In the past few weeks, dozens of reporters and conference organizers have reached out about Dwolla’s sale to NMI. Most have asked for an interview, a comment, or some kind of conference appearance. I’m grateful for every note.
I’ve either said no thank you, not responded, or pointed them toward someone else. The reason is pretty simple: I don’t think interviews or talks from me about the past are what best serve Dwolla, NMI, or the teams doing the work now. There is a difference between not wanting to talk about something and wanting the right people to be heard. The right people should be heard, and those people are the teams working on the companies and products clients use every day.
I was having dinner with friends last week, and one of them asked how I felt about it. It has been a common theme in texts and conversations over the past few weeks.
This is not the first company I’ve had the good fortune to be part of that had an exit. Depending on how you count my role, I think this is somewhere between four and seven. So I’m familiar with how these moments go. People often talk about an acquisition like it is an ending. Sometimes it is. But more often, it is a transition. A new chapter for an idea. No one knows exactly what the next chapter will become, but I’m excited to read it when it is written.
The idea, my friends, is to work on things with incredible people. If you do that well, the work can continue to grow with or without you.
When Dwolla recapitalized ~2016, I gave up control of the business. I knew exactly what I was doing, and I did it anyway in service of two things: the team and the idea. That was a decision I made, and a decision I internalized. I committed myself to it fully to the best of my ability.
I made that choice almost ten years ago. It has been part of my life every day since. It has shaped my marriage, my kids’ lives, and every other body of work I’ve engaged in since. There are no exceptions that I can think of.
In the wildly infinite number of possible outcomes for a company, team, and technology like Dwolla, this feels like a very good one to me. Money, a meaningful amount of it, flows directly back into the ecosystem. The idea continues. The teams spending most of their waking hours on the work get more resources, more access, and more room to accelerate.
That acceleration reflects an insane commitment to the cause from the teams at Dwolla and NMI. And let’s be serious for a minute: it also benefits their clients, and by association, all of the families everyone is working so hard for.
The reason I’m not doing the talks or interviews is not because I don’t care. I care a lot. I’m not doing them because the people who need to be heard right now are the leaders leading the teams and the product. The clients who are going to get more of what they need to accelerate their own businesses. The people still doing the work. Also as a client - I’m very grateful for that.
If you’re one of the folks out there looking for thoughts don’t call me. Call Skyler Nesheim. If you don’t know who he is, find him. If you want to know what it takes to make a project like this go the distance, call Alicia Eichmeier. There are so few things that actually matter in startups, but going the distance and leaving nothing on the table sure does.
I’ll also proactively apologize to Skyler and Alicia, both of whom would probably say they don’t need or want the mention. But they deserve it, and so much more. So do many others.
So how do I feel about it? I feel an enormous amount of excitement for the teams involved. They get to keep building what’s next. For people who build for a living, that is the real gift: continuing the journey with the right people, the right resources, and the chance to make the work even better.
I’m excited for what this will mean for them creatively, financially, and for their families. They don’t need to waste time on the past or thinking about what I think about it, we're all allowed to move on.
I’ve said it a hundred times, and I’ll say it again: congratulations to the teams involved. I am incredibly grateful to have had the experiences working on Dwolla in whatever capability I could alongside incredible people. Diana Wright had a great writeup to that point.
Cap tables, teams, and ideas evolve. Good things tend to evolve.
Go get ’em.