Thoughts on our startup, GetViable, being acquired by Bigcolors

Wow! 18 August was an Awesome day. We announced that the startup Dougal Edwards and I built over the last few years was acquired by Bigcolors, a Hong Kong based crowdfunding / investment company. And we got crunched on TechCrunch ;-)
I’m pleased with the result for a few reasons:

• We started GetViable to help founders get started on their startup journey. It’s tough and startups spend the first few months finding out where the hell to start and what to do. Over time, pivots, despair and iterations, we crafted GetViable by learning from TC, Dave McClure, Ash Muraya’s Running Lean, Eric Ries Lean Startup, Steve Blank, Paul Graham and Guy Kawasaki. More importantly, we worked with hundreds of founders at all stages, ages and experience.
• We took a shot at helping ‘the other 99%’ to get access to information outside the established startup ecosystems. That feels good. Not great, because the problem is still huge and not solved, but a start nonetheless.
• We pitched GetViable in Silicon Valley and got some brutal, helpful and honest advice.
• We exited to a Chinese (Hong Kong) based investor. The future in action.
• GetViable allowed me to live, breathe and experience the startup world. Not the wannabe startup for the sake of a startup world, but the brave souls putting their stuff on the line and doing it the hard way.
• James and Jackie from Bigcolors are awesome people. Hearts and heads in the right place. The GetViable technology has found a good home to continue the mission.
• Thanks to Kim for love and strength during the long and all consuming journey, Dougal for wingman duties, Nesha from Kolosek in Serbia, Chhavi in India, all out offshore partners, the awesome Australian Startup Community, York Butter Factory, Lean Startup Melbourne, Inspire9, RMIT, our first customer The University of Melbourne, Scott Julian, Leni Mayo, Adrian Stone, Advance Innovate Program & over 2000 founders in 32 countries…

Here are some quotes from the acquisition:

BigColors Acquires GetViable To Offer More Resources To Asia-Pacific And U.S. Startups — Techcrunch

As part of the deal, Bigcolors will acquire GetViable’s entire business, including its technology platform and user base. Jackie Lam, Bigcolors’ COO, told TechCrunch that Bigcolors will integrate GetViable’s platform over the next several months.

Bigcolors invests in early-stage startups through its crowdfunding platforms, which allows investors to trade options in companies, as well as the Bigcolors Seed Fund. GetViable was founded in 2012 and has worked with over 2,000 founders.

“GetViable is a comprehensive toolkit of different processes, different methodologies, specifically tailored to startups, like how to write a stakeholder plan to who your customers are, are they direct, indirect. There are business planning checklists that will help you, all the way through to thinking of how to create your [minimum viable product],” says Lam.

“It’s a lot of tools like that which founders think they can do already or do already. Certainly the picture we’ve seen to date is that some of them really at the start give us a ‘wow’ feeling and others we think, good idea, but the pitch has not been structured properly or the idea has not been presented in an investable way. So the tools GetViable offers can help these startups along the way.”

StartupSmart

The pair first were introduced to the Hong Kong-based co-founders of Bigcolors, James Giancotti and Jackie Lam early last year. Barry and Dougal kept in touch with the Bigcolor founders as they were very interested in their crowdfunding model. Recently, Giancotti and Lam reached out again to the pair and expressed interest in acquiring the technology and integrating it into their own platform.

On the acquisition, Barry said, “We see this as a great result, because of the reach that Bigcolors have we know that our mission around helping startups all over the globe to grow and flourish will be continued”. The GetViable website will stay live for a couple of weeks whilst they transition their customers over to the Bigcolours platform.

On a final note, Edwards added, “We must give a shout out to the Melbourne startup community in particular such as the team at York Butter Factory, and other investors and startups in this eco-system, they have been extremely supportive of what we have been doing since we started working on the business in 2012.” — Startup Smart

Bigcolors Announcement

Jackie Lam, Co-Founder and COO of Bigcolors says, “We believe that founders should have all the right tools to give their startups the best chance of success and make their business case more compelling to investors”.
“GetViable’s offering complements Bigcolors’ approach of investing in early stage startups. GetViable’s proven idea process encourages startups to consider the entire lifecycle of a startup, and develop a clear and structured business plan and investor toolkit”.

Leslie Barry, Co-founder of GetViable said, “GetViable sees this as the perfect outcome to realize our vision of helping startup founders learn how to build ideas faster with the right resources, wherever they are in the world. With offices in Hong Kong, Australia, and the US, we are excited that this mission will continue with Bigcolors.”

Dougal Edwards, Co-founder of GetViable said, “We knew from experience just how hard it can be to build a successful startup and decided it was time for this to change. We started GetViable to make it easy for anyone to iterate from idea-to-startup as affordably and quickly as possible. We’ve found a great partner in Bigcolors who shares this vision and has the ability to build on what we’ve started.” — Bigcolors announcement

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