Lessons from Founding a Company and Being Acquired by a Large, Publicly Traded Firm.

Bob Morris
11 min readDec 11, 2020

Insights from the front line.

Here’s a glimpse into this article — for those that want the SparkNotes™ version.

  • A Partnership vs. Other Structures — The benefits and the challenges.
  • Financing the Business — Early stage capital, burn rates and expectations.
  • The Market Opportunity — “Narrow is the path.”
  • Surviving Due Diligence — The process is expensive and daunting, but…
  • Post Acquisition — What’s next?
  • The End Result — Positive or Negative?

A Partnership vs. Other Structures

When we began the journey of building a management advisory for CMO’s focused on the complexity of business transformation in the digital age, each of the four co-founders brought a unique set of skills and experience to the equation. The company, Trade or more formally (Trade NTE — Narrative, Technology and Economics), was born out of decades of leadership experience at the likes of The Coca-Cola Company, Publicis, Ogilvy, Critical Mass and iXL / Scient (Razorfish) among others. Senior leaders who had all “done their time” within large corporate America or within the global agency…

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Bob Morris

Founder, Bravery Group; Co-Founder, Trade (Acquired by ICF Next), #Strategy, #digitaltransformation #CX, #designthinking