It’s been a while since I’ve posted. For those of you who enjoy following along, I’m sorry for the delay. In any case, here’s a brief update on what’s happened in the past year or so…and what’s happening now.
On Exeq
At the end of 2018, the writing was on the wall for Exeq. While we had solid product traction and usage, a couple of things were happening in the market that changed the investment landscape. Goldman Sachs was entering consumer fintech in a real way: they had just acquired Clarity Money (folding them into Marcus) and they were the banking partner behind Apple’s soon-to-be-launched Apple Card.
With Goldman and Apple both entering the fray, we knew that CAC was only going to rise, product differentiation would only get slimmer, and that to compete you needed bottomless pockets.
Serendipitously, we had recently brought on a pilot partner on the B2B side of our business. There was immediate alignment around what we were doing, and acquisition talks began in earnest November of 2018. We canceled our plans for raising another round of funding and pursued the acquisition with the full support of our board.
As anyone knows, acquisitions are rarely closed quickly (if at all!), but long story short, this one did close in Q1 of 2019.
On Flagship
Flagship was, and remains, a very exciting company in the hospitality and retail world. As an umbrella brand over solid brands in the Northeast, they’re building really engaging businesses around food, fitness, and wellness.
I joined Flagship initially as CTO, but we later realized a more appropriate title would be Chief Strategy Officer, primarily tasked with helping to guide decision-making, digitizing the business, and implementing an overarching strategy around the CEO’s vision.
While we both knew from the outset that the relationship was likely short-lived (having operated in and having come from two different worlds), I’m thankful for my time there. I’m grateful for the learnings and friendships made there, and can only hope that the impact that I and the Exeq team had there is even longer-lived than our tenure.
What’s Next?
Currently, the family and I are in back in the San Francisco Bay Area through the end of March before heading to a new city: the City of Angels, Los Angeles.
I’ve started a new company that I couldn’t be more excited about, one that has a genuine shot at being legacy-defining.
I’ll give the full story in the next post.