Founded by Lukas Snelling in 2012, Brave One specialized in providing acquisition and growth services for fast-scaling e-commerce brands like Peet’s Coffee, Olly, Hvmn, and Credo. As e-commerce growth experts, the Brave One team worked with hand-picked direct-to-consumer brands to dramatically scale their revenue, increase conversion rates, and improve performance across the full e-commerce funnel. With a full-service funnel offering, boutique product-oriented delivery service model, focus on e-commerce growth, and long-term, deep client relationships, Brave One was unique in the agency space and poised for long-term, sustainable growth.

Taking an Already Successful Business to the Next Level

Lukas had been focused on growing Brave One to its current success for over a decade, and he was ready to shift his focus to incubating e-commerce brands. He was willing to stay on to facilitate a successful transition, but ultimately wanted to exit to move on to his next venture – with cash in the bank to fund it. His right-hand-person, the COO, was excited to stay on with the company and help it continue to thrive for years to come. 

Not interested in pursuing the traditional, miserable M&A experience, Lukas partnered with us at Barney for the best agency acquisition experience in the world. All we do is buy and sell agencies, and with a long list of successful acquisitions under our belt he knew he could trust us to find the perfect buyer for Brave One. It was important to him to find a buyer that could take his already successful business to the next level – not let it crash and burn after he was gone. Strategic, financial, and cultural fit? He definitely came to the right place.

Both Unique and Profitable 

With over 21 clients on retainer and deep e-commerce specialization with consumer packaged goods cases, Brave One had 100% recurring revenue, industry specialization, and a combination of paid acquisition, conversion rate optimization, and email and SMS marketing that allowed them to unlock growth for their clients across every channel.  

Thanks to their deep industry expertise, hyper-focus on advertising and CRO, seasoned management team, high recurring and stable revenue base, and low overhead from a work-from-home employee base with minimal expenses, Brave One was both unique and profitable – exactly what we love to see at Barney. Their clients saw them as partners for e-commerce growth, working across the full e-commerce funnel to create comprehensive, behavior-driven customer journeys that drove sales for their businesses.

With opportunities to grow through offering related services, expanding outside of their Bay Area client concentration, and up-selling current clients, the future looked bright for Brave One. Their buyer would get a proven workflow process for delivering high-value product to existing and new clients, an incredible remote team with a track record of getting amazing results over and over again, a strong, long-term client base, and huge growth potential. What’s not to love?

A Specific Vision for Brave One’s Buyer

Lukas knew what he wanted in a buyer for his agency. Someone who would benefit from Brave One’s deep e-commerce growth specialization, wanted to add digital advertising and conversion rate optimization services to their existing organization, or wanted to grow in the direct to consumer, consumer packaged goods, or beauty industries would be a great fit.

He wanted to find a larger agency operating in the same space who could seamlessly integrate Brave One into their existing business, or a creative or web development agency looking to grow their service revenue and build on-going revenue streams. Either way, he wanted someone excited to take an already successful business with a proven track record to the next level.

Finding Brave One’s Perfect Match

With our industry specialization, shorter timeline, higher success rate, simple process, and huge pool of strategic, pre-vetted buyers, we got down to business finding Brave One their perfect match. We started with a valuation, calculating Brave One’s worth to buyers in today’s market, and created amazing marketing materials to showcase their value to our huge pool of strategic and entrepreneurial buyers. We identified high-potential buyer targets and quickly narrowed down the right buyer for Brave One: Single Grain.

A Larger Agency Focused on Realizing Every Opportunity for Their Clients

A nontraditional digital marketing agency focused on driving persistent growth for remarkable companies, Single Grain was strategically aligned with Brave One’s digital marketing specialization and culture. Sharing an orientation towards results and a focus on conversions, Single Grain and Brave One were a perfect fit. With Single Grain’s focus on realizing every opportunity for their clients using data to test, tweak, and optimize, they could benefit from Brave One’s deep e-commerce growth specialization and take them to the next level.

Check, Check, Check

Culture fit, strategic fit, financial fit? Check, check, check. Single Grain and Brave One were made for each other, and thanks to our trailblazing team’s dedication and vision, both companies were set up to thrive for years to come while Lukas realized his dream of incubating e-commerce companies (with cash in the bank to fund that dream).

Over at Barney, we added Brave One to our long list of companies we’ve guided through successful acquisitions. We love giving founders like Lukas the exits they deserve and helping agencies like Brave One find the partners they need to take them to the next level. We’re a tribe of trailblazers, disrupting the way things have always been done by thinking differently, challenging the norm, and staying hyper-focused on the industries we know and love. We buy and sell amazing businesses all day long – is yours next?