What Nobody Tells You About Selling Your Company
Justin Vandehey co-founded Disco with his brother Jeremy, built it for six and a half years, and sold it to Culture Amp in 2020. The wire hit while he was standing in his kitchen making dinner with his wife. His wife threw her arms around him. It was the best moment of the whole thing.
It lasted about a day. The next morning, he was setting up a new laptop and wondering what his job was. This conversation is about everything that happened after that, which is the part almost nobody talks about publicly.
What You'll Hear
The Win Lasts One Day
Justin describes the exact moment the first wire landed and the relief that came with it. Then he describes the morning after. If you have spent years pointing at a single outcome, listen to what he says about how quickly that outcome stops meaning anything.
Nobody Outside Your House Cares
He expected the exit to change how his community saw him. His identity. His standing. It did not. He is blunt about what that realization forced him to confront about why he takes risks in the first place.
Your Body Keeps Score
Three weeks of all nighters through diligence, and then his body simply shut down for a week. No trip, no celebration. He binge watched Succession on the floor. Then came the part he did not see coming, which was months of real sadness about giving up the thing he built.
Turning Down a Fair Term Sheet
They had a Series A term sheet in hand. Fair terms, no games. They walked away. The question that decided it had nothing to do with valuation and everything to do with whether they honestly believed they could return that money.
It's Okay to Just Want to Build
After the acquisition, Justin measured himself against a version of success he never chose. He tried filling the space with four instruments and an Ironman. What finally worked was accepting who he actually is, which sent him back to building with his brother.
Episode Timestamps
00:00 Exit Wire Hits Home
02:42 Fleeting Win Reality Check
05:28 Body Shutdown After Exit
07:09 Post-Exit Loss and Purpose
09:28 Why He Started Disco
25:25 Ignoring the HR Naysayers
39:22 Platform Risk Reality
41:58 Turning Down Series A
45:43 Life After Acquisition
51:06 Overcoming Imposter Syndrome
52:41 Leaving Wasn't His Choice
56:18 Starting Thread With Brother
01:00:41 Family Balance And Drive
01:05:27 What The Journey Taught
About Justin Vandehey
Justin is the co-founder of Thread, an AI native product that solves the handoff between sales and customer delivery. Before Thread he co-founded Disco with his brother Jeremy, a Slack based employee recognition platform that Culture Amp acquired in 2020. He spent the following years at Culture Amp leading revenue enablement and then global partnerships, and earlier in his career was a product manager at Intuit and the first commercial hire at Nomi.
Connect with Justin Vandehey:
Thread app: https://www.thread.app/
Thread Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-thread-podcast/id1620798384
