How to Build and Exit an MSP SaaS Company | Brian Byrne

Brian Byrne, founder of Mesh, joins Rob Scott to share his journey from starting a company to successfully exiting to Bitdefender.

Brian breaks down what it really takes to build an MSP-focused SaaS product, scale it in a competitive market, and navigate the realities of selling your business. From early challenges and growth decisions to the emotional and strategic side of an exit, this conversation offers a candid look at the full founder journey.

If you’re building, scaling, or thinking about eventually selling your MSP or SaaS company, this episode delivers practical insights you won’t hear elsewhere.
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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:03

Welcome to Top Tech with Rob Scott.

SPEAKER_02 0:07

Hello, I'm Rob Scott. I'm your host. We're on location at the IT Nation event in Orlando. And this is one of the biggest conferences in the industry. And I am so glad to be joined by my next guest, Brian from Mesh. Brian, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me, Rob. Yeah, good to be here. Brian, your story is amazing to me. Ever since the first time I met you, I've been so just interested in your journey and your story, and in particular, where you are in this moment in your career. Yeah. So tell the audience a little bit about your journey. Where did you grow up and how did you wind up where you are today?

SPEAKER_01 0:47

Yeah, well, I'll I'll try and keep it short. So grew up in Dublin, Ireland, as you can probably guess from the accent. Um, I landed in this industry completely by fluke. So uh dropped out of college after two hours. So I don't have any technical qualifications or anything like that. Um ended up going into construction after that, was an absolute failure at an apprentice electrician job that I yeah, I was really sucked at. Um and then my mom actually applied on my behalf for a cold caller job at an email security company because it was close to our house. So I was in 2012, joined a company called MX Sweep, um, which was actually founded by Danny Jenkins, who also founded Trent Locker. Um so I worked there for two years as a cold caller, and it was the first time I had a job that I was good at. So from there I went to a company called Email Laundry. Uh MX Sweep was acquired and I got made, I got let go. Joined email laundry, um, right place, right time. Industry, the email security industry took off, and I kind of became known as the face of it from going to events like this, meeting people. Um, so got tons of experience dealing with MSPs. Uh, and then it got acquired, and deja vu, I got let go again. So in 2020, I found myself out of work with eight years, eight years' experience selling email security to MSPs, and essentially, you know, just a really long list of MSPs saying, Hey, wouldn't it be neat if an email security product could do this for an MSP? And none of them could. So my two co-founders at Mesh, they were both technical and they were both keen to start a new email security in 2020. So we set about building that based off of basically what MSP's been saying for years. Hey, we we'd like to see this in an email security product. So yeah, in 2020, what we were building was super unique. Um, and since then it's been, I guess, elements of it have been emulated because a good idea is a good idea, right?

SPEAKER_02 2:54

And yeah, like emulation is the best form of flattery.

SPEAKER_01 2:58

It is, and and I did genuinely feel sometimes this was flattering because you know, albeit being a CEO co-founder, I still think myself as just like a sales guy. So um seeing my ideas copied by some companies that are like multi-billion dollars is is flattering. Um, so yeah, we founded Mesh in 2020. We uh took a long time to build it, so it was late 21 before we actually had any paying customers, and then we sold to BitDefender in July this year.

SPEAKER_02 3:27

So Wow, so let's just pause there. Yeah. And so walk me through this journey, which seems like a tight window overall. Small portion of your life between founding mesh and selling to BitDefender. Walk me through that timeline, how it all came about.

SPEAKER_01 3:47

Yeah, so um, so yeah, we start trading in late 2021, um, which was probably 12 months later than we initially set out, thinking, hey, we could have this built in six months. And oh, he's not later than it is. So we'd been self-funding it at that point, so we were under some major, major pressure. Uh late 2021, it was like every month you're seeing your own personal savings deplete, deplete, deplete. And like as the sales guy, once the product was ready to sell, now it was my time to shine. And the first few months we didn't grow like I was telling the other two guys. Don't worry about it. You just get the product ready, I'll sell it. Yeah. So month one, we sent out invoices for like $520, I think was the total across eight MSBs. And we were spending about $25,000 a month at that point to fund the company with four employees full-time. So into 2022, it was it felt like a mountain to climb, and there were points where I think all of us thought, oh, maybe we've we've made a mistake kind of coming back into the space. But truthfully, I always trusted the process was like, I mean, it sounds ridiculous, but Kevin Costner and Feel the Dreams, if you build it, they will come, was a little bit of what I was clinging on to. And I thought I knew the space well enough that nobody can do what we can do from an MSP standpoint. That the more MSPs that use it, learn to like it, love it, will become advocates for it. So um, into 2022 and beyond, word really started to spread organically. MSPs are awesome for telling their peers about hey, here's a product that we think is is really cool, we should check it out. So, like we got to a couple of hundred MSPs without even having anyone in marketing, and me as the salesperson, it just there's a virality to MSP products that is that is really neat. Um, so into 2023, we were starting to gain some traction, reputation, and we received a lot of inbound inquiries about hey, would you guys be open to taking investment? So being a first-time founder was something that I was cautious and you know, just you don't know what you don't know. So um we probably waited too long to take that first investment round. Um, and so that would closed in June of 2023. The VC in Ireland and the Irish government put like $1.7 million into mesh. By that point, I felt some of the unique cool stuff had been shipped away at, had been emulated. Um, and if we had taken money earlier, maybe we could have grown at a steeper trajectory. Well, we'd have a massive advantage of being cash positive when it came to negotiating with VCs, so we could say no. And I think it gave us a really strong hand when it was.

SPEAKER_02 6:48

But we went from burning roughly 25k in cash a month. Yeah, to be the cost flow positive and profitable in how long?

SPEAKER_01 6:56

Uh it would have been 18 months or so. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. Wow. And that was with you know, paying employees. It wasn't just founders at that point. Um, but we went as founders nearly two years without taking a salary. So um, yeah, there were a lot of sacrifices to get it to that point. But had we have been burning when we were negotiating with VCs, I think they would have had us over a barrel a little bit and thought, you know, we'll we'll lowball you and you have to accept it or you're gonna you're gonna go broke. So it was strategic in a sense of let's wait until we're cash flow positive. But it was also I just didn't have the time to raise money and also be the sales guy. So I thought, if I'm trying to raise while we're still trying to sell it, we'll probably go under because it's hard to do both.

SPEAKER_02 7:46

So and I've experienced that myself, so that's an interesting observation. So, so now fast forward, how does the Bit Defender deal come about when you first learned about the opportunity? What were you thinking?

SPEAKER_01 8:01

Yeah, what was I thinking? That's that's a really long answer. So um we were about a year post seed investment. Things were going really well, revenues had more than doubled. Uh, we were in a pretty good spot, and Bit Defender put out some feelers. And I think any founder in this space who has a company that's growing probably get knocks on the door often. How seriously? How many calls I get on? Yeah, it's exactly so how serious they are can be difficult to determine. So BitDefender reached out. We leverage some of their technology in mesh. So we have a relationship with them from since day one, and because of how we license some of their technology that's in our products, they can basically see our growth. So I think they were encouraged by okay, this is starting to get some real traction. So we had some conversations, and then that went quiet. And um, it was at this event a year ago, we had, I think we received our fifth term sheet. So um knocks on the door came in the form of, hey, we're looking to invest as well, interested in doing a series A. And I told all of them, hey, come back to me in Q3 because I just didn't have the time. So September of last year, we started having these conversations, probably 20 to 30 VCs, a bunch of them at this event because they specialize in MSB and want to come here and meet vendors. And we were pretty excited by so we we didn't set out to have those conversations like we're adamant we want to do a series A. Again, we were coming up on profitability, so we had optionality. Do we do this or not? But when we start envisioning well, here's what we could do with this money, it became quite exciting. So um, I was excited about the idea of hey, let's bro this, let's double head count and let's uh let's really go swing for the fences. Um, and a couple of things then happen. So I think everyone talks to everyone in this industry, right? So one company reached out and explored an acquisition, and we were open to having the conversation. And I think they they heard about it through one of the VCs, and the VC interested in us is also invested in this other, much bigger company in our space. We shared some numbers with them that I'm sure made it to this strategic. Even though they signed an NDA, I'm sure. And I I think most VCs don't even sign NDAs. You know, you're wasting your time. So yeah, if you share it with them, if you give them access to a data room, assume that's gonna go to other people. That's good advice. So that got the ball rolling on a conversation around MA, and then several parties also got interested. So we were having conversations with investors and potential acquirers all at the same time.

SPEAKER_02 10:55

But you're juggling a sale and a Series A together instead of saying to grow the business 200%.

SPEAKER_01 11:01

Yeah, exactly. Challenging time. It was a very challenging time, but bizarrely, like it there was no real turbulence with it all. So despite it being a distraction, the company continued to grow. Um, and that was the strength of what we had created, where it wasn't just founder reliant on founders, it was the staff were stepping up, sales were hitting numbers without me being that involved, which was awesome. So I think timing and coincidence play a big factor in all of this. Um, so in October of last year, uh, we basically we had an outage, right? So as an email security company, I think we our technology is the most immediate or the most urgent, right? If something goes wrong with email, you're you're gonna know about it. As an MSP, you're gonna get 50 calls within a few minutes. Hey, I'm not getting email. And it was no fault of our own, right? So this is something Microsoft had done to mesh. We're down for six hours, nobody's getting email in North America for six hours that uses mesh. That's hectic. We'd enough credit in the bank with our MSPs that nobody left because of it. People understood, one's off blip. But as founders, we realized what we've built could be potentially quite precarious and through no fault of our own. Like if this had been our mistake, that would have been actually better because we knew how to correct it. The fact that it was Microsoft on a whim had basically nuked our platform for a few hours, that was concerning. And timing is everything. So around the same times we had that, and we thought, right, we could do a Series A, we could have 10 million sitting in the bank. Doesn't matter if everyone leaves because you've had a second outage in a month. So that combined with some of the people that reached out to buy us. Like I've been in the space for such a long time, and I feel like I'm somewhat well known and I know a lot of people. Yeah, for sure. My reputation matters a lot. I'm 38 years old. Whatever I do after mesh, I assume will still be in this space. So the legacy of not just the employees at Mesh, the partners at Mesh, but the product itself really, really matters to me. And when BitDefender reached out, I thought, hmm, this seems like a good fit. And here's why. So many acquisitions in our space, email security are bigger company by smaller company, smaller company's product dies, consumed entirely by bigger company, and that's the motivation for the acquisition. BitDefender were licensing an email security product from a third party that they thought it'd be better if they owned it and they reached out to us. So this wasn't gonna be a case of our product dying. It was the opposite. It was gonna be well, it's gonna have way more resources and the roadmap's gonna accelerate in a way that you probably couldn't have achieved that as an independent small vendor. So it checked that box. Some of the other companies that reached out to us weren't cybersecurity first companies. So they were trying to make inroads into cybersecurity, and we thought like having that as your core, super important. So BitTefender check that box.

SPEAKER_02 14:06

I w I want to focus on the personal side.

SPEAKER_01 14:08

Okay, sure.

SPEAKER_02 14:09

So laid off multiple times through MA activity. You team up with two co-founders, you got this business, you're not taking hardly any money, your savings is dwindling.

SPEAKER_01 14:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 14:22

And then we come full circle, and the closing happens. I guess they wire transfer the money to your bank account. Yeah. What was the first experience with it for you? Was it on your phone, on your computer? When did you first see, like Yeah?

SPEAKER_01 14:38

So I've got, um, so I'm Irish and I've got my my bank account is Irish. There's a bank uh that I use called Revolute, and it will so like if I tap and pay for a coffee in the restaurant there, instantly I'll get an alert on my phone saying, You've paid this for coffee, and this is your this is your remaining balance. So when the wire transfer hit, it's like a notification on phone, you have received X from Y, and now your balance is this. And I looked at it and truthfully, I was like, it kind of feels underwhelming. Not that it's not a very generous sum of money, it was, but it doesn't feel like how maybe you imagine it's not like hey, let's crack open the champagne, let's go crazy. It was just this, okay, no, now what do I do next? kind of thing. It wasn't it wasn't like I felt like I had achieved anything bizarrely, which clearly I had. It was all right, well now what do I do? Um and what do we do next from a product standpoint, and um and being focused on that. So it sounds boring, or maybe it sounds like I'm you know, I'm not being truthful, but legitimately that notification coming in, I do remember it, but I remember being like, huh. And I've been historically like there's no money in my family, I don't even own any property, so this is like life-changing money, but it felt a bit I don't know, anticlimactic, or part of it felt like it wasn't the journey is the fun part. It's a cliche, right? It's uh it's about the journey, not the destination. Kind of was like the the parts where I got the most excitement were MSP saying, Hey, that product that you built, that's awesome. And it's that was the validating piece.

SPEAKER_02 16:27

The I I get emails, some of the most rewarding things that happened to me when people just write an email saying, Thank you for creating monks.

SPEAKER_01 16:35

That was it. The the financial gain at the end of it, and maybe just look, this is four months in, so maybe in time it will feel different. But for now, like hasn't changed my life that much. There's been no extravagant spends. Like, I listen to some podcasts with SAS founders, and at the end of it, they say, Hey, do you have a trophy purchase to commemorate? Not really.

SPEAKER_02 16:58

But you took 21 of your mates to Mexico City for a party. That's your trophy purchase.

SPEAKER_01 17:05

Yeah, it wasn't like a Porsche or Lamborghini or anything ridiculous like that. It was, I want to share this with uh some friends, and yeah, that was have some that was how I celebrated, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 17:15

So one of the most fascinating things that I I I'm drawn to about your story is that as founders, we all are looking for the perfect exit. Sure. But when we exit, we find maybe some things are different than we expected. So for you, in what ways has the exit been different than what you expected? Um I think it's been about what I expected so far.

SPEAKER_01 17:42

Like, I'm still running mesh. Day to day hasn't really changed. Um, weekly I have more meetings on my calendar because I meet with folks at BitDefender. Uh, we're currently working on an integration of mesh into BitDefender. But it's been about what I expected. You know, there hasn't been many surprises. Um, you know, so much of my identity, I think every founder shares this, is I am the CEO of this business. Me and this business are interchangeable. And I gotta get used to the fact that long term it's no longer my baby. I still maintain responsibility for it. My role at Bit Defender is VP of email security, so it is still my baby, but not in the way it used to be. So adjusting to what that will mean long term, I think is is something that will will take some time. But for now, it feels this is what I expected. Um, you know, there's there's a little bit less pressure, which is inevitable, um, just in terms of I don't worry about payroll. You know, it's like, hey, every month I gotta go in and make sure that we have enough enough cash for that. That's no longer something that is under my direct uh responsibility. So there's there's a little bit less pressure in some areas.

SPEAKER_02 18:58

For the SaaS founders like me, ultimately want to exit one day. Uh, describe the emotional roller coaster that exiting can be like.

SPEAKER_01 19:07

Um yeah, good, good question. So there were certainly points where it looked like the deal wasn't gonna come off, and you know, you can get emotionally invested in it. The longer it drags on, the more time, money, energy you spend in trying to get the deal done. And where it feels like it may not come off, you then start to doubt, Whoa, have we made a mistake here? And what's our legal bill gonna be at the end of this that you know we're we're gonna have to cover if we don't exit? Um, so I think preparing yourself, the the advice I would give is whatever time frame you have where you sign an LOI and you're saying, hey, we're gonna be closed by this date, I would say triple it at least and have the expectation that there are gonna be some unknown unknowns, things are gonna slow down, due diligence is gonna take longer than anyone estimates. Even people who've done this a million times, prepare for something that you're just you're just not gonna expect and have that time frame in your mind that doesn't matter what people tell you, assume it's gonna take way longer. And if you have that sec that expectation set out from the beginning, I think it's much easier to remain pretty level throughout and not feel the ups and downs too much because it is it is a roller coaster, and there are points where you know lawyers are gonna do what lawyers do, and they will get into little rabbit holes with each other, and everyone can kind of lose focus on well, what are we actually trying to achieve in the first place? And is this crazy edge case scenario that you're both looking to protect against ever likely to happen? No, let's just meet in the middle, and that's where I think things can really slow down. So managing your expectations, managing your energy, yeah, assume it's gonna take a very, very long time to get over the line. That's awesome.

SPEAKER_02 20:59

And if someone wanted to get in touch with Mess to learn more about email security and your other applications through BitDefender, what would be the best way to connect?

SPEAKER_01 21:10

Yeah, I mean, I'm pretty active on LinkedIn. So Brian Byrne, that's B-U Y R N E is my last name. Some Americans have a hard time pronouncing it. Some people think I'm named Brian Brian, uh, which happens a lot. Yeah, LinkedIn is where I'm most active, so always happy to connect. Reach out, send me an invitation, and send me a DM. Yeah. Into my DMs.

SPEAKER_02 21:31

Awesome. Ladies and gentlemen, my friend Brian from Mesh. Uh it's all about the journey. It's not about the destination. That advice is so poignant for founders who are looking to exit and so that they don't find emptiness on the other side. Thank you, Brian. My pleasure. Thanks for having me. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 21:52

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