Champ & Nanos: Changes...

So, despite our best attempts to settle in to life here in Seattle, it seems that life has other plans in store for us. A little over a month ago my company, EW (I'm not using any of the companies actual names because I don't want this to be searchable), was bought by a company called DG. For employees there are good acquisitions/mergers and there are bad ones. You may recall that EW was purchased about 18 months ago by a company I'll refer to as LL. At the time, I had a little equity in EW and so this purchase was good. I received some cash and equity from LL in the deal. We were one of LL biggest customers prior to the acquisition and it didn't seem like LL wanted to change much about us. They were mostly trying to set themselves up to be bought themselves (which would have also been great).

Well, it turns out that planning to be bought is not much of a plan at all. The purchase didn't work out for them, EW didn't grow as projected and we were behind on delivery of key product that would have helped revenue. After their stock took a big hit in the first half of the year, LL quickly sold EW to DG in August at a huge discount. LL had purchased EW for $110 million and sold it only 18 months later for $66 million (ouch!).

This seems like a logical deal for DG. DG specializes in TV advertising and content distribution and over the past 18 months had purchased two of our competitors UC and MM. I won't bore you with the details of the industry, but EW, UC and MM each have their strengths, with EW being known for our high touch service team (the team I ran up until I moved to Seattle). DG can leverage their client relationships (which are the same as ours) to bring in business for their online business and hopefully integrate all three organizations to bring out the strengths in each (BTW, the biggest competition in the market is a Google owned company, DC).

Great for DG, but there were a few problems for me. First, I'd left the Operations team (where our value was) and had moved to the product team (where MM was by far the strongest). As soon as the acquisition happened my team was told to stop all work since our product would not be used going forward. Second, the majority of my LL ownership was options with the strike price being higher than the current price and so that went away. I was pretty sure for the past few weeks that I would be let go and was doing some preliminary job searching. Sara and I were also talking about if we could make it work if I were a stay-at-home dad.

Two weeks ago I was asked to help with the integration of the Operations team and invited to NY to participate in the Operations Integration task force (I know what your thinking, but that is not the name of a legion of super-heroes like the Avengers or the X-Men). So last week I went to NY. My mom, the angel that she is, flew out to Seattle on three days notice to help Sara with Sam). Last Thursday in NY I was asked to be the Operations Integration Project Manager (seriously, at what point did I enter a world where you can put those four words together in a completely unironic way?). On Friday I got told that my current role, (also unironic) Product Management Program Manager, would be eliminated as of January 16th and, unless I found a new role, I would be out of work. There it was. In the language of the times I had been "synergized."

Now, it could be worse. I've got at least 3 months of employment and I'm in a role where I will have good visibility into the combined operations team and be able to identify where I can add the most value. I'm also very excited about this opportunity. I greatly enjoy change management and creating processes and structure (I know, you keep reading this and thinking to yourself "Is this all satire?" But it's not. Somehow, at 32 this is my life and I think it's interesting).

And if something doesn't work out with DG, I'm confident that things will work out for us. Sara's turned the corner on the whole MD career and is now generating a positive cash flow - so that division of Gravelin-Weisbrod Inc is heading up (although, unless we can generate some revenue out of cuteness, projections for the Sam A division look to be in red for the foreseeable future) . And, despite the continued lousy economy, most of the time I feel like I'm pretty employable (or at least my Mom says so). And, even if not, we've been fortunate enough over the past couple of years that I could have some flexibility on whether or not I go back to work immediately.

So, we're hanging in there through the changes. I think Sam has made a difference for me and my emotional stability through these tough times. He's added purpose. And he's a constant reminder to be present. And he's just so darn adorable. So, on that note, here's your Sam cuteness for the week:

He's becoming a fairly stable walker:

He likes to climb in things and up things. Here's the pots and pans drawer under the oven: