In this week's episode we speak to Alex Craven, CEO and Co-founder, founder of The Data City. Alex tells us about the sale of Bloom Agency, the harsh lessons learnt when selling a business, how and why the business sale went so badly wrong, half a million pounds worth of contracts without trying with his new business, data City and how ADHD and the risks it encouraged affected Alex’s business journey INTRODUCING ALEX CRAVEN Alex founded a digital agency and MarTech company in 1999 and sold in 2016, Alex has been pioneering applications of new technology throughout his career and is now CEO of The Data City, a tech start-up that uses machine learning to map the global economy for government and the private sector. Alex is active member of the digital / tech community, regularly speaking at events, judging awards, providing Non-exec advisory services and is also the Chair of web 3 start up ‘Pooldata.io’. Alex is a champion of diversity and inclusion and is passionate about raising awareness around neurodiversity and Entrepreneurship. Listen to the first half of this interview at https://leedsbusinesspodcast.com/episode/alex-craven EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS [00:00:00] The sale of Bloom Agency [00:05:15] The key lessons learnt from the sale process and the problems afterwards [00:09:00] Jaywing and the departure from there [00:13:50] The launch of Data City [00:22:00] How to innovate within your business [00:28:00] How ADHD affected Alex’s whole business journey KEY TAKEAWAYS & BUSINESS LEARNINGS Due diligence in the sale process is a two-way process - it is as important for you to check them out as they to check you The sale price is the first payment. If that isn’t enough don’t do the deal. 90% of earnouts don’t happen Founders have two problems; the first is a people problem and the second is the time it takes to identify that they have a people problem BEST MOMENTS “We shouldn’t have to sold to them, and they shouldn’t have bought us” “I was met at the door by one of the directors, escorted to his office, escorted to my office and the escorted out. I couldn’t help but laugh” “I am unemployable” “I don’t see it as risk, I just see it as an opportunity to get through” VALUABLE RESOURCES FOR YOU Website: www.leedsbusinesspodcast.com Website: https://thedatacity.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-craven-17b1441/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-data-city/ Twitter (personal): https://twitter.com/AlexCraven Twitter (business): https://twitter.com/TheDataCity Shout outs: https://wac.rocks/ https://www.roberts-mart.co.uk/ https://claritywealth.co.uk/ Want to watch instead of listen? Subscribe to our You Tube channel - https://youtube.com/@LeedsBusinessPodcast. DON'T FORGET THE LEEDS BUSINESS PODCAST ‘FAIR DEAL’ My half of the agreement; Every week I bring you inspiring Leeds Business people FOR FREE. Your half of the deal has two simple steps; 1) Share this episode with just ONE person who you think will get value from it 2) Post a review of the show at either Apple Podcasts App (https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/leeds-business-podcast/id1695413291) or Podchaser (https://www.podchaser.com/podcasts/leeds-business-podcast-5389157) or a 5 star review at Spotify (https://open.spotify.com/show/66AeIYry1gWfmBYMDlfmrT) or give this episode a ’thumbs up’ on YouTube (https://youtube.com/@LeedsBusinessPodcast) SOCIAL MEDIA Follow us on; LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/leeds-business-podcast/ Twitter - http://www.twitter.com/leedspod Instagram -...