New Beginnings

A few weeks ago, I moved back into the Atlanta Tech Village where I'm busy chasing a couple new ideas. Being here brought our DecisionLink beginnings and journey to mind. There are so many vivid memories and heightened awareness of the rich blessings God bestowed on me as we built the company.

13 years ago, John Porter Mark Camilleri Chris Richards Jake Berryhill and I started the DecisionLink business. We had 3 big challenges...we were self-funded (and therefore, under-funded), John and I were first time entrepreneurs and we sought to solve a really hard problem. We were almost knocked off the tracks when Jake was in a near fatal automobile accident in the spring of 2011. But we persisted.

10 years ago, we moved into the Atlanta Tech Village . I think a couple floors were still under construction. We started with one desk, then a 4 person office, then 7, then 10, then 17 and ultimately over 40. What a great place to grow and thrive and l'll always be grateful to Julie Pierre Karen C. Houghton David Lightburn David Cummings Irina Burlack and the many members of the ATV family where we were privileged to members. Atlanta Tech Village honored us with a wonderful graduation ceremony last Friday which, of course, included a bourbon tasting curated by Casey Teague Atlanta's top whiskey expert.

5 years ago we delivered our breakthrough product in v5 of ValueCloud?, the first enterprise-grade application for Customer Value Management. We went on a tear winning 90% of competitive deals including DocuSign INC ServiceNow Research CrowdStrike Adobe NCR Corporation VMware 卡特彼勒 Workday EBIMS (formerly AIRWATCH) Equifax Smartsheet iCIMS and almost 100 small to medium-size businesses. It reminded me of the 90's when the Florida Gators, led by the Head Ball Coach, were ripping their way through college football.

We hit 1M ARR, then 3M ARR, then 10M ARR and averaged ~120% NRR, something I'm super proud of. We flourished as we fought our way through the COVID pandemic and climbed to the top of the Atlanta Tech Village monument at Piedmont and Lenox:

We established some cool traditions like the DecisionLink Bourbon Bar and Ring the Bell celebrations, our camaraderie and culture were the best I've ever known.

We defied a lot of odds along the way:

• Nobody starts a tech company at 58 years old.
• Nobody can automate Value Engineering.
• You have too little money, no entrepreneurial experience, problem is too hard.
• Your don't have the power to create a category.

We accomplished all of that and more. 3 years ago, we raised an $18M Series A funding with Accel and thought we were off to the races.

We had some bumps along the way, you're not trying hard enough if you don't.

We suffered unimaginable loss in the passing of our colleagues Jake Berryhill and Doug Berryhill. While I'm disappointed we failed to achieve the post-Series A success that we should have, nothing compares to the loss of these beloved colleagues.

People matter most. Great companies mean nothing without great people and wow did we have them in our people, customers and investors.

Many of the best minds in the business are in our customer base; we'd have never built ValueCloud? without them. Too many to mention but I'd be remiss not to give my forever appreciation and admiration for Jeff Mitchell Mike Maxey Gavin Harris at AirWatch, VMware and Nexthink, Cliff Elam Jonathan Lerner and Greg Schwager at ACI Worldwide and multiple others, Ran Haimoff at DocuSign, Chris Dowse Michael Hubbard Matt Denton Greg Cunningham and Kevin K. Tai at ServiceNow and later at SmartSheet and Confluent, Mike Carpenter Megan B. and Daisha Chung at CrowdStrike, Trent Isaacs with Jonathan at Verint, Daniel Campbell David Bone and team at NCR, Kristina Cutter at Amadeus, Joe Sexton and Kevin Reardon at McAfee, Mark Stevens all over the place, Hadley W. Paul at Pagerduty, Ben Allard at Apptio, Ben Pruden at Elastic, Joe Gnorski at Glory Global (congrats on promotion to President Joe), Joanne Moretti all over the place, Patrick Bakey and Karen Heatwole at ICIMS, Ashley McLaughlin at Caterpillar, Mike Keating at Contrast Security and BioCatch, Rudie Roy at Dynatrace. Pete Mansel at Accruent, Michelle Accardi at Star2Star, Mike Murphy at Zscaler. I know I missed many and my apologies. Every one above made meaningful contributions in the pursuit of Value Selling Automation?. Many were customers at multiple company. Most of them "stood tall" when facing internal resistance, lethargy and other impediments to progress.

Those are the customers; we had unbelievable employees along the journey. In addition to John, Jake, Mark and Chris there were Lewis LaCook Gabriel Vidal Cliff Elam Kurt Laug Kristina Cutter Andrew Abdalla James Gaster Doug Berryhill Steve Durkee Bonnie Wilson Mike Maxey Joanne Moretti Zach Lowe Josh Lankford Lizzie O'Rourke Deanna Spinelli Ty Flippin Lisa Salit Lisa McWhirter Jackie Liney Katie Sullivan-Armento Heather Henderson Takiyah Turner Bob Caravella along with friends to the company too many to mention but I'd be remiss not to point to Jason Cole Jim Christen Brad Milner David Brock David Kurkjian . Again, I apologize for the many I missed.

Diversity and inclusiveness wasn't an objective, but it became a hallmark of our company. We had old, young and in-between. Women and men. Seasoned veterans and young pups. A fair amount of nepotism, I think Porter had me beat on that one. Different races. Single and married. Sexual orientation. Christian, Jew, Muslim and none of the above. We did an intern program with HBCU students, after all, Atlanta is the cradle of some of the most important parts of the Civil Rights movement. I loved praying over our team at many functions, nobody objected. Looking at "the room" for our 2021 Kickoff, I was amazed and gratified. We didn't plan it, it just happened...the way it should be.

DecisionLink was bootstrapped up to our Series A led by Sameer Gandhi and Accel with Joe Sexton , George Kurtz and other new investors (WOW!!!). I'm most grateful for those who came alongside John and me early on as we pursued our vision for Value Selling Automation? that evolved into Customer Value Management. Al Stringfellow, Nicholas Kavadellas Gary Cone and Aimee Cowher , William Rowe and his wife Barbara, Ariel Savannah Angel Partners , Don Oxley , Caroline Weller, Kurt Laug , Scott Lampert , Tom Tomaski , Robert Wilber , Fred Marxer , Jeff Rachor, James Heckman, CPA , Richard Haddrill , Jeff Mitchell , Mike Maxey , Joanne Moretti , Cliff Elam , The Doug Berryhill Family Kyle Berryhill Trevor Berryhill Brooks Berryhill , The Jake Berryhill Trust and George Roberts . The number of employees who exercised stock options was amazing. Almost every board member was an investor first. For many of these it was a belief in me as much or more than the business...what a thing to be grateful for.

Working with John Porter was the premier collegial relationship of my career (and I've worked with a tremendous number of extraordinary people).

The support of family was consistent across DecisionLink. Elise S. Berryhill, LPC, Jenni, Paul Goebel and the grands kept me going many days! Nothing is perfect but a hallmark of most of our team was healthy, loving relationships.

Working day in and day out with my son by my side was a blessing I can't adequately describe.

I'm grateful for and treasure those who helped us build a great company. It was an unbelievable experience in many ways. Best wishes to Mike Carpenter and Xfactor.io for continued success with ValueCloud? and the DecisionLink cohort.

I'm off to new beginnings and the next (hopefully big) thing.