Mark Volchek, founder of Higher One: $600 million IPO Startup Exits

Mark Volchek is an entrepreneur turned VC. While a student at Yale, Mark set out to disrupt academia by making student payments electronic. Higher One grew to a thousand employees and hundreds of millions in revenue, went public on the NYSE with a valuation of $600 million, then went back private as 3 entities that were all sold for hundreds of millions each. What a ride!



On this episode of the Startup Exits Podcast, we chat with Mark about:

• The power of connections in B2B enterprise sales

• How to measure product/market fit for a B2B company

• Distributed workforce at scale: hundreds of employees in many locations

• What’s needed for a startup to IPO?

• Running a public company vs a private company

• Going back private after being a public company

• Fundraising advice from a founder turned VC

• Finding great startups in non-obvious places

• How to approach investors as a startup founder



Mark now invests in “extraordinary people who are building the future in non-obvious places” via Las Olas, an early-stage VC firm.



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