Ep. 263 — Joseph Fung: Your Identity Isn't the Company. It's That You Build Companies.

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Episode Summary

You’re sitting in the chair you built, and the chair has eaten your name. The team, the customers, the impact, the wealth, all of it runs through you. Which makes the idea of selling feel like cutting off a limb, and the idea of holding forever feel like a slow trap. Joseph Fung has built and sold five B2B software companies, including TribeHR to NetSuite for $32M off about $10K of founder capital plus $3.5M raised. The thing that struck me is how early he separated his identity as an entrepreneur from his identity as CEO of this specific company. His mom asked him at 18 whether he wanted to be known for building websites or building businesses. That one reframe made every transaction afterward easier to look at objectively. We got into the gap between what your cashflow model says your business is worth and what a buyer will actually pay, why most M&A is emotional and irrational, how to define your non-negotiables before the deal, why your first sales hire can never sell the way you sell, and the deal that died in a parking lot hours before close. If you’ve been quietly wondering whether you can hold the impact, the wealth, and the eventual exit in the same hand, Joseph is a working example of someone who has.

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## Top 10 Takeaways
  1. Your identity as an entrepreneur is portable. Your identity as CEO of one specific company isn’t.
  2. Intrinsic value and what a buyer will pay are two different numbers. Run both before you decide.
  3. The valuation a strategic buyer pays isn’t a multiple of your cashflow. It’s a multiple of what you unlock inside their business.
  4. When someone buys your company, they’re buying the right to control it. Pick your non-negotiables before the deal lands.
  5. Most business sales are emotional and irrational. Build excitement into the asset, not just defensibility into the spreadsheet.
  6. Buyers don’t list reasons to buy. They list reasons not to buy. Run your business so that list stays short.
  7. The way you sell as a founder cannot be replicated by your first sales hire. Stop trying to clone yourself.
  8. Hire two sales reps, not one. Otherwise you can’t tell whether the problem is the rep, the market, or your script.
  9. Your sales reps don’t need to know your product. They need to know your customer’s pain better than the customer does.
  10. Don’t kick “giving back” down the road to after the exit. If it isn’t built in before, it usually doesn’t happen after.

Sound Bites

“Most sales, including a business sale, are kind of inherently emotional and often irrational.” (@TBD) — Joseph Fung

“You got to get comfortable with the idea that when someone buys the company, they’re buying the right to have control. So you need to make sure that you adopt any change that they’re really looking to do unless it’s a non-negotiable change.” (@TBD) — Joseph Fung

“The way a founder sells, the way a CEO sells, cannot ever be replicated by an individual.” (@TBD) — Joseph Fung

“When someone’s looking at investing in your company or they’re looking to buy your company, they’re not generating a list of all the reasons to buy. What they’re doing is generating in their head the list of all the reasons not to buy.” (@TBD) — Joseph Fung

“Intentional really means having a deliberate end goal and pushing yourself every day to move closer to that goal. It’s not just a nice to have. It’s actually moving towards it.” (@TBD) — Joseph Fung

About This Episode

Joseph Fung is a five-time founder in the B2B software space and the CEO of Uvaro, a tech sales career accelerator. He’s a computer engineer by training from the University of Waterloo, ran NetSuite’s global HR technology business for several years after they acquired his fourth company (TribeHR, sold for $32M), and has also founded and exited businesses in discussion forum software, content management, and hyper-local social networks. He speaks frequently on sales leadership, diversity, and corporate responsibility. He brings the rare combination of repeat-exit operator and someone who treats his identity as “an entrepreneur” rather than as the founder of any one thing — which is exactly why he can talk about transactions without making them precious.

Resources Mentioned

  • Uvaro — Joseph’s current company, a tech sales career platform. — uvaro.com
  • TribeHR — Joseph’s fourth company, HR software sold to NetSuite for $32M
  • Pledge 1% — The movement Joseph used to donate 1% of his company’s equity into a community fund
  • Toby Lütke (Shopify CEO) — Referenced for the “2030 showed up early” framing on B2B selling motion
  • Gartner study — Cited stat that 80% of B2B sales interactions will happen online over the next five years
  • McKinsey study — Cited stat that 80% of business owners are willing to spend up to $50K never meeting the sales rep in person
  • Joseph Fung on social — @josephfung across LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram

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