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As an insatiable kid, Ander Michelena, originally born in Spain, intuitively knew he was destined for the entrepreneurial journey. Although he kicked off his career in finance at Morgan Stanley in London, specifically focused on merger, acquisitions and IPOs of European financial institutions, his vision was always to create a high-growth business.

During his time at Morgan Stanley, Ander actively looked for proven business models in the US that were not available yet in Europe or LATAM and stumbled upon Stubhub, a successful technology platform that sold tickets online. A lightbulb went off for Ander. He saw that if he could successfully replicate Stubhub’s model in Europe to start, he could potentially build a valuable business.

Fast forward 7 years, Ander not only cofounder (with Jon Uriarte) Ticketbis but had scaled it to 300 employees in 48 countries with a total annual gross merchandise volume of $100 Million. In 2016, Ticketbis, after a 12-month due diligence process and a two-year courtship, inked an acquisition deal with Ebay for €165 Million (at the time the transaction came out to be close to $200 Million USD given currency conversion). The best part, Ander had 2 weeks left of runway (cash in the bank). Knowing the lucrative deal was underway, he refused to raise capital to avoid further equity dilution. Luckily the transaction closed, but it was risky given how long the process took.

Tune in to listen to the grueling process Ander went through to make this acquisition happen.

In this episode you will learn about:

• • • First-time founder experiences
    • Startup growth strategies
    • Raising capital
    • Runway challenges
    • International expansion
    • Scaling operations
    • Selling companies
    • Acquisition strategies
    • Post-acquisition transition
    • Leadership mistakes and lessons

 

Ander Michelena Llorente : Graduated in Business Administration and Finance in the Universidad Pontifica de Comillas ICADE (Madrid). He start his career in Morgan Stanley London, where he specialized in merger, acquisitions and IPOs of European financial institutions. In 2009 he left the Bank to create Ticketbis.com, a market where fans can buy or sell tickets, with his partner Jon Uriarte.

In 2014, Ticketbis became the leader in South Europe and Latam with presence in 30+ countries and over 300 employees in 14 offices around the word with revenues of Eur 60m. Ticketbis has recently started operations in Asia with a special focus on the Japonese market throught Ticketbis Japan

After the acquisition of Ticketbis for $165 Million, Ander launched the VC fund All Iron Ventures.

Connect with Ander Michelena:

• Website
• Twitter
• Linkedin

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Full Transcription:

Ander:  My momma actually say, oh, you were good, but. She always had this but, but you’re didn’t stop. I was a kid. I was constantly moving, constantly doing things.

Tanya:  That’s Ander Michelena, who founded and sold Ticketbis, the ticket sales platform for Europe, Asia, and Latin America to eBay for 165 million euros. At the time of sale, Ticketbis had over 400 employees worldwide and had only raised 26 million in funding. Now dedicated to venture investing, Ander is the founding partner at All Iron Ventures with an expertise in helping their portfolio companies expand internationally.

Ander:  It’s funny now because [01:15] space for it and actually, my kid, I have a 2-year-old, and my mom said he’s a copy of you. He does this.

Tanya: Oh, really?

Ander:  Yeah, he is. He good at things, super funny, moving. He’s awesome. He’s super [01:29] in that he does this stop. My mom always compare it to what I was. I have a small version of myself, at least on that sense, and also, I know what she meant now.

Tanya:  That’s amazing. What did you not stop with? Was it sports? Was it video games, projects, reading?

Ander:  When I was very small, it was just very nervous kid, just moving a lot, doing a lot of things, playing, etc. I always liked the games. At sports, I always played tennis, football, ski. I did golf. I did a bunch of things. I was always on the move, so it was a mix. I couldn’t be sitting in a place doing nothing. That was not for me. It has never been for me, and it’s still not for me right now. It’s the same. I cannot, and I will jump into that later.

For example, when we sold the company, we probably decided just to stop doing anything and go and relax on the beach and stay there and have the money invested somewhere. You got a good return and do nothing. Man, I cannot do that. It’s too boring for me. I need to do something. That’s the story of my life it seems.

Tanya:  It very common with entrepreneurs. It’s like there’s a fire burning inside, and you just have to apply that energy and channel it into something, which is amazing.

Ander:  I become crazy.

Tanya:  Of course, and so how did you go – thinking about your entrepreneurial journey and transitioning into that, how did you go from an analyst at Morgan Stanley to the founder of Ticketbis and really running that for seven years?

Ander:  That’s very funny. Basically, since I wasn’t – I always wanted to start my own company. I decided that in university I wasn’t ready to start a company. I think there is few success of people who actually have been in university have done their great company. [03:22] is one of them, of course, but there’s a lot of people who actually don’t have enough experience. I think your chance of success without finishing university, without having some work experience I think is much more limited, my point of view. That’s what I thought when I was in university, and I thought, look, another time. Finish university. Then I’m going to work somewhere for some time, and then I will give it a try.

That’s what I did, and also, I needed to decide what to do. She wasn’t my wife then. I married her after – two years after that. My fiancé was like I want to go to London to study law. I said perfect. Let me go there. Let me go do Morgan. I have an offer from Morgan Stanley, from McKinsey, from other banks, and I was like, okay, I’m going to take this right now. I’m going to go to London. We stayed there for two, three years, and then we’re going to come back and probably master something. I have this idea clear in my mind already before joining the bank.

Tanya:  Wow! How did you know you wanted to start a company? Not everybody wakes up and thinks that they want to do that.

Ander:  That’s a good question because I don’t have – funny enough, I don’t have entrepreneurs in my family. My dad worked for a bank. My mom is a nurse. There is not really a figure of entrepreneurship in my family. I don’t know. I think this has to do with the kid that I was, that I always needed to do something. I wanted to have the feeling that I was not only working for somebody else. I wanted to do something for myself. I saw that it was something that I needed to do, but I don’t have experience with. At this moment of my life, they will say this is why I decided to start a company. No, really, I think it was more the – it made the fact that I was and I knew it was something that I wanted to try.

Tanya:  Interesting, so almost intuitively you knew that that was for you.

Ander:  Yeah, I will say that, yeah.

Tanya:  Yeah, that’s amazing. What were some of the – before the amazing success that you experienced with Ticketbis or even during Ticketbis, what were some of the failures that you had to go through in order to develop your muscle and your muscle for risk taking?

Ander:  When I enter Morgan Stanley, in the first year, it was hard as hell, right? I knew where I was going. I was going to investment banking, going to the financial institution group. It was just under – I worked there from 2006, 2009 so on the peak of the craziness, and then, all of a sudden, when everything fell. You can imagine the amount of pressure that it was. In my life, I’ve always been one number, top two or three in everything in the classes that I had in my school, university as well, number one and number two in the career. When I arrived to Morgan Stanley, the first year I wasn’t one of the best ones. Yeah, I’m on the top 20%, but I wasn’t number one or number two.

That’s not failure by any means, but it was like, whoa, a check of reality. Okay, you cannot be the best at absolutely everything, right? That it’s always somebody who got to be better than your or something. Somebody’s going to do something different. That was another shock of reality, of humility that was – I think it was self – well, actually, it was very helpful to see that work out. There is a lot of competition and a lot of people who want the same thing, many things, a lot of intelligent people in this world. That was a good shock of humility, my first one, I will say, in Morgan Stanley.

Tanya:  What would be your second?

Ander:  The second is I actually – when I was looking at this model – before we created Ticketbis, I was looking at creating this company. I will look at different ideas. I was doing it with a guy that I knew from university. Both of us always talk of we need to start something together. He was working at Morgan – I’m sorry, at McKinsey at the time. We’re looking at different models and a license.

Funny enough, this person, he wanted to quit – he was looking with me at some product, but he was also looking with somebody else on other product. The product that he was looking with somebody else actually started running quickly, and they race. They have almost a grand race, and he said, look, I cannot – this is going on. This is happening. I cannot say no. You have to understand it. I need to go on this break.

Tanya:  You didn’t know when he – that he had these two initiatives going on at the same time?

Ander:  I knew. He was totally honest with me, but what I was expecting, you all would expect, no, the product that you are doing work is – that the work was going to work better or faster, etc. I will get with him different ideas. At the end, well, he has this other product and, actually, they got the finance. He said, look, I need to go with this. I need to do this. I totally understand it, and I’m still a very, very good friend with him. He’s actually the founder of [08:29], who is a very successful company, recruiting company as well, one of the founders. 

He decided to do that, and all of a sudden, after working for six, seven months and working – and talking about working that day job, investment banking with the 80, 90 hours a week that it is. On the free time that I should be sleeping, I was doing this so really working my ass off to actually get this done. It was like, oh, shit, now what I do, no? That was another look. Funny enough, I was lucky enough to find my co-founder, a little bit later on that. [09:06] two or three months. I push through. I thought the idea was great. I thought there was space to do it with a good amount of work.

Then I found Jon, Jon Uriarte, who is my co-founder, and he’s a great guy. We actually click very easy. It was very funny because we just met in an airport, funny enough.

Tanya:  Oh, really?

Ander:  You never know who you’re going to meet in an airport, so be ready for it. We met. He was actually working in Morgan Stanley as well. I start talking. We start getting together. I told him what I was working on. He liked it. He has also working several ideas by himself, similar approach to me, basically, analyzing things that worked well in the US, and then where you studied in Europe, that there wasn’t nothing similar in the LATAM. On those days, in 2009, you could still do that, right? Products move slowly, things that – most of the new stuff up here in the US, but it took American companies two or three years to go to Europe and another two to go to Latin America.

Now things are going faster, but at that time, that’s how it was happening. There was an opportunity to do this [10:14]. He liked what I was doing, and at the end, we agree on pursuing this product together. We launched Ticketbis. We quit the bank in 2009, and we launched Ticketbis in 2010. In January 2010, it was when we launched the website.

Tanya:  Weren’t you concerned with the economic crisis going on in 2008 to start a venture in 2009 and secure funding and do whatever you needed to do to get it off the ground, especially in Spain?

Ander:  Oh, my god, yeah, this is the best question. At the time, I was 25. We were raising money, but the concern, it wasn’t more me. It was more my family. I would remember I always heard this very clear going to talk to my parents, but at my mom, I’d say, “Look, I’m quitting Morgan Stanley,” so first job. “You could have very secure job that paid you a lot of money. What the hell is going on?”

“To start my own company.” “Oh, sure, and what are you going to do? You’re going to create a company that resells tickets online.” They’re like, “Oh, my gosh, what my son doing?” That was exactly their reaction. My dad was more okay with it, but my mom was like, “Oh, you need to think about this. Are you sure about this,” blah, blah?

It took them awhile to process it. After a while, they came with, okay, if you want to do it, do it, and they were really helpful. Also, the luck for me was that my wife has always been extremely understanding, and she was supportive 100% of the time. Never said I think about it. She was like, look, if that’s what makes you happy, do it. Just do it. I will support you. She was always there. That was very important, right? If I wouldn’t have that support, I don’t think I would have been able to do it because we didn’t – such a good high paying job to start something that 90% of the time, 95% of the time goes to nothing, it’s a big risk, right?

Tanya:  It is a big risk, especially in a huge economic crisis, and [12:15] got hit really hard as well.

Ander:  Yeah, I know [12:18] there. We were talking to – we told them to our bosses, and nobody could believe us. They were saying you are joking, right? Everybody was sticking to their chair very tight. Oh, I don’t want to go. I don’t want to go, and understanding what our boss had told them we are quitting were like what? You are serious, right? You are not serious, huh? Yeah, we’re serious. Oh, okay.

Tanya:  Yeah, very serious, and actually, I mean, the good news is it panned out for you. You sold to eBay for 165 million euros, which whatever the conversion was at the time ended up being close to 200 million, which is a huge success. A lot of the people that I speak to that have sold their business, once the business is sold and they’ve removed themselves, they experience this loss of identity and loss of self as they transition into the next chapter. Did you have any of that experience?

Ander:  For us, it was a little bit different. I think, when we sold the company, one of the conditions that eBay put on the table is that we needed to remain in the company for three years. We actually managed to – we actually went out after two years, very good terms with – I was working with eBay. That was no problem there, but we got it to two from three. At the beginning when we sold the company, we didn’t have the feeling that, all of a sudden, oh, my gosh, what do I do tomorrow? I’m normally working 16 hours a day, and then, all of a sudden, I don’t have anything. We didn’t have that.

Actually, the day after we sold, we just keeping working, but now we have a new boss that was the CEO of StubHub. Things just keep moving on that direction, so we didn’t have that feeling. We have a different feeling. It was very strange. When we sold the company, all of a sudden, you receive a transfer to your account, and oh, my God, this must be wrong. This is impossible, another feeling, another interesting feeling. Yeah, basically, you get the transfer in the bank, and you look at the account. You are like, oh, my gosh, what am I going to do with this? It’s a completely new experience. You don’t know. What are you going to do with it, right?

That’s up to [14:24]. It was a nice problem to have, but you feel like you need to do something with it. You cannot just be sitting there on it. It’s strange sensation, a very strange sensation.

Tanya:  I can imagine. What did you do with it?

Ander:  Basically, we talked to a lot of people, and they told us don’t touch it for six months. We didn’t do that, of course. The first thing we did is we – it was one of the biggest selling in Spain at the time. I think that’s [14:57] quite rapidly. The system [14:59] extremely fast in Spain. It’s a lot more transaction now, etc., but at the time, it was one of the biggest sales of the internet company in Spain. We became I don’t want to say famous. Our name was known, and we started receiving a lot of projects. Through all the projects that we receive, we basically say no to 99% of them. We like some of them, so we start investing money on some of these projects. As I say, I’m very busy.

Tanya:  That’s amazing. No, that’s really great, and I’m so glad to see you guys are reinvesting. Do you mostly invest in Spain, or are you location agnostic?

 Ander:  Location agnostic, so most of my – these all come from Spain. We do a lot of investment in the US through [15:49] for somebody [15:49]. I don’t know if you know these guys?

Tanya:  Yeah.

Ander:  Yeah, we do a lot of investment with them. We normally send them opportunities that we see in Europe. There’s investing that we see in the US, and we have done a bunch of investment with them. They are great, so we do invest in the US but normally through these partners. In the rest of Euro is also through other VCs. Our position is we are very complimentary to our VCs. At the end of the day, we try not to lead rounds. We are super flexible in terms of size of check that we can put on, but we bring a lot of value to the table. We have entrepreneurs. We still are entrepreneurs. We have been on the other side.

When we sold our company, I think our VC was already present in 40-something countries, growing over 100%, over 100 million in revenues, 400 and something employees. We were one of the only commerce that actually launched successfully in Asia, and we were present in Japan and Korea. There were, of course, [16:44] and then Latin America, of course, or Europe. I think that there’s a lot of value that we can add to companies, especially the ones that try to internationalize and go and do that. This is our [16:58] need, and we are just another compliment to a round where we can actually bring a strong value to the table. That’s long story to tell you that, yes, most of them are – our direct influence is Spanish, most of it, but we do invest outside of Spain. We don’t have a restriction or the same – finally, we can do whatever we want with the money. It’s very flexible. We invest a lot, and that’s normally through partners [17:23].

Tanya:  Awesome, that’s amazing. No, co-investing is always a great way to deploy capital. You mentioned that you had up to 400 employees globally. That’s a challenge to manage that many people. How have you evolved through your experience with Ticketbis over the years as a leader?

Ander:  It’s very interesting. When I start Ticketbis, I was a kid, 25, a total kid. I never managed anybody in my life. Yes, I’m lying. When I’m three years in Morgan Stanley, I have a – as year one analysts that I managed. That’s pretty much like not managing anybody, so I never managed anybody in my life.

All of a sudden, we start a company. I’m a founder, and we start hiring people. The company started growing, and we start hiring more and more people. There were 50 in the organization. I learn on the job, to be honest, and I make a bunch of mistakes, a lot of mistakes. First mistake is I’m, as I say, very nervous. I like to do things, get things done, get shit done. That’s what I do.

When you get somebody to do another job, a lot of time I felt like, oh, but I can do this faster than the person I just hired. Let me just do it. It’s a huge mistake, right? You ask somebody to do something. You should let them do it. Let them get that wrong. Let them get their mistakes, learn from it, and that’s the only want that this person is going to grow. You’re actually there trying to do everything. First, you’re not going to do everything. That’s totally impossible, and second, you’re undermining the person that you just hired. It’s stupid.

Then I learned. It took me a while to learn it, and in a way, it’s also the – a part of that is delegation of task. A lot of tasking is to me how I have to be able to delegate them and to trust people that we hire for that, to trust them to actually do it. In a way, I was feeling like I can do it better, so why you just don’t do it? I do it, and it doesn’t work like that in a company, as you can understand – as you know very well, sorry. That was one of the biggest thing that happened and that I’ve been involved in.

Tanya:  That’s amazing. Through your time with Ticketbis, what was the single toughest moment that you can remember that you had to push through?

Ander:  There was a lot. I’m going to pick – when you start a company, it’s like a rollercoaster. There is awesome moments. We think it looks green and the pasture looks green. It’s amazing. Then there’s moments like everything is hell. Oh, my gosh, what are we doing here? There was lot of moments on both sides.

Toughest moment, I will say two. One of them was when we actually – in part of Ticketbis, one of the mistakes we make on the way, we make a lot of mistakes of course, was that we – in part of creating Ticketbis, I was basically like a [20:23], but for Euro-Latin America and Asia, that’s what we created. What we did in part is try to launch an Evenbrite for as well in the countries we were in. We were like, okay, look, it’s two founders, two of us. It’s very complimentary. I mean, it’s primary ticketing. They need primary ticket, and that is compliment that we stick on there. We can offer both things. There’s a lot of synergies. We think we can do it. Let’s just do it.

We start, actually, on parallel to Ticketbis launching this, and it was a huge mistake because it was a lot of distraction. My partner focused a lot more on that part of the business. I worked more with the Ticketbis side for a while. The other company didn’t do bad. Year or two, we’re doing around 6 million, 4 million. That 4 to 6 million, it was growing.

At some point, it was very funny. We went to see an investor, and we were talking about the group, the Ticketbis group, and we’ll have the primary as secondary. He was thinking about it. He said, “Okay, so show me the numbers for one. Show me the numbers for the other. Okay, so why the hell you are doing this? It doesn’t make any sense. Kill the [21:41]. I mean, you have a business that’s a rocket. Why are you losing time with this?” 

In the meeting, we were like, oh, no, but you don’t see blah, blah. Then we went to – we went back to our office. We start thinking, all right, shit, he’s not there. This doesn’t make sense, right? Focus in energy, resources. Let’s just keep it. From them on, a couple weeks later, we just kill it. It was hard because we have around 15 persons working over in that part of the business, but then we make some layoff. We put some other people on the other part of the business. We make some layoffs, and we just focus on Ticketbis. That was an interesting kind of moment.

Then the second toughest moment was when we sold the – we were selling the company. We sold the company to eBay, but there was a moment that – the [22:33] took forever. Since the moment start the process until we sold it was almost a year. It was several reasons. One of them being it was a composite structure. We were present in 40-something countries, a lot of local entities, local offices, etc., so it was a composite structure. When we were talking to – well, basically, it took a year.

What we didn’t want in the meantime is to raise capital. It was like, shit, we’re not going to raise any capital. We need to survive on whatever we have. We need to give to pressure. Keep drawing to show good numbers so eBay doesn’t pull off. That’s one, and second, we don’t want to raise money. Because whatever money we raise, we’re going to sell the company, so it’s stupid to raise money right now. It doesn’t make any sense.

Basically, we didn’t raise any money in that period. We didn’t do any rounds for the last year of the company. The company was almost break even when we sold the company, but it was still consuming some cash. Not too much, one million a year. Something like that the year that we sold. Still, we didn’t have the money. Actually, we barely made it. I remember the day that we announce the transaction. We have around two weeks of cash left in the bank. That was it.

Tanya:  Oh, my God!

Ander:  Yeah.

Tanya:  You must’ve been shitting your pants for this deal to go through.

Ander:  Oh, yeah, that’s a good way to put it, exactly.

Tanya:  Oh, my God, how – so what did you do to keep strong and not cave on your negotiations and really come out strong on this deal?

Ander:  Actually, it was very funny because it was delayed so much that, actually, we were able to increase a little bit the price in the end, a little bit, not too much. We got another two or three millions out of the deal. Oh, you have to give too much, so we need to increase the price up a little bit. 

Tanya:  Oh, my God! That’s amazing.

Ander:  It’s easy enough for our financial statement. Anyway, look there’s nothing you can do, so on our mind, what we thought is the business is doing very good. If needed, we’ll go and raise quickly some money. We’ll [24:43] note or something. I don’t think we’re going to go bankrupt, and we also have another levers, marketplace so sellers and buyers. We could always play on the sellers saying our new policy. Instead of paying in X time, we’re going to pay in this amount in 90 days or something. That will give us – it was something that you don’t want to play because, actually, are burning sellers, but if needed to, we had those levers to actually increase our life until we [25:13] around. In our mind, we were like, okay, we’re running out of cash, but we have options if needed for to pay. It was getting close to it, so we’re like, oh, shit, hopefully it happens very soon.

Tanya:  Oh, my God, big balls, Ander, seriously. Did you sleep?

Ander:  Thank you.

Tanya:  Did you sleep at all? 

Ander:  The things that over the time – that’s another funny story. At the beginning, when we start the company, I was always waking up at night. Like, yes, I think you can’t do it. The beginning of the first couple years, I didn’t sleep that well. Then what I realize is that there are – I told myself, look, have you done – at the end of the day, have you done everything you can for this? Yes. Is anything on your hands? No. Then go to bed. You can’t do anything else.

That really worked for me mentally to think, okay, is it anything you can do is in your hands? There is something is in your hand to – is it a big problem and thing that is in your hand to solve it? Do it. If there is nothing, it’s not in your hands, why to worry about it? It doesn’t make any sense for you to worry.

Tanya:  That’s something intuitive for you to know, but a lot of people spend a lot of time and a lot of energy thinking about the what ifs, which, like you said, it’s stupid. They can’t do anything about it.

Ander:  Exactly.

Tanya:  Really channeling your thought, that’s amazing. If you could rewind, so you’re 35. Go back to 25. What would be an advice that you would give yourself knowing what you know now.

Ander:  Oh, wow! What advice I will give myself? Don’t quit Morgan Stanley. No, I’ll be okay.

Tanya:  That’d be terrible advice. 

Ander:  No, I’m joking. Look, what I will say is that it’s going to be a hard journey, but you need to be – humility is fundamental. You need to delegate. You need to be able to – the most important thing is to be [27:12]. I didn’t see that at the beginning. I strongly believe that, as I say, and delegating [27:17] has changed completely. I changed the spectrum. If I see somebody that’s doing good things, I’m very happy to delegate. That’s changed completely. It wasn’t like that, and I struggled even the first two, three years with that.

I think I would have been a much better manager in the first two, three years if I would had been able to learn straightaway. I wasn’t. Currently, I will say I will give that advice. That was the thing that I struggled the most in the beginning.

Tanya:  Yeah, I mean, I struggle with that too. When we started our business ten years ago, it was – it’s just so hard. It’s a real hard thing, but that’s amazing that you got control of it. How do people get in touch with you if they want to say hi?

Ander:  Sure, I’m happy to give them my email. Should I give it now?

Tanya:  Yeah, give it.

Ander:  Yes, it’s ander.michelena@alliron.com. Probably, you can spell it. If not, probably people will not ever reach me, A-N-D-E-R-dot-M-I-C-H-E-L-E-N-A-@alliron, like it sounds, alliron.com.

Tanya:  Amazing.

Ander:  That’s what my company is.

Tanya:  Amazing, well, thank you so much for being with us on the Unmessable show and really love your story. It’s very inspiring.

Ander:  Thank you, Tanya. Thank you for inviting me, happy to be part of it.