Earlier this year, Manchester-based tech startup Versori was acquired by US tech giant Avalara.
The deal was remarkable because Sean Brown and Daniel Jones had only founded the next-generation integration platform specialist four years earlier.
However, in the latest episode of The Naked Founder podcast, Brown spoke about the long journey to get to this point and the sacrifices made along the way.
He also shared his memories of working with a young Steven Bartlett during their days at Manchester-based social media agency Social Chain.
The first thing to say about Brown is that he’s anything but an overnight success story.
Over the last 17 years, he’s launched around 27 projects – some with more success than others.
As an 18-year-old backpacker in Australia in 2008, he ran out of money and devised a plan to sell tickets for a skydive in order to survive.
A year later, he launched a small tech business called Social Scuba, where people could log their dives and build a community. He later sold it for $6,000.
In 2014, he started the influencer marketing platform Hatch before risking it all to join Social Chain as head of product.
It was while he was at Social Chain that he got to know co-founder and future Dragons’ Den star Steven Bartlett.
“He was just a normal person,” Brown said of Bartlett. “He wasn’t the hardest worker. He wouldn’t deliver the projects. He would not do the sales, but he had the ability to go on stage and drive top-of-the-funnel leads into the business.
“The business was built on his own investment in himself to build his personal brand, and that went quite far in the marketing world at that point. He always had the ability to be good on TV and be a media personality.”
SeanCoin
In 2020, Brown decided the best way to learn about blockchain technology was to launch his own cryptocurrency called SeanCoin. The tongue-in-cheek venture was only available to people called Sean, Shaun or something similar.
In 2017, Brown founded Mercarto, a SaaS platform providing enterprise-grade e-Commerce and marketplace solutions to a diverse range of clients.
He successfully bootstrapped the company from a one-person operation to a team of 24 employees within 18 months, scaling revenue from $0 to more than $10m.
Brown told The Naked Founder podcast that one of his biggest learnings in business has been about himself.
“I underestimated the power of the team,” he said. “At the beginning, I thought I could move mountains on my own, which was completely wrong.”
Fundamentally, Brown said he just likes to build things.
“The best fun I could ever have is being sat with my laptop just building stuff,” he admitted.
It was with this in mind that he started Versori in 2022, and the company was accepted into Y Combinator, one of the world’s leading startup accelerators.
Since 2005, Y Combinator has invested in more than 5,400 companies, including Airbnb, Dropbox, Stripe, Reddit and Coinbase.
Brown knew it was the opportunity of a lifetime and, despite becoming a dad for the first time, flew to San Francisco to complete the three-month Y Combinator programme.
By the second half of 2025, Versori was growing by nearly 300 per cent.
Brown said he would literally fly anywhere for work, including to San Francisco to meet a customer despite recovering from knee surgery following an ACL injury.
“My knee was blown up like a balloon, but I got the deal across the line,” he recalled.
His hard work was rewarded when one of Versori’s customers – US tax and compliance software leader Avalara – acquired the business for an undisclosed sum earlier this year.
The deal was featured in New York’s famous Times Square.
Both Brown and Jones are staying with the business, which will operate as Versori by Avalara.
“A lot of people said, ‘How’s your first day working for someone?’” Brown said. “Actually, it’s been better than ever. I don’t come into work now with the existential dread that the business could be no more every single day.”
Brown’s approach to business can be summed up by a Post-it note with two words written on it: ‘profit’ and ‘purpose’.
“It’s a stark reminder at all times: don’t waste your time on anything outside of profit and purpose,” he said. “The reason why profit is first is because profit feeds into your purpose.”
You can listen to the latest episode of The Naked Founder podcast here
The Naked Founder is sponsored by Financielle and produced by Dan Brown of Renowned.