Mindbody Inc is the global market leader for cloud-based business management software for the fitness industry (including yoga, pilates and group fitness) with c.25% market share. When TDM first invested in June 2016, Mindbody had a market capitalisation of approximately $640m and revenue of approximately $139m. In December 2018, Vista Equity Partners (a leading private equity firm) purchased Mindbody for US$1.9b with revenue of approx. US$250m.
At the time of TDM’s investment, Mindbody had recently listed on the Nasdaq, but had faced some investor headwinds – we felt Mindbody at the time was both misunderstood and overlooked by most investors.
In CEO and founder Rick Stollmeyer, we saw a visionary founder, that was solely focused on long term value creation for shareholders. Rick deeply valued the propagation of a culture within Mindbody that would ensure it could grow quickly for a very long time. Rick was also a very large shareholder, aligning his long term interests with ours.
We have deeply understood vertical SaaS and payments business models for many years . Coupling this with our vast experiences with SMB customers – both their value and friction points – we, unlike other investors, felt Mindbody had the attributes to become the dominant player for these customers in the wellness industry.
TDM initially invested in mid 2016 as a supportive long-term shareholder and at TDM’s peak shareholding, owner just over 5% of the business.
We had frequent, open and productive communication with Rick and his management team, who all greatly appreciated our support, particularly through times of market volatility and investor skepticism of their ability to execute on their long term strategic vision.
Mindbody was purchased in December 2018 by Vista Equity partners, which represented a 68% premium to the prior day’s closing share price – the second highest 1-day premium paid in a SaaS transaction.
This represented a 3x growth in market capitalisation since TDM first invested in 2016.
