A $1B IPO in 5 months, then selling the dream house

Miranda

And I spent decades of my life not investing in those experiences in pursuit of work. Uh only to then realize that that was all accessible all along. So why was I working so hard?

Krystyn

My guest today is Miranda Lievers, co-founder and former COO of Thinkific, who took her company public in one of the most compressed IPO timelines in Canadian tech history. Most IPOs are 18 months. They did it in 5 months minus a day. So you entered the company. What was the headcount at that point versus when you left?

Miranda

Oh, there was like four of us. At our peak, we wrote 500.

Krystyn

What was the most difficult part of that ride for the team?

Miranda

I don't know. All of it. Like I remember like I remember at one point like everything. Oh, it was the strategic decision. Like no, you are and can only be the expert on your business. But everything that I loved and found joy and really stretched me through that process was about the journey.

Krystyn

What's your relationship with that idea of like of wealth of financial success?

Miranda

I built the dream home. I filled the dream home with the dream stuff and then sold the dream home. And part of even gaining comfort with that decision was the realization that I was no more happy sitting, you know, on the back deck in what I thought was paradise. Um that I am here in, you know, this tiny apartment in Bologna eating, you know, white rice and drinking a spritz.

Krystyn

For someone in that moment, what do you think they need to hear in order to get to that destination?

Miranda

One of the biggest ones is

Krystyn

Miranda, welcome to the show.

Miranda

Thank you so much for having me, Krystyn. I'm excited to be here.

Krystyn

Oh, well, let's go all the way back to 2014. You joined the Thinkific team. Where did this journey begin for you? And what was the moment that you realized Thinkific was something that you wanted to help build?

Miranda

That's a good question. Um, like I almost have to go like all the way way way back. And you know, I think about like early entrepreneur Miranda was like seven-year-old Miranda at the end of my driveway on a dirt road in the middle of nowhere. Um, with my table of crafts or whatever I was selling. I was never actually selling lemonade. Um, and there was nobody driving down my road, but if they were there, I was there and I was ready to hustle. Uh, you know, fast forward and I was always just interested in small business. How can you take this thing that you love to do and turn it into a thing that you do?

Krystyn

Oh, that's so powerful. And so was this is Greg and Matt. They started the business in 2012. Was that right? A couple years before you joined.

Miranda

Yeah, they had been working on it before that but Thinkific as an entity was incorporated uh about 18 months before I joined them. Yeah.

Krystyn

And so what did you enter? What was what did the company look like? Had it reached product? Yeah. Walk me through that that vision.

Miranda

I mean, I entered like a table that we all worked around above a taco shop and the primary benefit of that was that we had a back entrance into the taco shop. So, at lunchtime, you could beat the lines. Um, but

Krystyn

You have to Yes. Fuel, fuel, taco fuel to build.

Miranda

And we just like rented desk space from another tech company. Like they were the real like so we were just like a desk in a corner building like really which was like what was just a dream at the time and like even when I met um I met Greg first and it was like and I wasn't I knew that I wanted to build something else at the time I knew that I wanted to build something with other people but I'm not sure you know I wasn't sure at the time what that looked like but I met him and I got so excited about what they were doing and sort of running like a hundred steps ahead and seeing the potential of how this could help who I cared to help. And then it was just kind of like a okay like let's just do this together for a while and see where it goes.

Krystyn

And so we end up at the destination of a billion dollar IPO and working backwards to this taco stand that you were above in this kind of rented space from other founders. What was that build story like when you think about the problems you were solving in the beginning? How did those problems look a little different towards the end there? I like Were they

Miranda

You just need to keep doing more of what's working and less of what's not on repeat

Krystyn

Subtraction

Miranda

Like it's just like it's just like you just need to do those two things on repeat but where the trick is and what actually changes is like the problems don't fundamentally change. Um but as you grow a team because we're building human machines we're not building mechanical machines. Our businesses are human machines. And as you build a team, all of the sudden decisions or pieces of work that used to exist in one brain that had all of this different context is all of a sudden now in different human brains. And humanto human communication is actually highly flawed and inefficient. Like we're just not good at taking everything that's in my brain and helping all of that like get all of that information into your brain.

Krystyn

Hugely and communication breaks down. Code breaks down but not in the same way and code is frankly extremely easy but people code is easy at least not so much. Yeah, I heard like

Miranda

Yeah, one of my favorite quotes, one of my favorite quotes and I and I don't even remember the name of the person who said it, but it was a Nobel Prizewinning um physicist and they said, "Could you imagine how difficult physics would be if electrons had feelings?"

Krystyn

That's it. That's it. Right. And then as you're scaling, what was sort of the So, you entered the company. What was the headcount at that point versus when you left?

Miranda

Oh, there was like four of us. Uh there was four of us. There was just like around a table And uh like literally um we would go for lunch every day together and uh at our peak we wrote 500 and then we went through uh like many SaaS and tech companies went through some really painful layoffs and today this company sits around 300.

Krystyn

Yeah. So four to 300 to 500. Uh and of course like normalizing as you kind of are scaling um challenging moments. I've been through that in the leadership side myself. Um never easy. But in terms of that that scale journey, you're now having to take this four-person vision mission, which of course is extremely quick, you can iterate on the fly to then actually communicating a mission, a vision, values, systems, the system sort of the scaling part of that journey. What was the most difficult part of that ride for the team? What was the most challenging growing pains as you think about it?

Miranda

Like I don't know all of it. Like I remember like I remember at one point like everything like and a lot of really mundane things too like I'd like to tell you it's like oh it was the strategic decision like no like you know what was hard figuring out where to put everybody when we didn't have enough desks and we determined that like some people so going back to the fact that like humans have feelings. We determined at one point that it's like wait like some people are really stressed about the fact that we don't have enough desks and some people are really chill like I am happy to like it's like I don't care like give me a pillow I'll sit on a corn like I'll sit like on the floor and some people like that's really really stressful.

Krystyn

Totally. No. And these are and these are people problems. These are scale problems and people build software as we kind of talked about. Um as you think about getting to this IPO, this journey, um when did you start to really talk as a founding team about that being a real possibility? What was the light bulb moment?

Miranda

Yeah, great question. So, we had explored different we used to bring capital into the bill into the business and we'd talked certainly about um what the sort of long-term future of the business looked like, but we always had it on in the very back of our heads that if we ever were to IPO, we would only do it if we could hit that billion dollar valuation. And given the size that we were at, that was just so far in the future, like it wasn't even worth talking about.

Krystyn

What was the size you're at? Give us a picture of the company.

Miranda

Um

Krystyn

If you can. Yeah, just like place numbers at a point in time.

Miranda

Find that box. Yeah. Like right before we IPOed, I think we IPOed right around 35 million uh in annual revenue and we were a team of around Oh, well at that time we'd grown. So like right before we IPOed we were um probably 400 or 350 people, something like that. Um amazing. And so but before IPO was the path is we just knew that we were in a position where we wanted to invest to grow. And so we had started a process to look for adding more investors to our cap table. Effectively the valuations in the public market in that sort of like pandemic era insanity um so outpaced the valuations in the private market that it enabled both us to have a chance at a billion dollar valuation which was that benchmark that we said that we would only ever IPO at which frankly was insane.

Krystyn

Completely and you had raised money along the way is that right in terms of your build

Miranda

Very very little like we had early investors we'd only put at the time of IPO we'd only put about 6 million of primary capital into the business.

Krystyn

So you had a lot of options at the table to be able to go here and this is ultimately the classic VC exit. Let's get some IPOs. Let's sort of build a portfolio. Um but it sounds like the team had a lot more control of the company at the time. Was that was that right in terms of the options?

Miranda

Yeah, for sure. For sure. And the investors that we did have on the table. Um they were former founders uh the folks at Rhino Ventures uh who we were with us all along the journey still um with the company today. And unlike the typical VC story, they actually bought in at IPO. They believed in the story so much that they actually they doubled down.

Krystyn

Yeah. Well, that's so powerful. That speaks so much more than words in terms of actions. Um, and so we talked a little bit about in our earlier conversation about March 2020. Um, so just kind of getting up to that IPO and that moment and the conditions in the market and how things were going. Traffic quadruples almost overnight. Walk me through what happened there inside the business in those first few days. What did that look like when you saw that spike?

Miranda

Yeah, I mean like most uh or many people at that time when everything started to close down. Um ourselves included like even we came to the office one day were like at that point it was looking like we were going to possibly be put into lockdown. Um when obviously everybody had to go home and we decided to like let's just do this as a trial run for a couple of days, see what breaks so that next week if we end up going into lockdown like we'll um we'll have we'll be a couple days ahead. Uh and we just never went back. Like it was like it was wild. Like it was like we were just doing a two-day trial and that was the last day that we were all in the office together. And then like the rest of the world I think everybody just kind of held their breath for a few days.

Krystyn

Perfect

Miranda

It was the perfect timing because yeah because um literally everything just shot up and stayed up. So, uh, traffic, new traffic. Um, previous people who had created accounts were now on and building in ways that they had never had before. And just by chance, a ton of infrastructure work that we had been doing that was really about like, well, how do we, you know, shore up infrastructure so we're good for the next couple of years um, paid off because, uh, if it had happened a few months earlier like many of our, um, peers, we probably would have been dealing with downtime, too. But we didn't.

Krystyn

The fact that you were that proactive and thoughtful and planful. I mean, when you think about luck, so I was going to ask you about this. So, when you think about the success, the outcome that you made, the billion dollar exit, the IPO, um, how much would you attribute to luck versus preparation? What are your thoughts?

Miranda

I don't know how you can answer that question. Like, I think, um, you know, strategy and decisions and all of those things always look good in hindsight when you're like, "Yes, obviously, like they're the right decision. This decision. It's like, yeah, but there's like a hundred other things, right? Like there's like a hundred other things that we might have done or invested in that totally didn't pay off or like weren't a primary part of the story. Um I think that I think that it's naive to think that you can look back and say like, "Oh, this was just like a really planned um you know, careful decision." And yet, yes, like obviously those things do play a part, but the biggest thing is you just have to like you keep me, keep building, you keep moving, you keep building stuff, you do stuff, you build resilience in, you try to shore up things that um might be a risk and you and you keep going and you hope that you know some of it's going to pay off and a lot of it is timing and yes that is luck but I think luck is that combination of yes being in the right place time conditions but also being ready and able to say yes and be there prepared when the time comes.

Krystyn

Let's talk about preparation. In my experience and then also as we were chatting typical IPO preparation takes about 18 months 18 to 24 months to be fully prepared and ready. Any exit planning we typically recommend two to three years to sort of maximize the outcome. Um you did it in five months. Your lawyers were probably like thank you Miranda let's do it. Let's go all in. How did that happen? You also told me it was like the matrix in terms of like making decision. What was that period like for you?

Miranda

Yeah, good question. So, yes, it was uh at this point it was the fall of 2020. We've been like, you know, we're a few months into um into this co who knows what. It's now clear to everybody that this is not going away anytime soon. We're seeing the valuations in the public market sort of like skyrocketing. Were very aware that we were not like even thinking about that kind of process and we went to our legal team and we just said okay just hear us out. So it's like what would be the fastest like so assume that we had the capacity and were crazy enough to run all of the parts of the IPO process simultaneously assuming that we had no bottlenecks that way. What is the fastest possible time frame that you can map out in the you know the IPO Gantt chart of like how fast could we run a process?

Krystyn

Oh. And also saying to any founder, this is an impossible task. It's basically like let's go.

Miranda

That like that is actually the way to get my brain to achieve anything at all. Like please just tell me. Like I've actually told like my partners it's like if you ever need me to do something and I'm putting up a brick wall, you just need to tell me that it's not possible and then cuz I'm like I'm like always tell you what's possible.

Krystyn

Yes. It's the chip on our shoulders, right? It's like no we

Miranda

No I just don't believe that impossible things are Impossible. Um and that serves me well. Uh what was unique about that time and I think like well no I know what made the difference between even the six months where they're like this is the like it's not possible to do it faster than this versus what we actually did is we ran an IPO for the first time in history where it was done without being in person. We were entirely locked down at the time. So we weren't even going to the office. If we had so much have had to just drive the like 20 minutes to the office and back every day, we wouldn't have been able to do it on that time frame.

Krystyn

So for you personally like on your body like that you know it's a compressed timeline so it's like yes I can work towards this very clear destination when that stopped when it when it actually closed the bell rang so to speak. What did that feel like in your body to be like, "We did it. We did the thing."

Miranda

You know, that to me was like the first of I think what would be many like big like wo moments cuz at the time I couldn't have even described what was going on. But I would say that the day that we actually started trading was probably the most surreal, one of the most surreal days of my life because after 5 months of go go go, it was like the first day that wasn't endto-end meetings all day with like action items. It was like it was like just like standing it like it felt like standing in an empty room where there had just been like this massive event or party or whatever and all of a sudden you're just like in there and it's quiet and like that your ears are ringing because Yeah you're like you're just used to this pace and all of the sudden you're sort of standing there going wait what do I do now?

Krystyn

I've often heard stories of folks coming out of the woodwork when big events like this happen. Did you experiencing anything like that or was it just more kind of strange to be walking in Vancouver and kind of more known?

Miranda

A little bit of coming out of the woodwork, but I but I mean always with good intent. Like you do hear some with ill intent and I didn't experience that. It was, you know, kind of I think it's that part was kind of fun. Like it sort of gave people a reason to be like to reach out even if it had been some time or years. Um and so that was we certainly felt celebrated. We certainly felt you know uh almost for the first time like really a deep part of the tech community in many ways and that was yeah that was cool. But it is it like to this day it's strange like to like in very very very tiny circles like Thinkific is a big deal and so like even now like I'll occasionally be places and somebody would be like wait you're Thinkific and like they have a fan girl moment I'm like oh I don't that's weird like that's weird

Krystyn

Well and now let's talk about that. So you've was it a couple years transition is that right before you left officially.

Miranda

Yeah. So in our case only uh I think 17% of our company something like that was actually trading on the on the public markets. It's now you're just building publicly and yet and you have the ability to raise money uh more quickly or easily through the public markets. Um but for me uh it would be a couple of year about like just under two years um before I would ultimately step away. And so I stepped away about two and a half years ago now.

Krystyn

And so looking back on that moment where you were completely out, your calendar was empty so to speak. Um, and many folks that we work with, myself included, when I went through the exit in terms of leaving my founding role, I had sold off the company and then I was faced with this question of kind of what do I do next? It felt very scary for me. I'm curious for you, what did that feel like for you to kind of face that next chapter?

Miranda

Yeah, I feel like that's like a very long conversation that I'm still sort of figuring out. Um yeah, you know, it's funny because the first part of my sbatical, I'd given myself uh one real rule and that was that I was not allowed to start anything new for at least 6 months because I knew that um in the absence of holding myself to that that I was likely to just kind of keep up the same pace that I was doing. And I was like, "No, I'm going to I'm going to create some space here and deeply, you know, like I acknowledge the privilege associated with being able to say that and to do that." And for the first few months, I was like I was like, "Great, now I can schedule selfwork." And I literally I'm such a nerd.

Krystyn

You took a very Like systematic approach. I love it.

Miranda

Systematic quant approach, which is really adorable. Um and uh and so it's like I give so much grace to that version of me. Um it's like, oh, you didn't you didn't know. Um and so that was like the first part and eventually I sort of fell so far outside of my head that I didn't look at my computer um for months on end. And that was delightful too. And probably way more needed. And then through that process, it was like all the things. It's like I sought out actually I did not seek out an autism diagnosis, but I had I was frustrated because I kept coming up on things in my like very quantified self-work. That probably should have been my first clue. Um my very quantified self-work that I was like, "This looks like autism." But I um you know, clearly being the expert had determined that I uh did not meet the criteria for autism.

Krystyn

Tell me more about that in terms of, you know, if you're a founder listening and you're thinking about someone who's deep in the build, so deep in the build that they're forgetting to necessarily build a life outside, what would you want to say to them just from your lived experience of discovering more life?

Miranda

Yeah. You know, it's so interesting because I have thought a lot about what would I say to my, you know, earlier versions of myself and I don't know what I would have listened to like and so like I'm always I always struggle with that a little bit because I you know I'm not entirely sure um what I would have heard even if I had heard the words. Um, but for me like and it wasn't even that I was chasing I mean like I don't think you go into being an entrepreneur because you have your eye on wealth. Like at least like that's like quite the lottery ticket. Uh like and gamble like that's not necessarily it but certainly I was accustomed to doing hard things, making impossible things possible and just working really hard.

Krystyn

Oh, that's so powerful. And that's back to that what we talked about around these things are available to you. Many of them are free. And this idea of success, I'm curious. I've heard others like Kelsey Ramsden talk about like the success hangover, right? Right. And so how do you think about the definition of success now? Now that you've come into money, you know, you bought this house that we had talked about earlier in our other conversation just around you bought the house, the dream house, and then all of a sudden you decided to sell it because you didn't need it. What What sort of what's your relationship with that idea of like of wealth of financial success?

Miranda

Yeah. I think like it's so easy in so many parts of our life to just you know we sort of just go on autopilot a little bit of like well this is what you're supposed to do you know like you're supposed to um you know you're supposed to strive for promotions you're supposed to go to university and do this you're supposed to like build just collect all the gold stars right like it's like and I'm the very very quintessential um overachieving honor student for sure and it's like yes like I'm going to go get all of the gold stars and So this one was no different. This was, you know, sort of like the entrepreneurship gold star of, you know, congratulations, you know, you built a company and took it to IPO. And like I said is the most surreal part of that process was the day that we actually started trading.

Krystyn

The adventure, the courage to explore, to be curious. I'm hearing all these things through your story all the way back to when you were a little kid selling crafts at a table doing things you hadn't done before and chasing that next novel thing. And to your point about like wealth isn't the destination. The house, the dream house, the white picket fence, all of that. Great kind of external things that we think we should be striving towards, but when you actually get those things, it's a question of are is that what fulfills you?

Miranda

That's a good question. Yeah. I think um I shared at the beginning of our conversation about really just caring about helping other people lean into their thing and that has never felt more true for me. I many people have heard me say that I'm just unabashedly addicted to the light in people's eyes when they shine about what they're passionate about. And that is never more true than with entrepreneurs. And that has always been my driving force. And so where Thinkific was a way to support those people with software, what I'm stepping into now is I think that I can help those people with my words and my stories. I think that there's tons and tons of resources out there about how to start a business. Uh there's, you know, countless resources about how to operate at scale.

Krystyn

Oh, that is so beautiful and times do feel uncertain. There's a lot that's the same as ever. Um but there's a lot that feels a little bit out of our control and so for folks who are in that kind of that messy middle and I've been there. It feel I call it the spins where you're literally going from opinion to opinion to investor opinion to and going what am I building? How do I get it from A to B? Um, for someone in that moment, what do you think they need to hear in order to get to that destination? Or is there a framework or a I don't know, a way a mindset perhaps that you would encourage them to have?

Miranda

Yeah, there's lots of them. That's like a huge part of who I support. Um, but I think that one of the biggest ones is it's about being directionally correct, not perfect. If you spend your time trying to think about what is the like what is the perfect next step, what is the perfect move, um you'll spin in indecision and you can't live there. So it's just about like how do we just make it better? How do we be more directionally correct? How do we weight the dice to be 60/40 instead of 50/50? And another one along the same vein as you mentioned like all of the advice and all of the investors and everybody else has an opinion, self included, but it's really that that you are and can only be the expert on your business.

Krystyn

It's beautiful. One person told me that advice is like glitter. It gets everywhere and not all of it's useful. Some of it's pretty.

Miranda

Very true. I like that.

Krystyn

Um so last question just to close it out. What as you look back on your ride, you know, going from the tables where you sold crafts all the way through to, you know, your photography business, which we didn't talk about, but you've been entrepreneurial all the way through. And now you're creating space to intentionally let things unfold, which I can imagine maybe isn't easy for you, especially when you're a systems builder, right? I want to solve, right? It's not easy, not And so well done. Um, what does it mean to you now to live the good life? What does that mean?

Miranda

Yeah. I've like I've hinted at it a few times. Um uh we're talking right now while I'm in Italy. Um where I've been spending half of my time uh I have uh you know my beautiful hot Italian girlfriend uh is here. Uh she's moving to Canada in January. Um but

Krystyn

Wow

Miranda

But um Like I am no less we didn't actually talk about the fact that like I built the dream home. I filled the dream home with the dream stuff and then sold the dream home. Um, and part of even gaining comfort with that decision was the realization that I was no more happy sitting, you know, on the back deck in what I thought was paradise. Um, that I am here in, you know, this tiny apartment in Bologna eating, you know, white rice and drinking a spritz like and what matters is joy. What matters is experience. What matters is um the connections that we make and the people that we share all of that with. Um, and so to me that is what I'm focusing on going forward.

Krystyn

Miranda, that is so beautiful and I am so excited to see what you continue to create with that perspective and I'm inspired. I think our audience will be. I know our audience will be as well. Thank you so much for joining us.

Miranda

Thank you so much for having me. This has been so fun.

Krystyn

This podcast brings you conversations with founders who've made strategic exits, plus the advisers who guided them through the entire journey before, during, and after the deal. Real expertise from people who've actually been there. Getting to the deal is made for the Exit Horizon community, a private, highly vetted membership for Canadian entrepreneurs planning strategic exits. We discuss what most won't, how to maximize value, build systematically, and design what comes next. Connect with us, Exit Horizon, on LinkedIn or reach me at krystyn@exithorizon.com. I'm Krystyn Harrison. Subscribe to Getting to the Deal wherever you get your podcasts.