WHEN MIKE LEE SAYS “we,” it’s rare
that he’s referring to the staf of
MyFitnessPal, the ftness and
nutrition app company he and
brother Albert co-founded in
2005. More likely, Lee is referring
to colleagues at Under Armour,
which bought MyFitnessPal for
$475 million in February 2015.
It took a while for Lee to take the money. And
when he did, he didn’t run. When Under Armour frst
called, Lee agreed to visit founder Kevin Plank at his
Baltimore ofces only because he thought he might
end up with some kind of partnership. Then Plank
started talking about his vision for what he called
connected ftness. Plank knew that technology
would be playing a bigger role in improving athletic
performance, and Under Armour didn’t have the
technological capability to compete.
Lee got it. “If we were acquired by a company like
Google or Apple, we would become one small piece
in this giant machine,” he says. “At Under Armour,
we knew we would matter. We would have the
attention of the CEO, we would be a big part of
the strategy, and we would make a diference.”
Lee had months to get used to the idea of being
part of Under Armour, which, with $5 billion in revenue,
is hardly small. His staf would have no such luxury. He
knew the deal would fail if his employees fed. So his
frst presentation to them, the day the acquisition was
announced, had to cover the basics: No one would be
laid of. Everyone would report to the same person as
before. The company would not move from its San
•
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MIKE LEE
He sold
MyFitnessPal
because he
believed in the
strategic vision
that Under
Armour CEO
Kevin Plank had
outlined.
has money to pay the bills and simply
allocates what’s left. LearnVest bases its
fnancial advice on a person’s cash fow,
providing guidance even when there’s
little to nothing to invest. Schaefer’s
outlook is similar: “We believe you work
with people with potential and help them
get where they need to be, fnancially.”
To bring the companies together, the
standard choices were for Northwestern
either to fully absorb LearnVest or to
keep it at arm’s length. Neither felt right
to von Tobel or Schaefer. Northwestern
Mutual envied LearnVest’s approach and
its ability to test, learn, and change things
quickly, but its own culture was under-
standably more conservative. “Ultimately
when you manage a business you have to
think about disruption,” says Northwest-
ern CEO John Schlifske. “In many ways
we’re trying to disrupt ourselves. We put
the client at the center of everything, and
we’re willing to let go of the past if the
client wants something new.”
LearnVest, it realized, could do with
some more long-term planning, and had
to grow quickly to make the acquisition
work. Von Tobel (a onetime Inc. colum-
nist) refers repeatedly to the creation of
a third company culture, located some-
where in the psychic space between
Milwaukee and New York. For now, some
engineering teams have leaders in both
New York and Milwaukee; so do teams
reporting to von Tobel. Hackathons
take place in both locations and sporadic
synergy is not unusual. Northwestern has
even set up an internal venture pool to
fund ideas from employees.
LearnVest’s crew has largely stayed
put. Von Tobel notes attrition of about
10 percent; even that, she says, is
“crushing.” Still, no one had to leave;
no one even had to leave New York.
Since the acquisition, LearnVest has
hired 150 people. “On a startup budget,
you stretch and reach,” says von Tobel,
“and now we’re like, ‘Let’s just go out and get the best.’”
On its own, LearnVest could deliver 10,000 fnancial plans
annually; now, with Northwestern Mutual’s assistance, it’s
looking at roughly 500,000 fnancial plans.
Von Tobel says that selling to Northwestern will help
fulfll her vision in starting LearnVest, which is why she
intends to stick around. “We didn’t come together to be done
with it,” she says. “We came together to change fnancial
planning in America.”
INNOVATE
DAVI
D
PA
UL
MOR
RIS/G
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TT
Y
UNDer ArMOur • MyfitNessPal
Yes, TherE
CaN BE
syNergy iN
a BuyOut.
iF NOt, Why
BOther?