SOLD MY STARTUP FOR $780M:
THE GOOD, BAD & UGLY
👊🏻 In this episode, you will learn:
1) How Jack’s curiosity from a tender age carried him through as an entrepreneur
2) The value of an incubator – should you join one?
3) What it takes to get to product-market fit, and then scale
4) What it means to outgrow your startup, and what you can do
5) The harsh reality of a startup’s PR nightmare
About Jack Smith
Jack Smith is a serial entrepreneur, investor and advisor. Originally from England, he founded his first startup at 13 years old, studied at King’s College London, where he founded an incubator named IdeaBox and moved to San Francisco several years later, in 2011, to attend one of the best accelerators in the world (https://angelpad.com/).
With his idea Vungle, the leading mobile in-app video advertising platform, Which later sold to Blackstone in 2019 for $ 780 million (https://vungle.com). Jack also co-founded Shyp, which reached a peak of $ 250m valuation and then went to $0.
He sits on the board of COVA Acquisition Corp (https://covaacquisitioncorp.com/), (next to Austin Russell, the youngest self-made billionaire to date) and The Hustle (https://thehustle.co/), Which was acquired by HubSpot, Both companies are listed on the NYSE. He is an advisor to various startups (Survios, UJET, Coin (acquired by Fitbit), Intricately, Onfleet, RCI (acquired by Addepar), Ameelio) and most recently has helped shape The Prison Mathematics Project (https://www.prisonmathproject.org/), a non-profit which teaches maths to prisoners.
"As your company grows, I think you need to fire yourself..." @_jacksmith, co-founder, Vungle, that sold to Blackstone for $780M+
— Sarah Chen (@SarahChenGlobal) June 23, 2021
Jack shares how he outgrew his startup, some hard reflections incl. some of the common mistakes founders make: