Welcome back to StartUp.Club’s September issue! You’re about to learn how I lost $130 million by the age of 30. If you haven’t already, make sure you subscribe and join the 1 million+ entrepreneurs in this community. 👇

In this newsletter you’ll find:

• 📅 Listen to Today’s Clubhouse Talk

• ✏️ Losing $130 Million by the Age of 30

• 📈 2024’s Time to Sell Index Score [TTSI]

• 🚨 Big Start. Scale. Exit. Repeat. News!

• ✅ Hire Complements, Not Clones [Free GPT Access]

• 📢 This Month’s Clubhouse Guest Lineup

Estimated Read Time: 6 minutes 57 seconds

Don’t forget to forward this newsletter to a fellow entrepreneur.

TODAY’S CLUBHOUSE 👇

Join us September 6th at 2pm ET for The “ART” of Starting from Nothing with Founder of the Art of Shaving, Eric Malka

What you’ll learn:

• The key strategies Eric Malka used to build a successful brand from scratch.

• Understand the importance of passion and resilience in entrepreneurship.

• Discover practical steps to transform an idea into a profitable business.

😱 I LOST $130 MILLION BY THE AGE OF 30…

Yes, that is one of my claims to fame—building a great company only to bungle it on exit.

After spending 10 years building the company, it only took 10 weeks to blow it up through a merger.

We traded our freely trading shares for stock in a merger that gave us 40% of the new combined entity, which came with an 18-month hold.

We bet it all.

But what could go wrong?

Initially, it worked out well.

The joint entity applied for a wireless license covering most of Canada, and the stock soared.

It surpassed a billion-dollar valuation, driving our stock up to a high of $19.

In March 2000, a judge announced the breakup of Microsoft, and the Nasdaq dropped from 5000 to 4000.

The CEO appointed by the 60% majority decided to pull the $50 million offering to allow the market to recover.

Unfortunately, the market hit a low of 1200 and didn’t recover for 15 years.

The music had stopped, and there just weren’t enough chairs to go around.

The dot-com crash, combined with the hold on my stock, drove that $19 share price down to 6 cents a share.

Not only did I lose 95% of my wealth, but over a dozen employees who were multimillionaires on paper lost it all as well.

To this day, I feel the pain of those I let down as their leader.

Without this story, the book Start. Scale. Exit. Repeat. would never have been written.

Bad things do happen.

We saw it again in 2022 with the crypto crash and tech wreck, where e-commerce companies collapsed in value.

In retrospect, the book should have been titled “Start. Scale. Exit. Take Some Money Off the Table. Repeat.”

Following this collapse, my partners and I went on to build and sell several 8- and 9-figure companies, including selling Hostopia (TSX: H) one month before the Lehman collapse, .Club before the 2022 tech wreck, and GeeksforLess before the Ukraine war.

Timing is half the value.

This is why Startup Club is announcing the Time to Sell Index (TTSI) today.

Based on empirical data discussed in the book, this index is a non-real estate index and, like all indexes, is just an indicator. It helps determine whether we are in a buyer’s or seller’s market.

For starters, we will analyze the last 3 trough to peak periods and take the average to determine the percentage of IPOs at the bottom to the top.

Based on the estimated # of IPOs in 2024 (180) the # IPOs need to hit 154 X 566.97 needs to hit 873 IPOs for a strong sellers market and 435 IPOs to hit a balanced market.

Of course there are other factors at play such as lower interest rates allowing for more affordable acquisitions, private equity deals and venture capital funding.

Lastly, even when the market for IPOs recovers there tends to be a 6-12 month lag before smaller business experience the rise in valuation multiples.

The Formula:

Time to Sell Index – Strong Buyers Market –> 3.6 out of 100.

Yeah it doesn’t get worse than that.

Now is not the time to be selling. It’s time to be buying or building.

Enjoy the rest of the newsletter.

— Colin C. Campbell

🚨 FIND START. SCALE. EXIT. REPEAT. IN AIRPORTS

Start. Scale. Exit. Repeat. can now be found in US airports! 🛫 

Pick up your copy of Start. Scale. Exit. Repeat. at:

Hudson Paperback Table

WH Smith Forbes Shelf 

Not heading to the airport anytime soon?

No problem.

Order your paperback copy on Amazon here → Start. Scale. Exit. Repeat.

🛑 HIRE COMPLEMENTS, NOT CLONES

Hire people for your startup who are different than you.

Too many times I see entrepreneurs getting together and launching a business.

Fact is, it comes together by accident and sometimes you have a partnership that works because they're different.

I'll give you an example...

I invested in a company and they had five founders in the company.

The company grew to 12 million in e commerce sales and within two years had gone bankrupt.

How did it happen?

I’ll explain here👇

Finding the right personalities for your startup is crucial.

And that’s why I created this 100% free Personality Profile Quiz GPT

Check it out and let me know what you think.

📅 THIS MONTH’S ON CLUBHOUSE

September 13th at 2pm ET -  Founders Personality Workshop on Entre

• Discover how understanding your personality type can be a game-changer in building the perfect team as an early-stage founder.

• How can self-awareness guide you in identifying complementary skills, improving team dynamics, and making smarter hiring decisions that will drive your startup’s success?

September 20th at 2pm ET - Noah Rosenfarb, CPA to the .5%

• Discover the financial strategies used by high-net-worth individuals to build and protect wealth.

• Understand the unique challenges and opportunities faced by the ultra-wealthy.

• Learn how to leverage advanced tax planning techniques for significant savings.

Sept 27th at 2pm ET - Timing The Sale of Your Company

• When's the right time to sell? 

• How can I prepare my business for a successful sale?

Oct. 4th at 2pm ET- The Journey to Startup Success with Patrick Thean

• Learn from Patrick Thean’s experiences in coaching startups to success.

• Understand the critical milestones and challenges in the startup journey.

• Discover practical tools and frameworks to accelerate your startup’s growth.

🚀 SUPPORTING STARTUP.CLUB

Thank you for reading along for another issue of the StartUp Club newsletter! I hope you genuinely look forward to opening the StartUp.Club newsletter every week. You can further support StartUp.Club by:

1. Sharing it with a friend or fellow entrepreneur!

2. Responding to this email and letting me know what you think. We love feedback around here! What do you want to see more of? What are you not interested in?

3. Picking up your copy of Start. Scale. Exit. Repeat.

And if you made it this far, thank you for reading.

I hope you enjoyed this edition of the StartUp.Club Newsletter!

Have a topic you’d like me to dive into? Reply back to this email and I’ll see what we can do.

Colin C. Campbell