{York Bauer:} Hi, I’m York Bauer, I’m the CEO of MoxiWorks. We’re a real estate software company that services the residential brokerage community in the US, and we took investment from Vector Capital in 2019. In my free time. I’m a big motorcycle guy. I love riding. It’s very much an expression of freedom for me, and it also requires a tremendous focus that makes the troubles of the world disappear.
{York Bauer:} MoxiWorks is unique in what is frankly a very crowded field of real estate software companies. We produce a lot of the same categorical tools you might see out there, things like CRM and websites, presentation software. But we’re unique in that we were born out of a real estate brokerage and we do three things differently. The first is our tools make agents great with people they already know. The second is we operate an open platform that we call the MoxiCloud, which allows us to integrate solutions for more than fifty other companies. And the third is we provide a very high level of service. The real estate industry really needs and deserves that level of service, and we’re providing that at a world class level.
{York Bauer:} We as a board then decided that really to take the company to the level that we felt it could go and to become truly one of a tiny handful of platform players in our industry would require a good solid financial partner. Long before we actually signed up formally on the on the line that is dotted to engage SEG in this process, we got tremendous amounts of insight into what the process was going to be like, what the dynamics were that they saw in our industry, the data they had collated about our industry — all those things were incredibly valuable.
{York Bauer:} The advice I’d give anyone who’s in my seat looking to run a process like this, or maybe better said, is looking to either seek an investment or the sale of their company is, run the process but do so by selecting a great partner. And by that I mean an investment bank like SEG, because you can’t possibly overestimate how difficult the process is like this is not only functionally but emotionally.
The analogy I would give is the sale of a home or the purchase of a home. Same idea. That’s an incredibly high stakes emotional thing that you go through and you know over 90% of consumers have an agent for that reason. So why wouldn’t you do that with the sale of a company? Which is of course that times one thousand. So if I had to give one piece of advice, that’s the advice I would give.
“Run a process so you can maximize the market, but don’t suffer under the delusion that you can do that yourself. Get a partner to help you that does it all day, every day.”
{York Bauer:} I really enjoyed every interaction I had with SEG. When we would be in those moments of stress and I’d get on the horn with my, you know, “psychiatrist” advisors at SEG, there would be great guidance, but also some humor and some perspective and a discussion about what was going on in our lives beyond just this deal. I have to say that was a sort of a pressure relief valve for me and I genuinely looked forward, as I do to this day, to getting a call or an e-mail or some interaction with SEG because you build, if it’s going well, you know. In our case, you’re going to build a rapport of a relationship with these people that transcends this, this deal.
{York Bauer:} 2019 was really a watershed year for MoxiWorks. It was the year where we got to be all grown up as a company and really positioned ourselves to be able to get to the next level. And did so with the investment from Vector Capital. It’s everything we could have hoped and dreamed for really, and how that worked with who we are as a company and where we’re going. And really, none of this would have been possible without the help of SEG and I’m very grateful for the help they provided, the guidance and certainly, of course, the outcome that happened.
