How Did Tock Finish a Buyer's Question List in Three Days?

Tock finished a buyer's list of 896 questions in three days because Nick Kokonas would not let the advisors set the pace. The COVID growth was not going to repeat at 200 percent, so he treated the sale window as the moment. Steve Bernacki, his CFO, and Jeff Kaplan, his COO, moved the list into a Google Doc, color-coded it, and assigned each question to someone who already knew the answer. The lawyers said four to six weeks. Kokonas said the dashboards could produce it in about two days. Four of them on a Zoom ran about $3,200 an hour, and the bankers wanted 3 to 4 percent.

The board hated skipping the bank. He still had control, so he offered to do the banker's job for 2 percent and to go unpaid if the deal failed. They agreed. The three of them stayed up and sent the finished list back. People from Squarespace were on the calls, and that side was preparing to go public the next quarter, so the filing had to lock on March 31. Miss the date and the deal slips six months to a year, and it might die. One lawyer's method was to stall and close at noon on the last possible day. Kokonas told that lawyer, whom he called Spock, to stop holding the room.