Founded by Vuki Vujasinovic, Sling & Stone built up a world-class client roster, partnering with some of the most exciting start-ups, category-defining unicorns and publicly listed industry leaders. They experienced rapid growth over the past 11 years and now have 70 employees based across offices in Sydney, Auckland, and Los Angeles.
We recently caught up with Vuki to find out how he found the overall experience of selling his business and to see if he had any advice or insight for sellers in a similar position.
Watch his interview below.
Tell us about Sling & Stone
Sling and Stone is an agency that started in 2010. It started at a time when there were no agencies that knew how to or wanted to work with disruptors, start-ups and innovators. So I launched it in a share house in Newton, with an Ikea desk, a laptop and one very willing client.
We were growing off our own back, really proudly, growing internationally. And we could keep growing, but with the right partner and the right people in our corner, I realised that we could have an even bigger impact. Create even better careers for our teammates, do even more important and impactful work for our clients and perhaps in 5 years do what otherwise would have taken us 10 years.
Finding the right partner and getting the global scale and network of a group that can help you scale even further is something that I decided was the right thing to do at that time.
If you could distil all your experience down and only give one piece of advice to someone considering selling their business what would that be?
Both in running your business and looking at M&A opportunities, the advice is the same, which is, focus.
I’ve always been a believer in being the best, or trying to be the best at a specific thing, rather than a jack-of-all-trades.
What were the most important factors when selecting an acquirer?
Probably the most important factors for us, were finding a partner that understood the entrepreneurial spirit of our agency, but also that understood and backed our vision, rather than try and change what you’re about, or mess with the fundamentals of your business.
How did you find the overall experience?
It was really great to step out of running the business day-to-day for more than 10 years and have this helicopter view of the agency, of our business, of how we fit into the world and how we fit into our industry as well.
Bringing the right people into your agency at the right time was a really important step; it is a marathon, not a sprint.
I’m so thankful to the SI Partners team for finding VCCP Business. It's been really great!
Read more about the Sling & Stone transaction.