Somewhere.com
Nick Huber bought a company for $52 million. He had never bought a company before. He was negotiating against Andrew Wilkinson — a friend who had acquired over 40 businesses — and Wilkinson eventually stepped aside. Then three things happened at once that nearly broke the acquisition: the name changed, Elon Musk bought Twitter, and competitors poured in. What followed was one of the most honest post-acquisition stories anyone has told on MFM.
What Somewhere.com Is
Somewhere.com — formerly Support Shepherd — is a global talent marketplace that helps businesses find skilled workers in the Philippines, Colombia, South Africa, Egypt, and other international markets. The original focus was executive assistants and repeatable tasks. Under Nick Huber’s ownership, it expanded into mid-level and eventually senior-level international hires.
Shaan Puri described the company’s pitch simply: “The idea is you can find amazing talent, they’re just somewhere out in the world, you just have to find them.” The company generates 60,000 applicants per month and has 160 employees — six of whom are American.
The Origin: Support Shepherd
The company was founded by Marshall Haas, who built it to solve his own problem: he ran e-commerce businesses and needed affordable virtual assistance. What started as a sourcing operation grew into a staffing agency, then into something larger. By late 2023, it had 150 employees and was growing fast enough to attract a $47 million acquisition offer from Andrew Wilkinson’s Tiny.
Nick Huber was a customer before he was an investor. He described his original hire: “I wanted someone at my self-storage facility who could press one to accept payments. Very simple stuff.” The results were good enough that he became a minority shareholder. When Marshall told him about Wilkinson’s offer, Huber’s instinct wasn’t to sell — it was to buy.
The $52 Million Deal
Nick structured the acquisition creatively because the math didn’t work conventionally. He needed to raise $20 million from outside investors, but a 20% carry on that money would leave him with minimal upside. So he went back to Marshall and negotiated an 18% seller note — roughly $9 million of the purchase price effectively loaned to Nick by the person he was buying from. Total capital deployed: ~$29 million to acquire the majority controlling stake in a company valued at $52 million.
Shaan described the negotiation moment: “You’ve got peak energy and we’re both like, ‘Dude, we’ve had so many ideas how we could turn this business from X to Y. This is going to be great.’” Then what happens?
Three things. Simultaneously.
The Three Things That Went Wrong
First: the name change. Support Shepherd became Somewhere.com. The domain cost $400,000. The SEO that had been built for “supportshepherd.com” vanished overnight. Three hundred leads per month — a third of all inbound — disappeared immediately.
Second: Elon Musk bought Twitter. Nick’s ability to tweet about international hiring and send thousands of visitors to the company’s site collapsed. “It went from me being able to tweet about hiring somebody in the Philippines for $5 an hour and send 3,000 website visits and 200-400 leads, to virtually nothing.”
Third: competition. Other people saw what Nick was building, heard the acquisition announcement, and launched competing services. The announcement that was supposed to be a growth moment also sent a signal to the market.
Shaan’s observation: “You were pretty loud about the acquisition, which also invites competition.” Nick didn’t disagree.
Recovery
The company stabilized. By the time Nick appeared on MFM to give the honest account, revenue was up 60% over the four months prior to the acquisition and up 28% year-over-year. Still behind the original pro forma projections, but growing.
The more interesting lesson was about who the company serves: “We help real businesses. Small business agency owners who own 100% of the business and the cash flow matters to them. E-commerce businesses where you’re already on tight margins.” Not VC-funded companies with unlimited burn. Real operators watching every dollar — which made them more sensitive to economic headwinds but also made them sticky customers when times were good.
The Global Talent Insight
The lasting intellectual contribution of the Somewhere.com experience is about where to find executive talent. Nick described what surprised him: “The people who can run my company can do it better and cheaper internationally. A COO is in Johannesburg, South Africa. The head of performance marketing is in Bogota, Colombia. The head of finance is in Cape Town, South Africa.”
The conventional assumption was that international hiring was for junior, repeatable tasks. What Somewhere demonstrated — through its own operations — was that the playbook extends to the C-suite. “I used to think I need repeatable tasks and need to outsource those. Now I’m realizing the people who can run my company can do it better and cheaper internationally.”
Six Americans. One hundred sixty employees. The arithmetic of that ratio is the core of what Somewhere.com sells.
See also: nick-huber, bolt-storage, sweaty-startups, andrew-wilkinson, tiny