Carey Smith: How To Sell Your Company for $500 Million

Interested in learning how Carey Smith built his company from scratch only to sell it for $500 million?

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Join us for a fascinating discussion with Carey Smith on Friday – Jan 7th – at 1:32 EST: CLICK HERE

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A career entrepreneur, Carey Smith founded Big Ass Fans in 1999 and served as its CEO, or Chief Big Ass as he preferred, for 18 years.

Under his guidance, Big Ass Fans grew an average of 30% a year, with offices across the globe.

The company made the Inc. 5000 list of fastest-growing private companies 11 consecutive years — a feat achieved by only 34 others — and expanded from industrial products to include a line of chic, silent commercial fans.

When Carey learned that a man in Malaysia had created a revolutionary design for a residential fan, he brought the man and the fan into the company and turned it into a $60 million division: Haiku Home.

And when he heard that his industrial fan customers needed better lights, he hired lighting engineers to build Big Ass Light.

While other companies made and lost their fortunes, Carey’s contrarian business practices and relentless pursuit of new markets and high-quality products led to sustained, rapid growth.

By 2017, Carey had grown the fan and light manufacturer to nearly $300 million in annual revenue and more than a thousand employees. And he’d done it without any outside investors.

Carey Smith: Sold His Company for $500 Million

Ready for a new challenge, he sold Big Ass Fans for $500 million.

Carey shared these thoughts about selling his company with Inc Magazine:

“At the end of the day, though I really cared for the business, it’s not my child. You always love the people, but fans are a product. We wanted to make sure the buyer didn’t simply open the doors and tell everybody to leave. But other than that, it’s like buying a stick of gum: It’s mine until you pay me for it–and then it’s yours.”

The company’s stock appreciation rights program paid out $50 million to more than 100 loyal employees. Those who shared Carey’s work ethic with 15 that became overnight millionaires.

Following the sale, Carey founded Unorthodox Ventures. This Austin-based investment company that seeks to provide everything venture capitalists lacked. Carey discovered this when they approached him near daily at Big Ass Fans.

Carey’s team consists of high level experts. All of who help founders become serial entrepreneurs.  In particular, by providing support for everything from engineering and marketing to customer service and logistics.

Learn more about Carey Smith at unorthodoxventures.com.

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