Acquiring Minds: “Acquisition Unlock: €210m in 5 Years”

Host: Will Smith
Guest: Nick Keegan, Founder of Mail Metrics
Release Date: October 6, 2025

Overview

In this riveting episode of Acquiring Minds, Will Smith sits down with Nick Keegan, founder and CEO of Mail Metrics, to trace a truly remarkable journey from the brink of business failure to a €210 million revenue company—all through the power of acquisitions. Unlike the typical searcher who buys a business at the start, Nick began as a founder. Mail Metrics grew slowly for years before rapid transformation kicked in when the company pivoted, embraced a customer-centric print-and-digital model, and began accelerating growth by acquiring much larger companies.

The conversation moves from raw early mistakes, gritty survival, and hands-on business-model shifts to gutsy, highly-leveraged M&A, creating one of Ireland and the UK's leading regulated communications platforms for banks and insurers.

Key Discussion Points and Insights

Nick’s Entrepreneurial Origins and Mail Metrics’ Painful Early Years

• [05:59] Nick dreamed of a military career before launching his first company at age 24, inspired by a simple consumer pain point: consolidating all your bills and statements in one mobile app.
• Naivety and fundraising: Raised €700k yet admits “we were flogging a dead horse basically, trying to make this work.”
  • “Ultimately, it was an absolutely terrible idea…” (Nick Keegan, 09:48)
• Banks and utilities, the intended customers, didn’t want a third-party to own the customer relationship.

The Inflection Point: Serendipity and the Critical Pivot

• [14:16 - 16:52] A lifeline emerges in 2015: a large insurance company, having remembered Nick’s digital pitch, requests help outsourcing and digitizing their massive print mailroom operations.
  • “That’s exactly what we do.” (Nick Keegan, 14:34)—describing pivoting on the spot and pouring everything into winning the bid.

Building a Scalable Model (2016–2019): Early Traction, Slow Growth

• 2016-2018: Revenue creeps up (approx. €400k → €670k).
• 2018: Profitability achieved at €4k but founders underpaid.
• 2019: “We did 1.3 million in revenue… but it all felt very slow because we went, it was seven years to break a million in revenue.” (Nick Keegan, 27:05)

Realizing the Limitation—And the Power—of Owning the Print Piece

• [29:45 - 33:21]
  • The business gave away the lion’s share of revenue to a print partner:
    “We had set that deal up terribly… the print guys would get the print portion, we would get digital. But… we were giving a lot of value away.”
• Nick recognizes they must acquire their print partner (and/or others), both to control the full value chain and to cross-sell their digital platform to that partner’s customer base.

Learning M&A from First Principles: Autodidact to Deal-Closer

• [35:09 - 38:18]
  • “I went to Google and I type in how to buy a business… What is EBITDA? I didn’t understand the answer.”
• Hires a Filipino online tutor for a crash-course in business finance.
• Key learning: Build confidence to approach M&A professionals by becoming “just dangerous enough.”

The Breakthrough: Acquisitions and Rapid Scale (2021–2024)

The Double Acquisition

• First Moves [2021]:
  • Acquires two larger print businesses in Ireland and the UK. Both are significantly bigger than Mail Metrics at the time.
  • “Not only two businesses, but one in a different country… we spent 2022 just figuring out what the hell we had done.” (Nick Keegan, 52:57)
• “We always tried to level up every time we do a deal.” (Nick Keegan, 44:06)

Funding: Embracing Non-traditional Debt

• [46:06 - 51:05]
  • Used “alternative debt” (venture debt) at rates as high as 20%. No personal guarantees—“if a bank had said to me, you need to personally guarantee this, I would have just said, fine, because I wouldn’t have known there was an alternative…” (Nick Keegan, 48:49)
  • Successfully refinanced within 12 months to standard bank debt at 3% after integrating the businesses.

Scaling Up

• 2021: Revenue grows from €2m to €14.4m.
• 2022: Revenue at €19.3m; 60+ staff across Dublin, UK, Poland.
• 2023: Third acquisition brings revenue to €33m, about 140 employees.

M&A Strategy and Value Creation

• Cross-Selling Digital to Print Customers:
  • Strategy: Buy print-heavy businesses for <5x EBITDA, transition their customer comms to digital, boosting margin and the multiple to closer to 10x EBITDA.
    • “It sounds like an infinite money glitch, but it’s not… but if executed, yes.” (Nick Keegan, 62:07)
  • “We bought that business for three customers, and now all three are on our platform sending digital communications.” (Nick Keegan, 70:52)

The Biggest Leap: £210m Revenue through a “Transformative” UK Acquisition

• [71:39 - 78:18]
  • 2024: Mail Metrics acquires a UK target with €180m revenue, €22m EBITDA—even larger than themselves.
    • “We were 33 million revenue, 5.5 EBITDA. The business was around 180 million in revenue, 22 million in EBITDA.”
  • Closed just before Christmas 2024, raising both debt and equity, completing “a double deal.”
    • “Nearly killed us… but we pulled it off.”
  • Aftermath: 640 employees, market leader in Ireland, #2 in the UK.

Defensible Advantage: Owning the Tech Stack

• Most traditional competitors license third-party software for digital comms; Mail Metrics, uniquely, owns and continuously develops its platform for integrated print-digital solutions.
  • “What we have is totally unique and nobody else can copy it, whereby a lot of our competitors are all buying the same software and selling the same software to their customers.” (Nick Keegan, 79:50)

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On luck and resilience:
  “All these moments in our story where we got lucky and we generally did get lucky, but our eyes were open for a bit of luck, if you know what I mean. We were out there and we were active, despite things being pretty bleak.” (Nick Keegan, 84:48)
• On backing yourself despite feeling unqualified:
  “If somebody else can do it, you can do it... Don’t rule yourself out just because you don’t have the information you think you need. Just get started and take one, put one foot in front of the other.” (Nick Keegan, 86:03)
• On dealmaking and risk:
  “We took on nearly €5 million of high-interest debt… this was in the middle of COVID. I did have a moment where I sort of paused and said, ‘Jesus, am I doing the right thing here?’ But ultimately it all worked out.” (Nick Keegan, 47:48)
• On transition multiples:
  “If I could take a business that we bought for 5x EBITDA or less and convert 100% to digital… the valuation would probably be even more than 10.” (Nick Keegan, 62:07)

Important Timestamps & Episode Structure

| Segment | Topic | Time | |---|---|---| | 00:30 – 01:01 | Setting the stage: Mail Metrics’ inflection | | | 05:18 – 07:29 | Nick’s background and nontraditional entrepreneurship roots | | | 08:19 – 12:58 | The original failed consumer app idea and why it tanked | | | 14:09 – 18:58 | The pivotal insurance company call; the “luck” that catalyzed the pivot | | | 24:19 – 28:11 | Early traction and (slow) initial scaling—revenue and customer acquisition pain | | | 29:45 – 33:21 | Seeing the need: WHY buy the print partner, value chain control and cross-selling | | | 35:09 – 38:18 | Learning M&A “from scratch”; lessons for newcomers | | | 41:08 – 44:06 | Bringing in a seasoned CFO (Shane) with a creative comp/equity deal | | | 46:06 – 51:05 | Taking on high-interest venture debt; no personal guarantees; refinancing | | | 55:17 – 58:49 | Integration, org chart post-acquisitions, distributed footprint | | | 58:00 – 65:24 | The replicable acquisition/cross-sell playbook and reaching market dominance | | | 67:29 – 71:17 | On shifting value from print to digital; maintaining/expanding margin | | | 71:39 – 78:18 | The transformative UK acquisition: deal story, challenges, and outcome | | | 80:32 – 82:13 | The unique tech stack as a defensible moat | | | 82:23 – 84:19 | Next steps: toward €1 billion revenue, expanding M&A scope, entry into the US | | | 84:23 – End | Takeaways: resilience, self-belief, and “eyes open for luck” | |

Overall Tone and Suggestions for Listeners

Nick’s tone is candid, humble, and practical, offering step-by-step detail for entrepreneurial journeyers—especially those starting from scratch or non-traditional backgrounds. Will gently guides the conversation toward tactical lessons, emphasizing M&A learning by doing, and not being deterred by initial ignorance or industry “rules.”

For aspiring acquisition entrepreneurs: This episode stands out as a crash course in resilience, self-education, and the transformative effect of M&A, including both strategic rationale and operational grit.

Episode Takeaways

• The right acquisition, even by a much smaller business, can be transformational if there’s a clear value-creation plan.
• Cross-selling technology to a legacy customer base can multiply both actual margin and company valuation.
• Don’t be afraid to not know. Relentless learning and seeking advice closes the confidence gap.
• Gutsy financial moves have risk, but “alternative financing” can bridge the credibility gap—if you execute.
• Resilience, proactivity, and being “eyes open for luck” are critical traits.
• Once established, keep leveling up: buying bigger, integrating better, and never settling into the comfort zone.

Final Quote:
“If you think you can or you think you can’t, you’re probably right… Don’t rule yourself out just because you don’t have the information you think you need to have. Just get started.”
(Nick Keegan, 86:03)

Next steps:
Mail Metrics is now poised both to acquire more technology-forward businesses (not just legacy print) and enter the U.S. market, with the goal of hitting €1 billion in revenue. Nick boards a U.S.-bound flight the day after this interview.

For more tactical deep dives and episode summary sign-up, visit acquiringminds.co.