18 years 6 months and 18 days to Exit | Alejandro Pérez

Resources and Links

• Komet Sales: https://www.kometsales.com/
• Legacy Key: https://www.legacykey.com
• Alejandro on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aperez/

Key Timestamps

(01:34) Charging $10 per page for last-minute typing at 14

(06:52) The one-week flower project that turned into three years

(07:51) Realizing the goal isn't money, it's adding value

(09:04) Naming the company Comet, then finding out it's a cleanser

(16:22) Starting Comet after divorce, broke, living with parents

(20:49) Two years of building before the first real customer

(23:29) The acquirer who told him his company was worthless

(26:08) Naming his dream number and someone actually meeting it

(28:28) The Vistage speaker who challenged him to sell

(33:20) Deciding to sell on a mushroom trip in the Amazon

(37:29) The Nemo in a shark tank analogy for hiring a banker

(40:25) 18 years, 6 months, and 18 days to sell

(41:24) The Sunday acid test for loving your job

(42:11) Putting the majority of his exit into Bitcoin

(44:44) Two mindsets: scarcity vs abundance

(48:18) Why nobody remembers the kings of the Assyrian Empire

(49:02) Taking his son out of school to travel for a year

(51:21) Building a Bitcoin inheritance platform with Claude Code

(56:30) Handing over the CEO lab coat without ripping his skin

(58:17) Two heart attacks turned into rocket fuel

Episode Summary

Alejandro has been hustling since he was 14, when he started typing his classmates' papers with a tiered pricing model: a dollar a page if you brought it 72 hours early, ten dollars a page if you brought it after 8 PM the night before. Most people brought it late. He made a lot of money.

He went to college, became a programmer, and in 2001 took a one-week IT project at a flower importer in Miami that turned into three years. That's where he learned the industry from the inside. In 2004, he started his own company and spent six years chasing money and getting nowhere. Then he had the realization that changed everything. The goal isn't to make money. It's to add value. When you add value, the money follows.

In 2010, right after his divorce, broke and living at his parents' house, he started Komet Sales. Bootstrapped. No VC. 90-hour weeks. He describes those early years as hanging from a log in the middle of the ocean, never knowing if the next wave was going to pull him under. It took two years of hundreds of customer visits and countless product iterations to find his first real customer.

For years, he wore not paying himself as a badge of honor. Then in 2014, an acquirer told him something that changed how he ran the company. Your company isn't actually worth what you think if you're not paying yourself, because a buyer would need to hire someone to do your job. From that point on, he paid himself a market salary and treated the company like it could be sold any day. Books clean. Everything documented.

He didn't need to sell. He loved running Komet. But in 2018, a Vistage friend challenged him to think of the company as a car, something you use, not something you're married to. His mindset shifted. He named his dream number and, in February 2022, on a trip to the Amazon with his wife, he decided it was time. He hired an M&A firm (his "rental shark") and closed the sale eight months later. 18 years, six months, and 18 days after he started building.

Here's where his story gets interesting for Season Three. Selling didn't change his life. His words: nothing really changed. He was already living the life he wanted. He handed over the CEO title without drama, put the majority of his exit into Bitcoin, took his son out of school for a year to travel the world, and is now building an inheritance platform for digital assets. He runs on an abundance mindset, genuinely, not performatively, and after two heart attacks and almost two decades of building, he says he's having more fun than ever.

He's the most positive person I've ever met. You'll hear what I mean.

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