Somewhere

Marshall bootstrapped Shepherd, a global talent hiring platform, to $47 million in valuation in just three years with about 150 employees. The company was primarily focused on hiring executive assistants from the Philippines. When Andrew Wilkinson (the founder's former boss and a serial acquirer) made a $47-52 million acquisition offer, both Sean and Nick Huber, who had minority stakes and were sending significant business to the platform, initially advised against it. But Nick saw an opportunity: instead of the company being sold to Wilkinson's holding company, Nick decided he would buy it himself.

Nick faced a classic capitalization problem. If he raised $20 million from outside investors to buy 40% of the company, he'd only get an 8% equity upside after returning their capital plus hurdle rate—a terrible risk-reward for the work. Instead, he got creative: he raised $20 million from investors for roughly 40% of the company, then negotiated a $9 million seller note directly from Marshall for another 18%, totaling nearly $29 million of capital deployed. This structure allowed Nick to retain meaningful equity upside while taking control. The acquisition price ultimately reached $52 million as the business continued growing during the six-month negotiation period.

Three things hit at once. First, Nick immediately rebranded the company from Shepherd to Somewhere, purchasing the somewhere.com domain for $400,000. This single decision caused them to lose 300 of 1,000 monthly leads—a one-third drop in organic search traffic overnight. Second, Elon Musk bought Twitter and changed the algorithm, destroying Nick's personal brand's ability to drive traffic (he'd previously sent thousands of visitors and hundreds of leads with a single tweet about hiring). Third, competition exploded—multiple new entrants launched in the international hiring space, emboldened by Somewhere's public acquisition announcement. Then the macro environment shifted: rising interest rates and economic uncertainty meant businesses stopped hiring aggressively.

Nick's aggressive moves as new owner made things worse. He hired expensive American C-suite executives, built out operations in Latin America, South Africa, and Egypt with high-cost structures, and invested heavily in scaling before the revenue foundation could support it. The company that had tripled in cash flow the year before acquisition started contracting.

Over four months, revenue rebounded 60% from the low point. The key insight came from hiring talent directly: Nick realized he could build his entire executive team—COOs, finance controllers, performance marketers, IT consultants—internationally at a fraction of the cost of American hires, often with equal or better talent and hunger. At Somewhere, he now employs 160 people with only 6 Americans (all in high-ticket sales). His other companies follow the same pattern: 130 employees at another portfolio company with 7 Americans; 60 employees at another with 6 Americans.

Nick developed a rigorous hiring process: post jobs on LinkedIn with $100/day spend for 5 days ($2k total), filter for typing speed (35 words per minute kills 85% of applicants), request one-minute self-introduction videos (another 80% drop-off), watch videos for communication and maturity, run task-based assessments instead of interviews, then conduct brief interviews. This turned 1,000 applicants into 30-40 qualified candidates, then 3-4 finalists. He shared specific geographic talent hubs: Egypt for finance/Excel/Power BI (cheapest), Colombia and Brazil for operations (same timezone), South Africa for sales and finance (hiring Big Four audit professionals back for $3k/month), Sri Lanka for most roles, Philippines for administrative work.

Somewhere is growing 28% year-over-year, still behind Nick's original pro forma but sustainably growing with an "awesome team" across 35+ countries. The company processes 60,000 applicants monthly. Nick credits the recovery to ruthlessly focusing on what worked (referral-based hiring) and building the executive team globally. He's sharing his hiring playbook publicly (nick@sweatystartup.com) with curated talent from South Africa, Egypt, and Sri Lanka. The bigger lesson: his 11-company portfolio at peak has consolidated down with four shutdown, but the survivor companies are now more profitable than ever—proof that focus, not scale, wins long-term.