Many Founders ask, should I sell to Private Equity? The answer, paradoxically, may have more to do with your goals than valuation…

Many founders make one or all of these 3 understandable and potentially disastrous mistakes when selling; 1) use advisors without M&A experience, 2) get distracted by the M&A process and let business results suffer, 3) let their employees know they're selling too soon. All well-intentioned, stem from loyalty, familiarity, instinct, or transparency, and each one may lead to disaster.

If you're a founder whose business has unique intellectual property (real secrets to design or process), then protecting your precious IP might need a extra layer in due diligence with a buyer. Consider putting a "Clean Team" protocol in place to keep your secrets safe.

Founders that are in YPO or Vistage, or one of these other wonderful support organizations that help you and your fellow founders and CEOs get together and discuss really tough issues and learnings and best practices.

We highly recommend getting input from your fellow founder/CEO peers! Then, seek the more experienced counsel of a transactional professional to improve your odds of a great outcome with your prospective buyer.

If you're a #founder and moving toward a sale, or even responding to an unsolicited offer, it makes sense to get your financials in order by using an advisor with significant experience in M&A. Missing this simple step is often VERY COSTLY!

Many Founders rush to sign an unsolicited Letter of Intent (LOI) without getting legal or transactional advice. If you're a founder, don't be afraid to get professionals involved to protect your interests and potentially drive the price and terms toward more benefit for you. You won't chase away a serious buyer and you might be leaving a lot on the table by not negotiating before you sign the LOI.

Many #founders make these understandable and potentially disastrous mistakes when selling

if you're a founder, and you're approached by a financial sponsor (#privateequity) or strategic buyer, make sure you get an NDA in place, and share enough information to get an offer, but not so much that you lose important negotiating leverage, deal consideration, or both!

Founders often wonder which advisors are critical and whether some are optional. Here's a quick primer for #founders heading to a sale event.

If you're a founder, and you've started to clarify the difference between private equity and venture capital, some of the ways financial sponsors try to differentiate themselves will be confusing and frustrating. Here's a quick primer!

If you're a founder who's been approached by a SPAC about buying into your business and taking it public, don't take the first offer. Put the SPACs in competition. There are more than 300 active SPACs looking for private businesses like yours, and if that's an attractive path for you and your company, use an advisor to drive price, or terms, or legacy, and maybe a combination of all three!

If you're a #founder thinking about selling your business, and you've been approached by a SPAC, or by an investment banker representing a SPAC, this 2 1/2 minutes could be really valuable!

Need help sorting some things out?

Suffering from misaligned shareholder interests or have the wrong financial partners, or maybe you just need more or better capital sources?

We've got a proprietary database of funding options to fit each unique circumstance.

Going through a divorce? Death of a co-founder? Expensive debt threatening the continued success of the business?

We have a network of resources and capital providers to address these issues and many more.

Maybe you and your partner no longer see eye to eye and it’s just time to move on, but you don’t have the capital to buy him out.

Or maybe you’d like to continue, but your partner wants to retire, and neither of you has the capital to go forward while allowing for these divergent paths, so you’ll need to sell or wind down the business.

We have dozens, if not hundreds of growth equity, structured finance, and traditional private equity firms in our network that are set up specifically to provide capital to solve these dilemmas.

We can help!

Every founder hits a point in their company growth, which in our observation happens between $10mm-$50mm of revenues or when they have more than 20 employees, where their impulses, the entrepreneurial instincts that worked so well in the early life of their business, no longer seem to be effective. And when that impacts the value or transferability of their company, that's where we excel. We're expert at professionalizing the parts of your business that enhances value, and maybe even more importantly, at guarding against the things that could derail a successful transition.

If you're a founder and in the process of selling your company, there are just a few things that are crucial to getting to the best outcome...The Three Keys to Negotiating Your Sale.

If you're a founder, the due diligence process in a buyout or recapitalization transaction for your business might feel invasive, and maybe even accusatory and insulting. To navigate the process, lean on your advisors and practice four simple (not easy) principles for a successful outcome.

Simple, but not easy or intuitive keys to making sure you choose the right advisor for one of the most important decisions in the life of your business.

Securing the right investment banker with the right alignment around terms and conditions are critical to a successful outcome.