When Megan Bowen talks about buying out the founder of Refine Labs, she doesn't start with the SBA loan, the term sheets, or the operating agreement. She starts with a phone call from a taxi in Australia, five days after she was told things had never looked better.
That whiplash — from "I'm energized about our partnership" to "you need to buy me out" — is the moment everything changed. Not just for Refine Labs, but for Megan's understanding of what she had, what she'd built, and what she was capable of doing next.
I sat down with Megan to trace the full arc: how she joined Refine Labs as COO in 2020, became a minority partner, survived the SaaS apocalypse of 2022, navigated years of compounding partner conflict, and ultimately executed a partner buyout that put her in the driver's seat of an agency she had been quietly running for years.
It's one of the most honest conversations I've had about what business partnerships actually feel like when they break down and what becomes available to you on the other side.
The Company She Walked Into
Megan came to Refine Labs through the founder, Chris Walker, who spent four months convincing her to join as his COO. At the time, Refine Labs was a handful of employees, a handful of clients, and, as Megan puts it plainly, "essentially Chris's consulting business."
Her background was fifteen years inside B2B SaaS companies — sales, account management, operations, and eventually COO-level leadership at a company that was acquired by WeWork. She knew how to build operational infrastructure. Chris had the brand and the raw ingredients. The combination worked.
Six months in, they formalized it. Megan bought in as a co-owner. It was March 2021, and everything seemed to be moving in their favor.
The Rocket Ship, and What Followed
From late 2020 through the end of 2021, Refine Labs grew 7x. VC-backed startups were spending freely on digital marketing, and Refine Labs was in exactly the right position to capture it. Retainers that started at $8K a month climbed to $50K. There was a waitlist. The agency could do no wrong.
"We thought we were the smartest entrepreneurs that ever existed," Megan told me.
Then 2022 arrived. VC funding dried up. SaaS companies ran out of runway. The clients who had been happily paying $50K a month started churning. The waitlist disappeared. And the decisions that had felt easy during the boom: hiring 40 people in 90 days, taking on debt, suddenly looked very different.
Megan had been through downturns before. Chris hadn't. And in the turbulence of those decisions, the fault lines in their partnership became visible for the first time.
When the Partnership Started to Break
Megan was technically a 10% owner. In the operating agreement, the decision rights weren't equal. But that's not how Chris had described the partnership when he brought her in. "On paper, I'm the final decision maker," he'd told her, "but we're really in this 50-50."
For a long time, it held. They stayed aligned on the big calls. Then 2022 came and the disagreements started stacking up.
She pushed hard to slow the hiring. He overrode her and hired 40 people in a quarter. She wanted to limit the debt they took on. He overrode her again. When the layoffs came: two rounds in the back half of 2022, nearly a million dollars in severance, she was the one managing them. She was the one navigating the emotional weight of letting go of people they had just hired.
"I was the wartime CEO," she said. "He was the peacetime CEO. I was doing all of the hard work and not feeling like I could make the important decisions."
Resentment built. He tried repositioning the agency away from its core demand gen model. She pushed back. They brought in outside consultants. They restructured leadership. In January 2024, they split responsibilities formally: Chris to a new venture, Megan as CEO of Refine Labs, with new governance guardrails in writing.
For a while, it worked. And then, in 2024, the same pattern resurfaced on the next set of big decisions. The majority-owner card came back out.
A potential acquirer sent a term sheet in Q4 2024. Megan saw it as a possible clean exit from the dynamic. Chris rejected it. The offer wasn't high enough, and he wasn't ready to sell.
Then, on February 5th, 2025, he told her he was energized about their partnership and excited about the future.
Five days later, from a taxi in Australia, he told her to figure out how to buy him out.
The Mindset Shift That Changed Everything
Megan came into our first conversation exhausted, frustrated, and not seeing what was in front of her. She was looking at the buyout as a burden, not an opportunity.
What I told her, and what she later said was the turning point, was simple: this is a huge opportunity. She had leverage she wasn't using. She had options she wasn't seeing. She was in a position of strength, not weakness, and the sooner she understood that, the better every decision she'd make from that point forward would be.
"You opened that door for me," she told me later. "And after that conversation, my mindset totally flipped."
That shift matters more than any deal mechanic. Because the quality of the decisions that followed: who she chose as a partner, what terms she insisted on, how she structured the close, all came from that clarity.
Building the Right Partnership the Second Time
Megan knew she didn't want to do this alone. She wanted financial de-risking, and she wanted a partner with experience who had done what she was trying to do: grow an agency through acquisitions and eventually exit on strong terms. That had always been the plan at Refine Labs. She wanted someone who was committed to seeing it through.
She also knew she was going to make this decision in 45 to 60 days. There was no time for a slow courtship. She put her cards on the table with every potential partner she met and asked them to do the same.
I introduced her to Mark Homer, who had previously been through his own partner buyout and had capital to deploy. From their first conversation, she knew it was right. He flew out. They spent a full day together: lunch, his lawyer's office, dinner. They had every hard conversation about governance, decision rights, exit timelines, and what they'd each do in the difficult scenarios that always show up eventually.
She wanted majority control: 51% minimum. She wanted full authority over day-to-day operations. She wanted a clean break from Chris with no extended earnout or seller note. No lingering dynamic. No reason to stay connected.
Mark was aligned on all of it.
How the Deal Actually Came Together
Chris had anchored his price to a previous acquisition offer from Q4 2024, one that Megan, Mark, and most observers agreed had undervalued the business. He presented it as generous. She saw it as a starting point.
She first went back to Chris with a number she could fund entirely on her own, without crossing her personal risk threshold. He refused without hesitation.
That opened the door to bringing in Mark. Between Mark's equity check and an SBA loan, which Megan describes as intense, tedious, and deeply educational, they were able to construct an offer that combined cash at close with relief of the company's existing debt obligations. Together, it came in close to Chris's original asking price. And it was all cash at close.
No earnout. No seller note. No reason for Chris to remain in her orbit.
The LOI was signed in April. The deal closed in mid-July. Five months of running the agency, managing the SBA process, negotiating a purchase agreement with Chris, and establishing a new operating agreement with Mark — all simultaneously.
"It was heavy," she told me. "I basically had two jobs."
Chris attempted to derail the deal multiple times. Unexpected issues surfaced around taxes and corporate structure. Mark kept reminding her: it's not usually this complicated. But they got through it.
What She Learned
Megan is clear-eyed about what she'd do differently and about what was her responsibility all along.
She had a victim mindset for longer than was useful. There were moments earlier in the partnership where she could have advocated harder, drawn clearer lines, or forced a resolution before the resentment had years to accumulate. She didn't. And while Chris's decisions contributed to the friction, she owns her part in letting the situation continue.
"You always have a choice," she told me. "I felt like I had no choice. But I did. And I probably could have forced a change a year sooner."
Her advice to any minority partner in a difficult dynamic: get clear on what you actually want before you're in a crisis. Know your non-negotiables. Advocate for them out loud, in writing, early. Don't assume a verbal understanding will hold when things get hard. It won't.
And if you're feeling stuck — reach out. Not to vent. To hear a perspective from someone who has been through it. That conversation might be the one that flips the script for you.
What Comes Next
Megan has a three-year vivid vision written out. The whole team knows it. Acquisitions are part of the plan. An eventual exit is part of the plan. Everyone is aligned and energized.
She's already making changes she wasn't able to make before. She's hired a salesperson. She's moving strategically. Inbound acquisition opportunities are already arriving.
"I feel like I did the hard stuff," she said. "And now I'm really excited about what comes next."
That's what the other side of a difficult partner buyout can look like, if you see the opportunity inside the chaos instead of just the chaos.
Listen to the Full Conversation
Hear how Megan Bowen joined Refine Labs as COO in 2020, became a minority partner, survived the SaaS collapse of 2022, navigated years of partnership tension, and ultimately executed a partner buyout that put her in full control of the agency she had been building all along.
