John Levisay
Craftsy
Co-founded Craftsy in 2010 with Todd Tobin, Bret Hanna and others. The Denver company produces video tutorials on cooking, sewing and all sorts of crafting topics. Craftsy was acquired in May by Comcast Nbcuniversal for a reported $230 million.
On starting up
“When you start a company, there are really three potential outcomes. You build a company that stays private and becomes a kind of large private company or you go public or you sell the company. And we were always believers that all three of those outcomes are contingent on building a great company. So that was kind of always our focus. Find a need in the market, achieve a product market fit and delight customers. Build a loyal and avid customer base. That was our mantra and approach throughout the business.”
On deciding to exit
“We were not looking. We had not hired a banker. The business was not for sale. If you’d asked me a year ago where we would be in a year, this would not have been on my radar. I think that anytime you look at (a sale), you’ve got to evaluate that on a number of parameters. Is this what’s best for employees, what’s best for our investors and what’s best for our customers? When we began to have talks with NBCU, I was incredibly impressed with the people there, from an integrity perspective, a vision perspective and from a smarts perspective. The outcome was a good one for our investors and ultimately for the vision of the business and to grow the business.”
Advice to entrepreneurs
“We had this hypothesis that there was a market opportunity for quality content delivered in a new way. Once we began to get content in the market, we realized that some of the categories we thought people would want, they don’t necessarily want. But others, they definitely want. You can call it a pivot. You’ve got to listen to your customers no matter how early it is.”
What’s next?
“We (Levisay, Tobin and Hanna) have no intention of going anywhere. (NBCU) is expanding our reach and resources and bringing in new ways of thinking about things. It furthers our mission. This wasn’t like one of those situations where you see the founders selling a business and essentially immediately departing the business or signing an earn-out and just counting the days before you can leave. It’s just the opposite. All of us here are really excited about the future.”