When you take your company to market, the offers on your desk will generally come from two distinct camps. One group views your business as a math equation. The other views your business as a missing puzzle piece. The M&A industry labels these two groups “financial buyers” and “strategic buyers.” For a founder, it’s much […]
Signing a letter of intent with an impressive purchase price feels like the ultimate validation of your life’s work. Most sellers spend the entire transaction fixated on that headline figure, fighting to increase it during early talks and defend it through due diligence. Focusing on that headline figure is completely natural, but it gives the […]
You sign the term sheet, pop the champagne, and see your dream valuation sitting in bold print. What nobody mentions during the celebration is that a third of that money is locked behind a door you no longer hold the key to. That’s the quiet truth about an earnout. A buyer can agree to your […]
It was a good deal, on paper. The multiple was right where the broker projected, there were no surprises in diligence, the wire hit on a Friday. Six months later, the man who signed it told me he felt like he’d lost something instead of winning it. He wasn’t my client. I met him after, […]
The most expensive thing in your exit is not your advisor’s fee. It is the problems you knew about and never fixed. Sophisticated buyers don’t surface those problems to kill deals. They surface them to reprice. By the time a known issue lands on the table in diligence, you are weeks into the process, emotionally […]
He went silent for close to a minute. Not five seconds. A full, uncomfortable minute, staring at the screen between us. I’ve sat across from hundreds of owners during a valuation conversation. You learn to read the silences. This one wasn’t disappointment. It wasn’t shock in the usual direction. The number was more than double […]
