n December 2019, today's guest was three weeks from closing a sale of the software business he'd acquired with a traditional search fund.

This was to be a fantastic exit for Raj Mahajan.

And just like that, his biggest customer publicly announced it was building a competing product.

Raj's buyer walked.

What followed is a story about what concentration risk looks like when your biggest customer not only chooses to stop supporting you, but actually starts stealing from you.

Raj bought SuperSalon in 2015.

It was point-of-sale software for multi-location salon owners.

He converted it from on-prem software to cloud-based SaaS, tripled annual recurring revenue to $11m, and took it to market at the right time in a hot category.

Then came the unraveling: a whistleblower, a lawsuit filed mid-COVID, and a settlement that Raj describes as the hardest thing he's ever done.

Listen for his reflections at the end of our conversation, reflections originally written when he thought a big exit was three weeks away, and revisited now on the other side.

Raj shares his insights on hiring, on culture as armor, and on "my attitude is my decision."

By the way, Raj is now searching for another company to acquire, to get back in the game as a search fund CEO. We hear why.

Here he is, Raj Mahajan, former CEO of SuperSalon.