For those that weren’t aware, Aline became a part of Yard Group in October last year after working together for the previous few months and sharing the vision to get every organisation thinking and acting on the emissions created by their digital operations.
It’s been a few months now and the dust has begun to settle so I think it’s worth reflecting on this and sharing my journey as this is the first time I’d ever sold a business or brand that I’d made and hopefully there’s something useful for someone, if not it’s still good to get this out there to reflect on.
This whole journey started back in February 2021 when I first started Aline. Aline started off the back of a design studio I cofounded called generate space and was a way to for me to branch out and start looking at other aspects of digital sustainability outside of websites. After delivering a few webinars and making some noise, I landed Yard as a client in June.
We hit it off almost instantly, delivering a webinar to the leadership team and started working together on their new website. Working with future selves, we delivered a website that had a massive 97% lower emissions than their previous website and it was at this point we spoke about Aline being acquired and being a permanent part of the Yard team.
The decision
Initially, I was shocked by this with Aline being very new still so I had to way up the decision.
There are plenty of positives, such as security and having a huge amount of additional resources that included having someone else chase invoices (which I hated). These are what I focused on and what made my decision for me in the end as I’ve got a small family and having those would mean more time being able to work on what I’m actually good at.
The process
The process itself of fairly painless.
An APA was drawn up, negotations made and contracts signed. It was all over in a flash. Solicitors got involved to double check the purchase agreement and didn’t anything untoward so was a very quick process.
The aftermath
Not really much to say here.
I was introduced to the rest of the team, some of whom attended a webinar I delivered and rest is history.
I must admit, looking back, that the timing was somewhat favourable (if that’s the right term) as we unfortunately lost my mother-in-law at the end of that November which meant I couldn’t work for a little while so I could support my family more.
If you didn’t sell back then, would you sell now?
This bit has been written in 2023
I’ve recently had conversations with other business owners in the surrounding industries such as training or product development, this question has come up a few times so thought I’d reflect on the answer I gave.
Yes, I would sell now if I hadn’t back then. The reasons are the same as I explained before; resources from a bigger business and as soon as the acquisition happened I was all of a sudden put in front of much larger organisations than I’d ever dealt with before as at that moment I’d stopped being a one man band.
The security and support from the leadership has been brilliant too and I’ve learnt a great deal from working with them that I hope will help me much more in the future which, for now, will be spent working at Aline.