Sydney AI design start-up Relume has knocked back multiple acquisition offers of $25 million to $35 million, its co-founders instead backing themselves to build a company they think can become the next Canva.
“And we think the opportunity is 10 times bigger than what we were being offered, considering the team that we’ve got and the space that we’re building in, and the community that we’ve built up. The trend, the team, the customer base, it’s a holy trinity of things that you don’t get often in your life so we decided to knock those offers back.”Anisse said he spent about a month researching other acquisitions and speaking to other company founders who had gone through a buyout.
“After an acquisition you have to figure out, ‘This is my new role, this is my new job’, and the founders I spoke to often not enjoying that job, even though there was often crazy sums of money involved. So I looked at that risk and thought, ‘No, I’m happy now with what I’m doing and so are the team.’ ”The offers valued the company fairly, according to Anisse, but the decision to knock them back has so far been validated by Relume’s growth numbers.