Great Hill Partners

Credibility Corp.

• CEO: Jeff Stibel

We first met serial entrepreneur Jeff Stibel in 2007 when, acting as CEO of small-business (“SMB”) solutions provider Web.com (NASDAQ: WWWW), he was leading a dramatic turnaround of the business which would triple shareholder value in less than four years. After leaving the company in 2009 following a successful sale to Website Pros, Stibel reached out to GHP to help determine his next move. According to Stibel, “I was determined to acquire an online platform in the small-business and local market and spoke with a number of different venture and private equity firms. Great Hill was an early call given their sector knowledge, but what set them apart was the frequency and quality of deals that their team produced for me to evaluate.” After reviewing nearly twenty opportunities over the course of nine months, we were presented a unique opportunity – D&B was seeking to divest its Self Awareness Solutions unit, a non-core asset that provided credit management solutions to more than 150,000 SMB customers. While most buyers focused on the unit’s financial performance while under D&B management, GHP and Stibel, drawing on their shared experience in the SMB and online markets, saw through the poor numbers and honed in on the business’ unique product set and strong competitive position in an enormous and underpenetrated marketplace. We moved aggressively to evaluate the opportunity, mobilizing a deep set of resources including six senior executives who had formerly worked with Stibel at his prior companies. Leveraging the hands-on operating expertise in marketing, technology, HR, sales, business development and finance of its unique due diligence team, GHP and Stibel were able to identify a series of potentially quick yet impactful solutions to many of the issues the business was facing and gain confidence that the business could generate substantial growth under new ownership. We worked through a complicated set of seller objectives to effect a transaction, structuring the deal as an ongoing strategic partnership and establishing a new entity, Credibility Corp., to acquire the assets of D&B’s Self Awareness Solutions. D&B ultimately chose GHP and Jeff Stibel as a partner given their unique understanding of a complex situation, their creativity in structuring a transaction that effectively addressed the seller’s objectives, and vision to build a broader portfolio of service offerings to SMBs using the core business as a platform for growth. According to Stibel, “GHP’s perseverance and skill in working through a complicated and lengthy due diligence and negotiation process was critical to executing this transaction. I look forward to a successful partnership as we continue to grow Credibility Corp over the coming years.”