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Episode 134

Estonian-Founder Exits to Japanese Tech Giant Rakuten with Heikki Haldre

This week on The Exit: When Heikki Haldre was at university, his brother gave him a computer and told him that it didn’t matter what he did as long as he did something. So he started a business. Living in Estonia, a newly developed country, Heikki worked with high net worth individuals who were looking to incorporate companies. Looking back, he acknowledges that this type of business was pretty horrible. In fact, out of the 10,000 companies discovered by the Panama Papers, about 1,000 were incorporated by Heikki. He quickly got out of that space, selling the business to a Luxembourg company and never looked back. Heikki took the money from the sale to build a career that would include three more exits, the biggest of which involved selling a virtual fitting room business to Japanese technology conglomerate, Rakuten, the sixth largest Ecommerce company in the world. With four exits under his belt, Heikki has a wealth of knowledge to share about how to find potential buyers, setting your business up for a great sale price, and managing the transition period. Listen to hear his full exit story.

Heikki Haldre was the Founder, CEO, and CPO of Rakutan before its acquisition in 2016. Post the acquisition Heikki was the Board and strategy Advisor for Rakutan Fits.me. Heikki is currently the Founder of Miros, The world’s first visual language for eCommerce search.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hhaldre/

His current company: https://miros.ai/

For a Free Flippa Business Valuation: flippa.com/freevaluation 

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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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