Catch of the Decade

CHAPTER 6Catch us if you can

When we started Catchoftheday we were content to go it alone and we weren't actually looking for an investor. We had built a good‐looking business, won a bunch of awards and shown enough entrepreneurial talent for people to become interested in us. By early 2010, we'd started receiving a lot of interest from local and international venture capitalists, private and public companies, high net worth families and wealthy individuals. Companies such as Insight Venture Partners, Sequoia, Yahoo7, Level Equity, Bessemer, Intel Capital and others lined up to court us, valuing our business at $50 million one day, $80 million a month later. Wait! Do I hear $120 million? Is $150 million your final offer? Going, going … It was going nuts. We dated a lot of suitors. It was an honour to be invited for lunches and coffees with some very influential parties that we had only read about in magazines.

However, as the meetings progressed, we became more confused about why we were on the investor dating market in the first place. Our business was quite profitable, and we had the funds required for our projected growth. What were we actually wanting?

Still, we kept our minds open and were flattered that this little business, which had started just five years earlier, was now being courted by companies that had invested in Facebook, Apple and other unicorns. The upshot? We turned them all down and waited for our Prince Charming to arrive.

To be honest, despite the fact ...