2 Commas: The $multi-million exit show with Josh Comrie

Lisa King had a goal from the very first day of Eat My Lunch: the business would be a success the day it became unnecessary.
She built it in 2015 to solve a problem she couldn't stop thinking about, kids going hungry at school in a country of abundance. By week 12 she was making 2,000 lunches a day out of her own kitchen. At peak, nearly 5,000, with police officers, politicians, and grannies in their sixties all buttering bread before sunrise. Then the government launched its own school lunch program, and Lisa did something most founders never do. She closed the business on purpose.
Before that happened, a media story accused her of personally profiting off hungry kids, at a time when she was being paid less than she'd ever earned. She had to show a reporter her payslip to prove it. We talk through what that period actually felt like, what New Zealand's tall poppy syndrome did to her willingness to talk to press afterward, and the identity crisis of letting go of a business that had defined her for five years.
We get into:
How Eat My Lunch scaled from 50 to nearly 5,000 lunches a day
The media smear and what it actually cost her personally
Why she built the business to make itself redundant from day one
What closing your first business does to your sense of who you are
If you're building something with real purpose behind it, or wondering what it takes to walk away from your own success on your own terms, this one's worth your time.

Most founders won't give up 80% of their business. The ones who did walked away with more than if they'd kept 100%.
Murray Schnuriger made the jump from 20 years advising founders on exits to actually owning the risk at 5V Capital, a mid-market PE fund across Australia and New Zealand. Toby King has spent his career at Cameron Partners, one of NZ's most established M&A firms, allied with Rothschild and Company. Together they've sat on both sides of more NZ business exits than almost anyone alive.
The Education Perfect story is the one that sticks. Two brothers built an edtech platform into 50% of NZ secondary schools, hit their ceiling, and sold 80% to 5V. One went backpacking for a year. 5V brought in a new CEO, put sales teams on the ground in Australia, and tripled the business in three years. Exit to KKR. The 20% the brothers held at the end was worth more than their original 100%. That's the structure most NZ founders never think to ask about.
Murray and Toby pull no punches on what founders consistently get wrong, pricing on EBITDA when buyers price on free cash flow, waiting one more year for growth when the multiple compression wipes out the gain, and showing up to a sale process without a narrative that holds up under serious due diligence.
We get into:
Why selling 80% can leave you wealthier than holding everything
The EBITDA trap that costs NZ founders millions at the table
Why "one more year of growth" is often the most expensive decision you'll make
How PE investors actually think about your exit before they've even finished investing in you
What your business narrative needs to nail to earn a premium valuation
The succession wave hitting NZ baby boomer founders and why PE is filling the gap
If you're building something and wondering what it actually looks like to sell part of your business, back yourself for one more run, and walk away with more than you started with, this one's worth your time.

What if the most successful version of your company is the smallest one?
This week I sit down with Mark Zeman, co-founder of SpeedCurve, who quietly built one of the most unusual software businesses I've come across. No VC. No sales team. No marketing function. A team that never grew beyond seven people, paid two to three times market salary, and shared the monthly profit with everyone.
SpeedCurve had customers like Airbnb, the New York Times and the Guardian. They found him, not the other way around. And after 13 years, he exited to Embrace, not at the peak.
We get into:
- Why Mark turned down customers, capital and "grow at all costs"
- How a UX designer in New Zealand ended up shaping global web performance standards
- The handshake co-founder deal with Steve Souders and why it worked
- Monthly profit share instead of equity and a someday-maybe exit
- The moment the market shifted and SpeedCurve became the wrong shape
- Selling a declining SaaS business and why Embrace still wanted it
- What working inside a VC-backed company has confirmed and challenged
If you've ever wondered whether there's another way to build a SaaS business and exit on your own terms, there is. Mark just lived it.

What if the biggest risk in your company isn't your product, it's whether your people are actually ready to lead?
This week, I sit down with Logan Yonavjak, founder of the Readiness Engine, to explore how AI can now measure leadership capacity at scale. We get into coachability, the grit myth, the early warning signs a founding team is in trouble, and my own method for testing resilience and values in the room.
Essential listening for founders, investors and operators.

Most of us have no idea what's actually going on inside our body.
John Bessey has been in the room for three major tech exits as CEO of Merkle (Davanti), head of revenue at Introgen, and on the executive team when Gen-I sold to Spark. He's also a certified metabolic and health coach who reckons most high-performers are flying blind on the things that actually matter and he's got the blood work to prove it.
In this episode, John and I get into the overlap between building a high-performing business and building a body that doesn't quit before the game's over. He shares what actually worked when he stepped in as an external CEO and why most of those appointments fail, how Divanti's earn-out structure gave the founders real control through the sale, and the simple rituals he uses with executives to cut distraction and find the two or three things that will genuinely move the needle. On the health side, the four horsemen, why your GP's "you're fine" might be the most expensive thing you hear this year, and what John changed the day he stopped chasing biohacks and went back to basics.
John's 55, thirteen kilos lighter than he was a decade ago, and building deliberately toward skiing Cardrona at 93. His book, Rituals of Impact, is available at ritualsofimpact.com (free shipping in NZ) and on Amazon worldwide.