Completely agree with @thatthatis, but one separate thought.

> "talks began in October"

> "they [HandyBook] had a much better and well-defined marking model and they had already developed what we were trying to iterate, but better."

Is this related to the departure of the people behind the https://giveit100.com/ around then? The non-technical founder was responsible for marketing at Exec, for example. I could imagine were I in her shoes and heard this back then I also would be looking for new work.