Calm Company Express

You’re a founder with ~95% of your net worth in a software business that you built from nothing and defied all odds to get to millions a year in revenue. Amazing! You’re proud of what you’ve accomplished and optimistic about the future of the company, but wow is it stressful having so much risk in one business. At the same time, you’re wondering if you have the team and strategy to transition from a scrappy upstart to a professionalized operation.

We’ve been there. Sometimes the best way to stay focused on the long-term is to take some risk off the table.

Calm Company Express is our attempt to try to solve this pain point.

Who is it for?

Founders of software businesses that are:

• Mostly founder-owned: outside investors collectively own 0%-20% of the company.
• $1m – $20m Annual Recurring Revenue
• At break-even, near it, or preferably profitable
• B2B SaaS is our center of gravity, but similar business models could work

What is it?

Calm Company Express will offer to buy 5-15% of the company

• 5-10x ARR valuation depending on good core metrics (e.g., growth, churn, etc.)¹
• Founders can take as much of the cash as they want “off the table” in a secondary.
• Can be structured as a SAFE, equity, or Shared Earnings Agreement (we’ll discuss it)
• BS-free, hassle-free, a true "by founders, for founders" process.

Who is it NOT for?

Well, it’s not for everybody. We’re not trying to make this offer available or attractive to literally every founder or business out there, but we think there are quite a few founders who’ll find this to be a good win-win deal. If it doesn’t look interesting to you, no problemo ✌

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What else do you get?

We are constantly meeting founders at this stage of the business struggling to figure out strategies for the next phase of the business: metrics-driven marketing, professionalizing a sales team, attracting and retaining top product talent, and generally scaling your organization to 10x your ARR.

We’ll pull from the core Calm Company Fund mentors and investors, plus some new folks to be announced, to help you get to the next level.

Interested?

Candidly this is an experiment for us born out of hearing demand for it from entrepreneurs in our portfolio and network. So there are a lot of small details to be filled in, but the crux of it really is as simple as it sounds. Our goal is to minimize the amount of founders’ time that we need to get to a decision, but we can’t yet promise an ultra-fast turnaround time as this is a bit of an experiment.

PS - if you're interested in investing in this product, fill out the form here.

1. To be clear, we’re not saying every business merits this valuation. This is just our target and contingent on strong business metrics.