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Marker was a publication from Medium about the intersection of business, economics, and culture. Currently inactive and not taking submissions.

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Here’s What Happens When You Decide to Sell Your Startup

Joe Procopio
Marker
Published in
8 min readDec 5, 2019

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Photo: Westend61/Getty Images

Are you considering selling your company as a potential exit? Now? A year from now? Five years from now?

In over 20 years of working in the startup world, with over a dozen acquisitions under my belt as an entrepreneur, advisor, and investor, I can assure you that an acquisition is always a massive and complex transaction that you’re never 100% prepared for. In fact, the one regret I hear over and over again from my peers is that they got less than what they should have when they signed the deal.

Whether you’re a founder or you just have some equity, there’s a bunch of stuff you need to know before you decide to sell your startup, stuff that you won’t actually learn until you’ve been through it.

I sat down with a friend last week who is in a position to seriously consider selling her company. It’s her first startup, so we went over a high-level outline of the process.

How to know when it’s time to sell

There are basically four reasons to sell your company:

  1. Things are going poorly. This obviously isn’t good and, unless you’re in a position where…

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Marker
Marker

Published in Marker

Marker was a publication from Medium about the intersection of business, economics, and culture. Currently inactive and not taking submissions.

Joe Procopio
Joe Procopio

Written by Joe Procopio

I'm a multi-exit, multi-failure entrepreneur. AI pioneer. Technologist. Innovator. I write at Inc.com and BuiltIn.com. More about me at joeprocopio.com