Rolling Up Bill Management: Flint Lane, CEO of BillTrust (Part 7)

Sramana: Did the companies you acquired have any investors?

Flint Lane: They were sole proprietor places. They were small print-and-mail companies. There are hundreds of print-and-mail businesses out there. We targeted some smaller sole proprietorship companies that did print-and-mail billing. We can upsell the e-billing solution as well as automate their processes. We found several candidates and worked through an M&A process with them.

Sramana: I am asking this question because doing private roll-ups when there are investors in all companies is incredibly complicated, especially if there are VCs on both sides. Valuations of private companies can be very difficult to pin down.

Flint Lane: We just did cash purchases. We did not want to have to deal with more stock holders. Things get more complicated that way.

Sramana: Cash roll-ups are much more efficient. It sounds like there are a lot of small print-and-mail companies out there, so this cash acquisition strategy may be a good avenue for further growth.

Flint Lane: Yes, that is what we are going to determine. These two deals we just did were relatively small, but there are larger ones where we could use a similar strategy. However, we would have to raise some money.

Sramana: What has been your strategy for building your team?

Flint Lane: Our team is about 100 strong now. We have a great team of people with a great set of core values. We use the mantra ‘What would the customer want?’ and that serves us well. We like to promote from within and give our team chances to be successful in senior roles. As we hit certain inflection points, we find it necessary to bring in expertise from the outside.

The team that was here five years ago had no experience building $50 million to $100 million businesses. Occasionally we need to hire from the outside for competencies that we did not have. We have been successful in balancing and keeping the core team while hiring from outside. We do the best of both.

Sramana: What is the composition of the team in terms of functional areas?

Flint Lane: We have about 20 people in sales and marketing. We have 20 people in product and 10 people in admin and finance. We have around 25 people in client-facing relations like customer service. They rest are operations people.

Sramana: Is all of this based in New Jersey?

Flint Lane: We also have facilities in Chicago and Sacramento. We just did an acquisition in Boston, so we still have about 20 people up there.

Sramana: This is a very interesting story, and your roll-up strategy is exciting. Thank you for sharing your story.

This segment is part 7 in the series : Rolling Up Bill Management: Flint Lane, CEO of BillTrust
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