses is crucial. Timing the exit is essential for maximizing business value. Creating generational wealth requires strategic planning and execution. Building a strong leadership team is vital for scaling a business. The significance of company culture in retaining talent. Sound Bites "All boats rise in a rising tide." "You always want to go out on top." "I worked that plan every day for 12 years." "PE wants you levered up and hungry." "Good things happen to good people." "Business is a team sport." "Show up early and often, stay late." "Don't let what you want get in the way." Chapters 00:00 Introduction to Mark Drever and Accelerate Solutions 02:23 Mark's Journey: From Bootstrapping to Major Growth 07:15 Transitioning from Independent Business to Private Equity 12:26 Navigating Employee Growth and Leadership Changes 17:55 Timing the Exit: Building an Asset-Based Business 24:02 Understanding Business Dynamics: Asset vs. Lifestyle 27:24 Navigating the Sale: Strategic vs. Private Equity 30:55 The Importance of Business Structure and Clean Operations 33:14 Choosing the Right Partners: Lessons Learned 35:17 Reinvesting for Growth: The Role of Private Equity 38:34 The Future of Work: Remote vs. In-Person Collaboration 42:43 Advice to My Younger Self: Balancing Career and Life

With Guest

Mark Drever

Released on

December 16, 2024

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It has been my pleasure and a deeply transformative experience to work with Mike Dias. Our entire organization has changed structure, direction, and focus to help us achieve phenomenal growth! Mike brings a truly curated and extensive executive coaching experience that I believe surpasses all other programs. He is precise and exacting in his feedback, balancing the delivery of critical and brutally honest advice with steadfast promotion and emotional intelligence. I highly recommend his services to those corporations serious about growth breakthroughs.

John Than

Founder, CEO of Appficiency inc.

I would highly recommend Scaleup Valley as a leadership coach for any company that wants to get in control of their OKRs or build an OKR structure. Mike Dias was incremental in the buildup of both the structure as well as running the cadences until the team was ready to take over. In the process Mike Dias served as sounding board to both me as CEO as well as coaching all members of the management team

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Chief Executive Officer @ Leapwork

I reached out to Mike because we wanted help to facilitate our strategy days. We ended up expanding that engagement because I realized, through Mike's help, that what we needed was to elevate our leadership team. Mike has tremendous inside into scaleups and I am really looking forward to continuing the partnership. Thank you Mike,

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Founder and CEO at 24Slides

Mike is a person who came into my life and taught me many things, both professionally and personally. Extremely intelligent, concerned with people's well-being, with a lot of experience in building and scaling companies, strategy and business. I had the pleasure of structuring a startup alongside him and his day-to-day participation made all the difference. With an open mind and great ideas, he made the construction seem easy. Dedicated, always open to listening, resolute and ready for all the challenges that life throws at us, it is a pleasure to have him as a friend and co- worker.

Julio Henrique Salina

CTO at 4all

I worked with Mike and I learned a lot from him. He is a great advisor and a very good coach. He is not only an effective leader, he builds enduring greatness through a paradoxical blend of personal humility and professional will. He knows how to make the difference between good and great. You always want and need Mike on your team!

Raúl González Martínez

VP of Engineering at Cobee

I worked closely with Mike for 1 1⁄2 years in scaling our management function and reporting. He was always very responsive and a great peer for testing ideas and getting recommendations on how to run the new team and future steps. Would definitely recommend working with him again.

Lasse Mejling

VP of Strategy & Finance at Leapwork

It has been great having Mike's advice on ForceManager. He always provides out of the ordinary insights, specially related to people and talent management, which is core for a company to scale up. Mike is persistent and patient to help get the organization and its strategy and team ready for the scale up phase.

Mònica Comalrena

COO at ForceManager

We have been collaborating with Mike since summer of 2022, and he has expertly guided the LMS365 executive team and leadership groups in our departments on how to better leverage the Objectives and Key Results framework (OKR). We use the OKRs to decompose the strategic steps we need to take across our organization, to effectively move us towards our big strategic ambition. Mike is a good, empathic and pragmatic leadership coach who combines solid knowledge of the OKR framework with experience from working with leadership coaching in many SaaS scale-ups. He is good at spotting the areas for improvement on each individual leader's level, and very clear and direct in how we can establish clarity of vision and world class execution. I can recommend Mike for both OKR executive group leadership coaching as well as OKR coaching on an individual leader level.

Flemming Goldbach

Product and Technology Leader

Mike has played the scaleup movie several times now. He is one of the few people on the planet that gets how CEOs feel, think and he really cares about you, the team and the business. He has the patience to listen and the courage to challenge our deeper beliefs. I have also been impressed by his flexibility and discipline of being able to play multiple roles simultaneously as CEO Advisor, Leadership Team Advisor/Coach, COO as a Service... The feedback from the Leadership Team about his impact was that his impact on them has been life changing. I strongly recommend Mike, if you want to have a "partner in crime" to scale your company.

Oscar Macia

CEO at ForceManager

I worked with Mike for the last 1.5 years. Mike is a superb consultant who always challenged the team and myself to be better with goals and outcome. The best thing about having Mike on the team is his outside in view about all objectives/goals and KRs. His rich experience of working with other companies gives you insights on how world class teams are doing things in the industry. Mike has a charming personality, it feels like talking to friends instead of a coworker. Mike always pushes you out of your comfort zone and keeps you on your toes which ultimately helps you in building a better company. I strongly recommend Mike as part of the management team due to his rich experience and the value he brings with his expert advice.

Praveen Kumar

VP Customer Experience

Mike es el coach ideal para cualquier compañía que quiera tener éxito en sus planes de crecimiento y expansión. No sólo es capaz de crear una nueva visión conjunta, sino que define los pasos de ejecución y seguimiento de una manera detallada y realizable. Además tiene habilidades personales que permiten alinear complejas relaciones personales dentro de los equipos de trabajo. Recomendaría a Mike a cualquier compañía que desee dar el siguiente paso para "Scaling up".

Agapito González Pujol

COO at WAM Global

We have worked with Mike during our growth journey. He has excelled as a great facilitator drawing on his vast experience with scale-up companies, and he has been an absolute pleasure to work with throughout our journey. More than happy to recommend Mike in the context of SaaS leadership teams.

Lars Vestergaard

CCO at LMS365

“It has been great having Mike's advice on ForceManager. He always provides out of the ordinary insights, specially related to people and talent management, which is core for a company to scale up. Mike is persistent and patient to help get the organization and its strategy and team ready for the scale up phase.”

Mònica Comalrena

COO, ForceManager

“We have worked with Mike during our growth journey. He has excelled as a great facilitator drawing on his vast experience with scale-up companies, and he has been an absolute pleasure to work with throughout our journey. More than happy to recommend Mike in the context of SaaS leadership teams”

Lars Vestergaard

CCO at LMS365

Lars Vestergaard

CCO at LMS365

Mònica Comalrena

COO, ForceManager

Lars Vestergaard

CCO at LMS365

Lars Vestergaard

CCO at LMS365

Lars Vestergaard

CCO at LMS365

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FAQs

Find out more about our frequently asked questions from our framework, our specialization, program duration, pricing structure and more.

What is your leadership framework?

It is the combination of team and individual coaching with three critical pillars to achieve scale and profitability:
1. Reverse Engineering Vision Narrative
2. OKRs
3. Meeting Cadence

Mike Dias scaled 18+ businesses to 100M+ and we are happy to disclose more about his framework. Please feel free to reach out. Have in mind that each coach only works with a maximum of 4 companies at a time. We are very selective.

How long is the coaching program?

We want to make our Leadership Teams independent and let them fly alone when they are ready. Usually the time to leave home is after 18-24 months. Though in some cases we are still involved on a quarterly basis for a longer period of time.

What is your success rate?

We are incredibly grateful to be able to have much better odds than the market. Only .04% of the businesses get to $100M. We have an average higher than 1 in each 2 companies we work with.

Do you offer coaching services?

Yes, when we believe in a CEO, we are happy to offer a tailor made solution of 1:1 Coaching, starting with a 2h workshop with coaching sessions every 14 days. This is very exclusive as our coaches have limited capacity.

What industries do you specialize in?

We have started in tech, more specifically, with SaaS and VC backed businesses. Today we have experience in tech (VC and non VC backed ventures) and we are sector agnostic as our methodology has been providing results to multiple clients in multiple industries. Recently we have expanded to HVAC as an example.

Can you help with fundraising?

We help you achieve the numbers of revenue and profitability that allow you to have interest from the best investor. Though we don’t provide those services. Happy to do informal intros to the companies we work with as we know them and we believe that they are investable.

What sets you apart?

We are at your side every single week, facilitating the weekly Executive meetings and having 1:1s with every single member of the Leadership Team. The majority share advice, but let you execute and go away. We are there to be accountable for the financial results with you.

What is your pricing model?

Our Premium ScaleUp Program starts at $30k per quarter and we expect to work together for at least 4-6 quarters. We are happy to have the option to decide if we want to continue until the end of the first 90 days.

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