2 Exits + 4 Kids = 1 Incredible Woman

0:00Welcome to Exit Paradox, where we explore what actually happens after a successful business exit. I'm your host, Anastasia Koroleva.

0:14I think my sense of purpose goes well beyond my work. It extends to my family. I would say my arc of purpose has expanded. Linda Abraham is one of the most extraordinary women I've ever met. She's in a class of her own. She sold her first company 28 years ago, delivering a 5x return to investors in just two years. But Linda didn't stop there. She went on to lead her second company, Comscore, from founding to IPO, building it into a global powerhouse with offices in 23 countries. Today, she runs Crimson Capital, investing her family's money in early-stage tech companies and serves on several boards, including Tiger21.

1:09But what really blows me away most is that she built all of this while raising four children and thoughtfully nurturing deep loving relationships with each of them. This episode is about an exceptional entrepreneur who managed to do it all and built a life that's both financially successful and holistically fulfilling. There's so much we can all learn from her.

1:40Hi, Linda. So happy to have you here. Hi, Anastasia. Great to see you. so Linda we just talked about how your first exit was 28 years ago which for me is it just excites me so much you have no idea because it means that unlike most people I talk to you had almost three decades of post-exit experience and a chance to process process it and move on from there well yes for sure it was it's hard to believe it's 28 years ago but But it was. Well, you've done so much since then. So we'll focus on this today because this podcast is all about what happens to people after a successful business exit. So if we go back to that moment 28 years ago and you just sold Peregrine Technologies, how did you feel?

2:35Well, it all happened, you know, very quickly. It wasn't really expected that we would sell it that quickly. We had, you know, visions of building it into something really big. But we basically got a, you know, an offer that we were not expecting. And it was kind of too good to pass up. And so how did I feel? I felt kind of, wow, we built something of real value in a relatively short amount of time. It was about two and a half. we were just about two and a half years in and all of our investors you know had like a 5x return which they were very happy with and it was definitely great for us personally.

3:21My kids were, my son was very young at the time, I had yet to have my second daughter but it was a time of kind of great excitement. We felt very accomplished and really very excited. So how did that translate into your next business? How did your motivation change? Why did you even decide to do it again? Well, it was a really interesting time. It wasn't at all obvious what we wanted to do next at all. And my husband and I did both of our companies together. So one of the benefits of working with your husband is you have a lot of opportunity to talk about it and brainstorm. But the first thing we did was none of that was just sort of take a breath and think about, you know, very carefully what we wanted to do next.

4:17And it was a very interesting time. It was 1999. The Internet was first getting started. And we were, you know, sort of collectively taking stock of what we were good at, what we really enjoyed doing, what we were good at. and we were both very good with data, very good with analytics. My husband in particular was really great at being a technology visionary and innovator. And I was good at kind of selling products, commercializing things. We also had another co-founder who we had worked with previously at our previous company before Peregrine. And he and another investor kind of approached us with this idea that, you know, collectively, you have the great, great collective skill set that you could really be.

5:12The Internet is going to be something someday. At the time, it was, you know, just getting started. But, you know, the notion was that as it grows, it's going to mean it's going to need a third party scorekeeper of some kind. and you guys kind of have the collective intelligence and the right experience to be able to play that role. You've heard of Nielsen for television and the Nielsen television ratings and they have their sort of the currency of buying and selling ads online. We could potentially be that for the internet. And so we started thinking about it and one thing led to another and we went out to, we put some ideas together.

5:58And at one point we went out to Silicon Valley to test out, you know, the PowerPoint deck and pitch it to a few people. And at the time, this will be very different for you because you weren't around then. But at the time, money was flowing to the internet like crazy. It was very overfunded. It was, it was, if you had, if you had an idea, you basically were able to get funding. It was kind of crazy. So a lot of ideas that were funded in that period that should not have been. But we had a 26 page PowerPoint presentation, much of which we wrote on the plane between Washington, DC and Silicon Valley.

6:40And we ended up getting a$26 million valuation. And we all we had was an idea. We had no product. We had no employees. We had no technology. We just had an idea and a vision of how we were going to do it. And we got funded at, you know, a great valuation. So that's kind of how we got started. That's amazing. But do you think it was a good thing that you had so much money early on? Absolutely. In fact, there's a downside to it, right? Well, you know, what we were doing and keep in mind the timeframe here, we were going to build, We were going to basically create a panel of people who are going to volunteer to let us, you know, track everywhere they went on the Internet anonymously.

7:29We're not going to collect PII, but we were going to build a panel of a million people from around the world. And this was pre-cloud. So it was a very capital intensive business. business. We had to buy all of our own servers. We had to, um, um, you know, manage our, all of our own technology. So it was extremely capital intensive. So, um, that being said, we, if there was an award for being frugal with how you spent every dollar, we would have won it because we were very, very, very scrappy with the money. Um, we never bought new desks. We always bought use desks and polish them ourselves. We were very, very, very scrappy with the money, which turned out to be great because the next year was 2000 and all of our major clients went out of business.

8:22And so we really crashed. That was a very tough period. We call it the internet nuclear winter. And a lot of those companies that were funded ended up going out of business. In In fact, of the companies that were funded in 1999, I think only 5 % of them survived 10 years later and we were among them. It was your frugality that helped you be in a different position. Well, that was a part of it. That probably wasn't even the primary position. But, yeah, we did have we did preserve cash and we were glad that we did. But what really helped us was being able to kind of think on our feet and think creatively about how to come up with additional uses of this massive data asset that we had built.

9:08Because when we first started, our early vision was that we were going to measure e-commerce primarily. And so we had big clients like Pets.com, for example, which was a huge company with a huge valuation at the time. They were one of our biggest customers. And when the Internet crashed in 2000, a lot of those e-commerce, early e-commerce companies went totally out of business and there went our revenue. So here we were with this very unique data asset, you know, a million people from around the world. And we were measuring everything that they everything they did on the Internet, everything they bought, everywhere they went.

9:47And so we basically pivoted from that e-commerce tracking model to more of an audience measurement model where we were measuring full audiences. And we were doing a lot more analytics and developing products that helped people basically move their business or be able to compete online using our data. And so it was a period of tremendous creativity. creativity um and but we were it was really um there's nothing that pushes you to be creative than the the need to survive and that's really where we were we were you know dangerously close to failing and failure was just not an option so we kept coming up with new and different creative ways of using the data.

10:36I mean, one example is we came up with an application where you could take this data and use it in financial models. There was a major hedge fund whose name I probably shouldn't say, but it's a very well-known hedge fund. I guess I can say who it is. This was a long time ago. It was Citadel. We weren't able to say their name at the time. we referred to them internally as Bulldog. There were only like three people who knew the actual company. But basically, we sold them exclusive access to our data for millions of dollars because they were using it to find out on their side which companies were going to win and lose in the age of the Internet.

11:22And we had this very unique early insight as a heartbeat of which companies were doing well with regard to reaching people online and which companies weren't. So they were able to incorporate that as one of the inputs into their financial models and do a better job at predicting the health and success of companies in the digital world. So that was just one of many, many kind of new twists on the data asset that we had developed. And we just kept coming up with more and more of them. And we ended up coming up, inventing kind of new lines of business that really helped us get through that difficult period.

12:00So despite all these difficulties, you IPO'd in just seven years after you started. Yeah. And that was a much bigger exit for you personally. Yes. So I often talk to... Yeah, in fact, I was just going to say, not just us, but one of the proudest things in our lives is we minted, I think, 31 millionaires that day. That is huge and it's very important. That was one of the greatest things that happened, not just our own personal success. But did you stay on after the IPO? Oh, yeah, I was there for 15 years. For a while, your financial situation changed, but you were still very busy working. Why did you continue working, even though presumably you could afford not to?

12:51For me, it was never about the money. still isn't about the money. It was, you know, to me, it's really, money is really a byproduct of doing something that you really believe in, that really motivates you, that you enjoy, that you find challenging. And so, you know, having the opportunity to, you know, play a major role in running a public company was a whole new set of challenges. It involved a whole new set of things. It allowed us capital, for example, to expand internationally, which is something I spent a lot of time doing. It also allowed us to do a bunch of acquisitions, which I was also very involved in, having led many of them.

13:35And so it really allowed us to expand in a way that we couldn't have otherwise if we had just been relying on cash flow. So it was really a very pivotal moment of change and an opportunity to turn Comscore from a US-based company into a global company. And by the time I left, we had 32 offices in 23 countries. So that was quite a journey. Amazing. Why did you leave? Well, you know, I kind of subscribed to the Steve Jobs, you know, when he talked about if you wake up every morning and you look in the mirror and you're really, you know, excited about what you're doing, then you keep doing it. But when the day comes where you're not, then it's time to do something else.

14:19And I kind of got to that point. I had done kind of everything I wanted to do, and I felt like I wasn't really learning that much anymore. It was really becoming more of what I already knew how to do over and over again. And that's just less interesting to me. So, you know, when I got to that point, you know, I just picked the person that I thought was going to basically be able to do what I was doing and worked with him to, you know, take over my role. and it was all, you know, all very orchestrated, all very positive. So I had a great team and they kept doing what they were doing. So that's when your actual exit happened because you suddenly had no longer, you know, place to go, you know, a purpose and structure and all of that.

15:09How did that feel? Well, in the beginning it was, you know, I would say a little bit disconcerting not having the structure of, you know, having a, going to an office every day and having a team. But one of the things that I did was, well, at Comscore was a lot of M &A work. And that got me always that had me very. Sparked an interest in learning where technology is going, because I was always seeing new startups, new companies, what they were doing. And our challenge at Comscore was, you know, do we build, buy or partner? And that was one of the things that I was always thinking about. Where's technology going?

15:59Could we build this thing or should we buy it? So I ended up connecting with lots and lots of technology startups there all over the world, which was an amazing experience. So that sparked an interest in new companies. Some of those companies I ended up investing in. And then once I invested, they would ask me to be on their board. So I did a lot of board work. So it was sort of a very natural transition to doing what I started doing with early stage tech companies, because a lot of the companies somehow with my background kind of found me. I didn't really have to go out and look for companies.

16:37It was sort of I had a pretty broad network of of people that I work with and knew lots of people in the venture capital community. And so there was a lot of collaboration. People would bring me in to kind of say, hey, I'm looking at investing in this company. Can you give me your ideas? What do you think? So I had this, it kind of gave me an opportunity to, you know, sort of transition into something else without having to work too hard to find it, I guess. Did you take a break? I did take a break. And I, but I didn't take a break right away because, well, I kind of jumped into a lot of things very quickly.

17:20And I think that's just because part of my personality is that I'm interested in lots and lots of things. And so almost, you know, if I thought something was interesting, I would kind of get involved in it right away. And collectively, I remember, you know, my husband saying to me about six months out, like, I think you're busier now than you were a comp score. And so, you know, that got me thinking. And so then I started to kind of pull back a little bit. And my break really came maybe, you know, a year and a half after leaving Comscore because I really started saying, wait a minute, I really don't want to sign up for, you know, another full time role yet.

18:05I'm really missing out on part of what I should be experiencing here. And so I started backing off a little bit and getting involved in fewer companies in bigger ways. And what did you do instead if you started working less? Well, I started working on boards of companies and doing advising for some of the startups that I was working with. Yes. So less of day-to-day work and more. Less of day-to-day. Yeah. So you have four kids. So I imagine it was quite a challenge to balance your motherhood and business. Yes. How did you help you? How did you manage to do that? Well, let's see. Yeah. Lots of younger women ask me this question, and I guess I have a couple of different answers.

18:59One is that it is, first of all, it's not easy, as we all know, but part of the approach that I took was I didn't try to figure it all out at once. When you have four kids, they're in different stages and there's quite an age difference with my kids. So two of my older kids are not mine biologically, but they are very much mine in my heart. and then I've got two that were younger. So they're going to be, they all were in very different stages. And I really tried to mold what I was doing around what their needs were in a lot of cases. And I had fantastic help at home. That's a key part of the, that was a key part of the ingredient for me.

19:52We had an amazing nanny, and one of the best decisions that we made was when we first started Comscore, we gave her some founder shares when they were worth nothing. And today she owns her own home and drives a Lexus. So she was also very interested in the success of the business, right? You aligned interests. Well, we kind of said, look, this is going to be quite a ride. There's going to be lots of unanticipated things. We're going to need extra help from you. But basically the philosophy was when I'm with the kids, I want to be 100 % focused on the kids. And she would focus on the house. When I was at work, she would be 100 % focused on the kids.

20:42And I didn't really care about the house, that kind of thing. So the kids always came first. and I think the advice I would give to younger mothers is I think there's a tendency to figure it out all at once. What is this formula? What is this magic formula that I'm going to use for work-life balance? And I think that's just the wrong question. It is really a daily question. It's very fluid and you have to be able to be flexible and you've got to have great people around you. And the key thing is you've got to have an amazing husband, which I'm really blessed with because we were 100 % aligned that no matter what was happening with the business, family came first and we would just do our best kind of on a day-to-day basis.

21:29And there were plenty of times that I would, um, I mean, let me step back. I mean, the reality is you cannot be in two places at once. You know, you can either be at your kid's basketball game or you can be closing a big deal in New York. You cannot be in both places. So there were plenty of times where I had to have someone from my team go and do something that I would frankly, you know, in many ways prefer to be doing. But because of the needs of the family, I did not want to travel or wanted to be somewhere else. And so you have to put your ego aside and you have to say, what is the best way to get this done and everything I have to get done.

22:12And, um, so, and that means in some cases you end up not doing some things that you, um, frankly think you could do better than the person that you're sending in some cases, or in other cases, you just something that you really enjoy doing that you don't get to do. And you, you instead have to do something that you enjoy less. Um, so there There are, you know, there are daily trade-offs and, um, and there's no one right way of figuring it out that you can kind of say, here's the formula. Here's what I did. You should do it too. I just don't think that exists. I think every kid is different. Uh, the four of mine had different needs at different points in their lives.

22:55And that applies to their dad too. There were plenty of times where, um, you know, my husband would be in a better position for whatever one of the kids was going through to be able to handle it. So I would pick things up that he was doing so that he could, you know, he could do whatever he had to do with the kids. So very much of a long answer, but I would say it was a daily challenge. It sounds like a teamwork. Yeah, it's a teamwork. If we think about building a startup, it's also very fluid. Yeah, absolutely. At the end of the day, it's how well people cooperate, how well they gel together because also in the beginning in a startup, it's not always clear who does exactly what job.

23:36So I personally think that a family in this sense is not that different. I agree with you completely that you grow with your children, with your husband, you grow together and learn. Yeah, a lot of people would say to me, you know, oh, I could never work with my husband. You know, how do you guys do that? And, you know, I kind of have two answers to that. One is that we worked together before we got married. very effectively. So we kind of had a pretty strong series of data points that we worked well together. But the second is that when you're both entrepreneurs and you are building the same company and you're building a family, you're very organically and kind of holistically aligned.

24:20And if we were both building two separate companies, I think it would have been a hell of a lot harder. But the fact that we both had, we were very aligned on what was important, what our priorities are and how we were going to make those trade-offs. And we helped each other and we had a fantastic team that was just outstanding. So we were really lucky. But still, it had to be difficult sometimes. Oh, yeah, it was. Well, one of the sacrifices that I made, which I only realized after I left Comscore, was I really did not sleep enough for 20 years. I was always tired and I kind of didn't even realize that until I stopped and still I had the luxury of being able to wake up with an alarm clock which I actually think is the most meaningful sign of wealth that one can have in their life it's being able to wake up yeah I really didn't even realize so for me that was you know that I was working a lot you know as soon as the kids went to bed at night, that was a big time of creativity for me and productivity.

25:34And then, you know, if you work till often till, you know, one, two in the morning and you're up at six, you know, that's just not enough sleep. So that was a big sacrifice, which I only really realized in retrospect. I didn't realize it as much in the time. Was it that during that break that you slowed down and caught up on your sleep? Yeah. How long of a break did you take and what else helped you transition to a more holistically healthy lifestyle that you have now? Well, I think, you know, the luxury of time and the luxury of focus was really terrific. That was a terrific bridge for me. So, for example, I was able to focus a lot more on my health, which I have been, you know, doing much more so than when I was building the companies.

26:41I was able to, you know, get involved in exercise, just read a lot more about health, just try a lot of new things that I wasn't able to try before. And that really kind of opened my eyes to a lot of things that I really had been missing. So that was a very pivotal thing for me. And it also led to some interesting investments that some of them have not yet worked out, but hopefully they will someday. But I think that that was very eye-opening. And there's some recognition that health as you get older is not something that's going to take care of itself. You kind of take it for granted when you're younger, but I no longer do that.

27:26Yeah. So most of us find it pretty difficult to transition from an entrepreneurial mindset to an investor mindset. Yeah. How did it happen for you? Yeah, I learned some hard lessons with that transition. when so in my journey when I started investing one of the things that you notice is that you know when entrepreneurs want your money they tend to agree with you on a lot of things and so I would look at a company and I would sort of I would you know evaluate the product evaluate the technology and develop an opinion on you know what I thought it could be and you know, talk with the, the, um, the CEO about these ideas and you tend to get a lot of yeses during that conversation.

28:18But what I really learned is that, you know, there is the things that can make you a very good entrepreneur or a reasonably good entrepreneur can make you a terrible investor because if you bring with you the, you know, optimism or vision that you think could be and and the end of the day the ceo doesn't either agree with you or they can't execute on what it is that you're both discussing um that ends up not working out so i i learned some hard lessons there and i also learned um that there is a you know the transition from being an entrepreneur to being a board member is something you have to be very very mindful of in that context and so So I went.

29:02Can we talk about this in more detail? Why is that difficult? Why is it difficult? Well, because, you know, when you are very operationally, you know, experienced as I was, you tend to, in a lot of cases, go right to how you would fix the problem if you were involved and, you know, if you were operationally involved. and you don't have that same, you know, you're sitting on a different branch looking at the situation from a different point of view when you are a board member. Now, in some cases, you bring a perspective, expertise that the CEO, you know, can't see, and you're able to kind of add value that way by, you know, having him or her think about things a little bit differently, And that's really the hope in terms of one of the ways you're adding value.

30:05But initially, my head always would go to what I would do if I were in that situation. And the reality is I'm not in that situation. I'm not running the company. So the most productive thing I can do is translate that into more of a strategic question and more of a strategic discussion about what the options are and think about things from a higher level. with also for the full recognition that, you know, I don't have the same familiarity with all of the day-to-day details of how the business is being run. I'm looking at it at a much higher level. So it took me a while. I would say that took me, I would say I probably had about a two-year learning curve of being very, very conscious of that.

30:51And also, you know, asking other people who I was sitting on boards with for feedback on that regard in terms of how it was that I was presenting myself, how it was I was adding value, the kinds of things that I was raising, the way that I was having conversations. And I learned a lot in those two years about how to be a better board member and advisor and the difference between that and being the entrepreneur. many people find sitting on boards quite boring after an entrepreneurial journey because there is not as much control or a chance to channel our creativity into our business did you feel that i've enjoyed it i um i think that uh i mean some have been more interesting than some roles have been more interesting than others, obviously, as is always the case.