The best Christmas present I got this year was seeing Voisey post almost £30 Million pounds in pre-tax profit to the year ending December 2020, which was the year in which we sold the business to Snapchat.
The world of angel investment isn't always smooth, easy, or straight forward but when you see outcomes like this it makes all the sleepless nights, the stress and the difficult negotiations worthwhile!
Tech companies are great at playing the long game, often being willing to bank roll investments for many, many years until they expect - or hope - to see a positive ROI on the balance sheet, so it is personally very rewarding for me to see Snapchat already enjoying a positive return on their investment.
When we were negotiating the deal with Evan Speigel I knew that he was the right man to develop and grow Voisey, I was confident that our co-founders would be looked after well as they moved into the Snap Inc. family, as part of the deal, and I was happy that we had created a win win situation, which simply equates to a great result for everyone.
So this recent posting of almost £30 million pound profit just goes to show what a great acquisition it was for Evan and Snapchat and what a great business they have acquired. Angel investment is sometimes a strange world because you craft, build and nurture something that you then must let go of in order for it to flourish - so when the result of the hard work has such positive outcomes it's a real validation for a job well done.
Another unexpected and unplanned win were the learnings and lessons from this sale - this was not the biggest deal that I have ever been involved with but it was definitely, by far, the fastest. 18 months from an idea on a napkin to an exit to one of the world's leading social media companies - it was definitely a whirlwind that I'll share more about in a future blog.
Anyway, Merry Christmas from me and mine to you and yours.