Embracing Acquisitions: 3.5 insights from selling a business built on uncertainty
Announcing the sale of Uncertainty Experts to MediaZoo Ltd, where we have joined the team to help realise the ambition and potential of the work we began at my kitchen table in lockdown.
Five years ago, in the middle of lockdown, wedged somewhere between burnout and bankruptcy, I launched an idea from my kitchen table.
Today, that idea, The Uncertainty Experts, is being acquired by communications, learning and behaviour change specialists, MediaZoo Ltd.
To say I’m proud would be an understatement.
To say this was a perfectly executed plan would be an overstatement.
But to say we’ve found a home where our original ambitions can become fully grown would just about hit the mark.
And because so many of you have been part of this experiment as participants, collaborators, sceptics, supporters, or friends, I wanted to share something a little less “press release” and a little more honest about what it feels like to sell this unusual business we built entirely on uncertainty.
And it’s not a “walk away with a suitcase of cash” hero-preneur turnaround stories.
It’s a big decision about the long-term mission, and about the scale of our impact.
About placing something I care deeply about into a home where it has its best chance of reaching its potential.
So here are three and a half things I wish I’d known, in case you ever find yourself selling something you created from nothing but conviction, chaos, and a slightly cracked belief in possibility.
1. The most exhausting part of uncertainty is obsessing over the outcome
Every time we’ve run Uncertainty Experts, whether it’s government departments, fast-moving tech leaders, frontline workers or lonely entrepreneurs, the same pattern emerges: uncertainty itself doesn’t drain people. Expectation (or worse, holding on for false certainty) does.
And it’s precisely what the last nine months taught me.
Learning to enjoy the unknown isn’t about optimism. It’s about reframing doubt as a place of discovery, rather than danger. It’s about tolerating the maddening discomfort long enough for something unexpected to emerge.
Every time I told myself, “It has to be done by the end of the next month or before the next crisis/invoice/opportunity hits”, the whole thing tightened.
When deadlines become lifelines, they stop being motivating and start being suffocating..
Jim Collins calls this the Stockdale Paradox: the POWs who survived weren’t the ones who convinced themselves they’d be home by Christmas. They were the ones who accepted the uncertainty and held faith that they’d make it in the end.
I wish I’d learned that sooner. It would have saved me some sleepless nights and sweary mornings.
2. Shared values beat perfect plans (especially in rough seas)
One of the regular outcomes of Be More Pirate workshops is that teams rediscover something we all secretly know: values make better navigational tools than plans. Uncertainty Experts only deepened that lesson.
Spreadsheets provide a comforting illusion of control, but behind the rows and formulas, they’re often well-presented works of fiction. And while long-term thinking has never been more needed, the world moves faster than most strategy cycles. Tech, policy and culture can shift before a plan even gets signed off.
The most effective leaders I’ve met through Uncertainty Experts aren’t trying to map out five years. They’re collapsing the range of their decision-making smaller moves, made closer to the ground, anchored by purpose rather than prediction.
And that’s precisely what guided us through the last year.
We began with three very different potential acquirers:
a Big Four consultancy,
a visionary human-centred design firm,
and the third organisation to enter the mix that instantly felt familiar because their values showed up in their people, their work, and the way they held the conversation.
It was a turbulent year for everyone out there, and the good ship Uncertainty sailed through some heavy waves. And in the end, the decision wasn’t made by models or projections. It was made by alignment.
MediaZoo backed our commitment to providing free places for those who need them most. They backed our ambition to support young people, including full year-group trials launching in February. They backed combining impact with income, not sacrificing one for the other. And they showed up as decent human beings, I’m deeply excited about building the next chapter with, not a textbook acquisition where I’d be worried about having to defend our integrity against.
3. Selling something you love is an act of grief as much as growth
When you sell something you built from nothing, you feel pride, yes. But you also feel loss. A strange kind of grief. A sense that part of your identity has been lifted out of your hands.
That’s exactly how I felt as we headed towards this moment.
But with the tools from Uncertainty Experts perspective-taking, radical gratitude, and meta-awareness (and the reminders from the team who kept me consistent) I realised it was never about something being taken from me. It was about handing something over to people who could help it grow beyond what I could alone.
The truth about grief is that it has stages. And the real act of letting go didn’t happen when I signed the deal. It happened long before, when I finally admitted something uncomfortable:
I’m a good founder, I’m creative, energetic, and infectious, and I love working with big ideas and small teams.
But I know from past experience that doesn’t qualify me as a brilliant CEO.
Not for scale. Not for global growth. Not for the true potential of Uncertainty Experts.
And admitting that, without shame or shade, became the turning point.
Because even when we were broadcasting Uncertainty Experts from my kitchen table, with a green screen balanced on books, we somehow managed to transform teams at Nestlé, Nike, and the NHS. We heard from young people who said it changed the trajectory of their adulthood. Key workers who said it kept them going. Leaders who said it helped their transformation succeed.
The evidence was clear: the programme had world-changing potential.
The risk wasn’t as much selling it as it was underselling it.
Accepting my professional limitations and my characteristically limited leadership attention span was humbling. But freeing. Because everything the science shows us is true:
Knowing your limits is part of resilience.
Accepting them is part of growth.
So that sense of grief wasn’t a signal not to sell.
It was proof I’d built something worth caring about.
Letting go is never easy. But sometimes the bravest move is allowing something you love to grow beyond you. That’s what this is. Not an ending a widening.
And I’m excited again. Giles Smith, MediaZoo’s CEO, has assembled a team of outstanding talent. He leads with openness, clarity and none of the micromanaging or fire-starting I used to indulge in. I have a lot to learn, and that excites me. The thing my team and I created stands a better chance of reaching its global potential inside their organisation than it ever would have on our own.
3½. The big moments don’t matter — the tiny decisions do
Everyone imagines acquisitions are decided in some dramatic moment a cinematic pitch, a tense negotiation, something straight out of Succession.
But the reality is a collage of tiny decisions:
The tone of one email.
Choosing honesty when ambiguity creeps in.
Saying no when your fear says “just say yes”.
Holding your values steady when impatience tells you to drop them.
Big things don’t always happen in big moments.
They happen in thousands of small, values-led nudges that compound over time in a direction you can only recognise in hindsight. Where real trust is born, and that’s the basis of this partnership and the really BIG things I hope will come of it.
A few quick thanks
Before I sign off, some thankyous that matter.
To Katherine Templar Lewis, first the scientist who helped me make sense of uncertainty, then my co-founder in Uncertainty Experts, and finally (and most importantly) now my wife and co-founder of our son, Elvis. Navigating this with you has been one of the great privileges of my life. I’m excited we get to walk into the next chapter together as part of the MediaZoo team.
To Kate Brundle, who has been Robin to my slightly chaotic Batman for nearly twenty years. There is no version of Uncertainty Experts without you.
To Uncle Andy (Andy Orrick), who helped us turn a rough idea into a story people could actually immerse themselves in; to Adam Day-Lewin, who helped transform a lockdown experiment into a creative force; to Richard Fearn, whose belief and well-timed interventions kept us alive more than once; and to Gabbi Cahane, whose wisdom and late-night sense-checks kept me sane.
And finally, to Giles, Darren, Andy, Pete, Vic, Liz, Josie, Yas, Jake, and everyone at MediaZoo, thank you for welcoming us so warmly and already building the platform that will help Uncertainty Experts reach the scale and scope we always hoped for. Thank you for protecting the heart of this work and giving it a home to grow.
Something we made
In the middle of all this uncertainty (and far too many lawyers), the thing that kept me grounded has been the world of Be More Pirate, the workshops, the community, and the podcast I co-host with Captain Alex Barker.
Series Three just dropped, and it’s full of some of my favourite rule-breakers — from Tim Smith to Margaret Heffernan, but I want to point you to a lesser-known pirate: The Artist, Storry.
Her story from surviving sex trafficking to becoming a rising creative force was one of the most inspiring moments of my last few months.
It’s a reminder of why rebellion, curiosity and responsible trouble-making are still the engines of my work.
Here’s the a trailer for the episode
Something to look forward to
And finally, what next?
On Jan 1st, Pan Macmillan will be releasing what we believe is the first personal development book to be proven in a neuroscience lab to increase Uncertainty Tolerance!
The Uncertainty Toolkit is built on the tools and techniques behind Uncertainty Experts and is designed to put everything we’ve learned about uncertainty into your hands, your pocket, and, hopefully, your habits.
It’s practical, evidence-based and weirdly timely.
Pre-orders genuinely make a huge difference to hitting some of the lists that seem to matter at launch, so if you’ve ever been part of this project as a participant, supporter, critic, or friend, your support would mean a lot as we launch it into the world.
And, you can support your local indie bookstore at the same time by pre-ordering from bookshop.org. (Edit, have just had this helpfully pointed out by one of you, that it’s worth mentioning for my fellow dyslexics and audio book lovers, we have made an extra special audiobook of Uncertainty Toolkit, featuring the voices of the experts themselves and the neuroaesthetic soundtrack katherine made with Morcheeba)
Or, if you’ve got a team and would like Katherine or me to do a keynote, webinar, lunch and learn, or uncertainty session in return for some bulk buys, we’re keeping some sessions free to do just that. Please drop Emma a line at emma@samconniff.com
Thanks as always for subscribing, and please feel free to unsubscribe if it's no longer for you. Love & Uncertainty, Sam
Congrats Champ! I have loved watching the pivots, the test and the movement!
Congratulations on this next important step in your venture! I was an early participant and have watched your progress. Will order the book (the link is not working right now) and look forward to seeing your future!