In the first episode of Acquired & Operating, host Alexa Patino sits down with Mike Vough, Senior Vice President of Corporate Strategy at Optimal Blue. Mike traces a career that began with a consulting job out of Penn State and took an unexpected turn when he answered a LinkedIn posting for a trading role he was not sure he was qualified for. He learned the business one step at a time on the DC metro every morning, bought into Compass Analytics, and then lived through three transactions in a few short years as the company was acquired by Black Knight, merged into Optimal Blue, and eventually divested to Constellation and Andromeda.

He talks honestly about the morning he found out the company would be sold, what it felt like to prepare a business for a deal while still running it, and how product P&L ownership changed the way his teams think and operate. The deal is the headline, but the people who keep building afterward are the real story.