Here is the story of how Vladimir Putin almost killed our latest deal and how we acquired a startup from Ukrainian founders in 2022.

https://twitter.com/swilera/status/1527297866825633792?s=20&t=dF26oQIVFHMGsEX90XCuAg
In late 2021 we started raising to acquire Lanteria.com, an HR software company based in Seattle (with founders based in Ukraine).

We struggled getting this deal funded as mentioned before on Searchfunder. We couldn’t find a bank that would lend to a bunch of guys living overseas (and sellers in Ukraine).

After being stuck in lending purgatory for months, Xavier Helgesen swooped in with the contact for Dogwood State bank. Within 3 weeks we were in closing.

Closing started March 1, a week before that Russia invaded Ukraine. The bank started asking questions, we thought the deal was dead.

We put together a plan with my partners in India take over operations if Ukraine team was disrupted. My partners were able to appease the bank enough to let the process continue.

They wouldn’t guarantee close, but they would let us keep sending docs.

We were in constant contact with the founders, and their team so we knew the company was still operating with normality.

Fortunately, our investors believed in us enough to wire the funds.