Why I am sold Meta to Profi.ru

I am transferring Meta to Eruditor Group [Profi.ru, Zoon, Ruki] to founder Egor Rudy and partner Ruslan Zaidullin and stepping down from operational management and as a shareholder.
Although this is emotionally very difficult news for me and the team, it is good news for Meta and me in the long term.

First the backstory

The history of the creation and development of Meta is mostly determined by my personal history, my abilities, skills, as well as traumas and limitations.
In the fall of 2017, I was already working with a psychotherapist to get rid of the effects of the shock trauma and by May 2018, most of the effects were gone and I started doing Meta.
For profit was still too scary to do, but non profit psyche allowed, and this format looked very attractive: there was a hypothesis that this way it would be possible to attract people through value and get additional resources. The hypothesis proved true with people, but not with resources.
So I decided to do non profit.
What happened next was two and a half years of chewing glass and scrutinizing the abyss:

• didn't hire developers for a long time
• lived the truth “hiring mistakes are the most expensive” and rebuilt the team
• didn't do automated client-therapist tagging for a long time
• didn't invest in content
• still living on a bad unit economy [my main facepalm]

Despite all the mistakes and sufferings, Meta now has a great team, a good product that is not ashamed to recommend to friends: to everyone who comes to me with the question “Vanya, can you recommend a psychotherapist?”, I write “the best recommendation I can give is to choose one at Meta with whom you feel you can establish contact. We have a really good selection process.” And in one year, we've almost quadrupled to 3.7 million in revenue.

Difficulties

I discussed the idea with Egor, Ruslan [Ilya Mutovin had left the project by this point], the guys liked the idea, they saw the value of developing Meta as part of the Eruditor Group.
It was extremely important to me that in the discussion the guys [at least in words] shared Meta's principles and mission:

• make psychotherapy easier and more accessible
• spread the word about psychotherapy
• keep high standards for the therapists we add to the database

The guys wanted to hire an experienced and empathetic CEO + Meta gets access to Eruditor Group's capital and resources.
This was a tough decision for me, which I discussed with Meta's chief expert-Karina Karamyan-to see if I was missing a big mistake or if there was a factor I was overlooking. But the problems, the high probability of closure and the fact that the guys from Eruditor Group have resources and the same principles and vision for the future, made me decide to hand over the company to Egor and Ruslan.
The guys managed to find a cool CEO - Lena Kiryushina. Lena launched a subscription service on Dozhda, was digital director of Vedomosti, and was managing director of Amedia Library. I've been in contact with Lena and I liked her. The feedback I gathered on Lena was very good. From the reviews on Lena and from my interactions with Lena, I got the feeling that Lena had the right qualities-experience, listening skills, and empathy. With Lena as CEO I have hope that the Meta team will be in good hands.
It is important that Egor and Ruslan see the value in developing Meta as a separate product, not as part of Profi, and this means relative autonomy for the team and decision making within Meta.
I am also pleased that part of their vision for Meta's future is to continue to develop Meta as a high quality service that can be recommended to friends.

But how?

I consider two factors:

1. I don't see Meta being competitive as a non-profit in the future

   • what we were going to do as a non-profit-simplify psychotherapy in Russia is being done by other for-profit competitors who have adequate quality and can invest in content.
   • we have not done much specifically to get value out of what Meta as a non-profit and I cannot say unequivocally that it is not a viable model.
   • that said, right now “Meta as a non-profit can be competitive and successfully fulfill its mission” I rather see as unproven. Mostly because Meta doesn't have access to capital

2. Non-profit is a decision by me as the sole shareholder of the company. When the company is transferred, I am no longer a shareholder and the new shareholders have the option to change the model to for-profit.

The terms of the company transfer - Eruditor Group pays me 8 million rubles. This is all the money I invested in Meta. De jure, it's a sale. De facto, it is a return of part of my investment [there is still an investment of my time] in Meta without profit, i.e. preservation of the non-profit principle. The market price of Meta is, of course, much higher.

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