The Company I Founded Was Acquired. What Now?

Sounds Good Agency | Shopify Experts (SGA) merged last month with Shopsys. Now that the acquisition is official, I'd like to take you behind the scenes and walk you through the entire process — what it means for me and how it will impact the overall market in the future.

Before I begin, let me provide a brief introduction to the companies involved. I founded SGA and since 2016 we have focused exclusively on Shopify. At the time of the merger, we had a team of 15 people, primarily providing strategic, frontend, and backend services for merchants on the Shopify Plus platform. Shopsys was operating on a completely different level than us. They are the largest provider of e-commerce solutions in the Czech Republic and Slovakia, and are roughly ten times larger in terms of both revenue and market presence.

So why would they be interested in partnering with a small player like us? Glad you asked...

WTF?

Robin Navrátil (CEO and co-owner of SGA) and I first met Petr Svoboda (founder of Shopsys) and Matej Kaposvary (CEO of Shopsys) at one of the best e-commerce events in the Czech Republic on May 17, 2023 — Reshoper. At first, I never thought we would become besties, but I was curious to meet them and learn from their wealth of experience.

To my great delight and surprise, we quickly discovered that Shopsys was considering entering the Shopify platform market and was already internally building a division to work on these projects. Not because they had stopped believing in their own technology, but as a way to expand the market they could serve. The Shopsys platform, ideal for custom development, can require a larger investment that only bigger companies can afford.

A pleasant surprise — we found some great partners. We could collaborate on interesting projects. Follow it up with coffee? What do you say, soon?

Photo from Shopsys' twentieth anniversary celebration

That escalated quickly 🤯

At our next coffee meeting, we realized a few interesting things:

• We genuinely liked each other — they might be much bigger than us, but we could have a healthy conversation and share ideas as if we were on the same level.
• They were serious about entering Shopify — but had very little idea of how to manage it effectively.
• Could they be open to acquiring us?!

Should we be open to this idea? After talking it over with Robin, we realized... yes, absolutely!

Life in a small agency is brutally tough!

Especially as you start growing and landing bigger clients — your cashflow is always at risk, a new growth challenge pops up every week, and every bad decision can get you into serious trouble. Shopsys was already where we wanted to be — and with their support and partnership, we were even more convinced that we could pull it off! And much faster than on our own.

Let the games begin...

Once we agreed on the idea of a potential partnership, we knew that thoroughness was essential. More than any legal or accounting assessment (which was of course critical), we needed to know whether we could genuinely work together over the long term. To find out, we invited Petr and Matěj to join our internal quarterly meeting. It was a great experience:

• We were completely open, as if they were already part of our company, so they saw exactly what the state of our business was.
• They didn't judge us for our weaknesses, but saw our potential in our strengths.
• Our values seemed to be fundamentally the same — saying we were culturally aligned is an understatement.
• The Shopsys guys were humble and approachable — they never came across as the big players with all the answers, but as partners who wanted to help and also learn from us.

This meeting was the foundation of our relationship, on which we could start collaborating immediately, as if all the contracts had already been signed. Trust and collaboration became the guiding principles for all future interactions.

Were you scared?

A little, but not entirely. Robin, João Antunes and I, as SGA owners, had some concerns, but fortunately they all gradually faded away. For example, there was the question of losing control over management decisions or a deterioration of certain cultural aspects we had integrated into our team. Would we have to radically shift our focus and stop serving our international clients? Would we have to force people back into the office after 7 years of being remote-first?

All these concerns were natural, but unfounded. With Shopsys, we were able to address all of them, so we could enter this new partnership with full confidence in the future.

What now?

After the merger, the previous SGA owners — including myself — exchanged their stake in the company for shares in the Shopsys group. That is quite remarkable, because overnight I stopped worrying only about my team of 15 people, and now I am deeply invested in the results and success of our group of nearly 80 people. What else has changed?

• We have industry veterans helping us grow — not just as a company, but personally as well.
• We have access to new tools and resources (from marketing to HR, legal and finance) that were previously beyond our reach at our scale.
• We can take on larger projects without as much worry about cashflow, because we have a strong partner who can support us through difficult times.
• We have a seal of approval from Shopsys in our market, confirming that our efforts over the years have made sense: Shopify is truly a valid technology not only for serving international clients, but also our local markets.

To give you an idea of how this partnership has catapulted us to the next level — previously we would send one major proposal (larger than €200,000) for a project once a year. Now we send 1–3 proposals of that size every month. Demand for our premium services continues to rise, and we are reaping the rewards of years of building our expertise.

I'm excited about what's coming.

What can I expect from this new chapter, now that we are fully and officially together? We plan to grow — a lot! We are working hard on unifying our operations and optimizing our processes. This will help us greatly in winning better deals and delivering on them more efficiently. These steps are essential to supporting my personal mission, which is to educate our market about the benefits that businesses can gain by leveraging Shopify and Shopify Plus.

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What do you think this merger means for our market? Do you expect, as I do, exponential growth in Shopify adoption in the Czech Republic and Slovakia? What is your view on Shopify's growth in Central Europe? Let me know what you think in the comments 😉.