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Episode 119

Exiting for a Record Multiple to Morgan Stanley with Dru Riess

This week on The Exit: The minute Dru left college he was on the hunt for an opportunity. His desperation took him to a dusty barn in Dallas with an old printing press and a contact written on a napkin for 49% of a business that at the time wasn’t operational. This was the beginning of Popular Ink, which grew to the number one print packaging business in the US, and was acquired by Morgan Stanley for a record multiple. Listen to learn how Dru built the business from nothing and exited to one of the biggest investment management companies.


Andrew (Dru) Riess is a visionary executive and profitability catalyst with repeated success growing revenue, optimizing profits, and expanding business footprint within multimillion-dollar corporations, private-equity backed organizations, and entrepreneurial start-ups. Among many achievements Dru founded the company Popular Ink in 2007. Popular Ink, LLC had grown organically to be a leader in short run, high service specialty packaging for health and beauty and nutraceutical mar-kets, before its acquisition by PPC in 2019.

LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/riess2/

Website – https://innovativegummies.com/

 

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The Exit—Presented By Flippa: A 30-minute podcast featuring expert entrepreneurs who have been there and done it. The Exit talks to operators who have bought and sold a business. You’ll learn how they did it, why they did it, and get exposure to the world of exits, a world occupied by a small few, but accessible to many. To listen to the podcast or get daily listing updates, click on flippa.com/the-exit-podcast/

YOUR HOST

Steve McGarry

An entrepreneur, content creator, and investor based in sunny Tampa, Florida. In 2015, while living in San Francisco, Steve sold his first fintech startup LendLayer to Max Levchin’s (founder of PayPal) consumer finance company Affirm.

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