They Got Acquired - Raise more money – or sell?

November 10, 2023
​Read on web​

San Francisco couple Emma Lawler and Philip Thomas embarked on a global adventure in 2017.

To enable themselves and others to live a digital nomad lifestyle, they built the tool they wanted: Moonlight, a marketplace connecting developers with part-time remote work.

Bootstrapping for a year and a half, Lawler handled business development while Thomas focused on the product. They lived and worked in tech-centric cities, hosting meetups to build their developer community.

After securing pre-seed funding in 2019, Moonlight grew to more than 10,000 developers and thousands of companies that wanted to hire through the platform. Customized newsletters and personalized job recommendations drove member engagement.

Yet when it came time to raise more money, the founders realized there was another option they preferred: sell the business.

Through an investor, they connected with their buyer PullRequest, a code review service. Lawler and Thomas sold for a mix of cash and stock, then stayed on as employees for a few months during the transition.

Lawler said it wasn’t always easy being both a couple and business partners.

“It was too many things all at once,” she said. “We are still together, surprisingly. So something worked about it.”

See the full story of how they sold – and what they went on to do next:

​This couple grew a remote work marketplace used by 10K software engineers​

📢 Want to sponsor They Got Acquired?

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What if 7,000 founders who are building with the intent to sell knew about your company and how you can help them?

We'd love to work with you to promote your message though:

📩 This newsletter

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📈 Reports (like these)

Interested?

Get in touch, tell us about your goals, and we'll develop a plan together.

ICYMI: One of our most popular posts

Have you read our story about how content site CSS-Tricks sold?

It's one of our most popular articles.

The crazy part about this story is the founder, a blogger, thought content sites weren't attracted to buyers...

Until he was approached by a strategic buyer.

​He grew a blog for developers to 7M monthly pageviews, then sold it to an advertiser​

See you next time,

Lexi Grant
Founder & CEO
​They Got Acquired​
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