Aside from Mutual NDAs, what ways do you have to protect your company during acquisition talks?
Backstory: We've built a pretty slick product that people love, makes the market more efficient and we're the first movers with solid brand recognition.
We've got experience selling websites, but this project is quite different. We're about three years old and still have a huge growth curve ahead of us... but there are a lot of new entrants into our space by larger more established companies in our space.
Several of these companies have devoted significant resources to emulating us and 3 have now sent the "are you for sale?" emails.
We've replied to all of them saying now isn't the right timing, but 2 of the companies have hinted that they can offer our desired exit price or more.
How do we best protect ourselves if we decide to move forward with talks? Especially, considering that our potential acquirers are already our competitors.
Backstory: We've built a pretty slick product that people love, makes the market more efficient and we're the first movers with solid brand recognition.
We've got experience selling websites, but this project is quite different. We're about three years old and still have a huge growth curve ahead of us... but there are a lot of new entrants into our space by larger more established companies in our space.
Several of these companies have devoted significant resources to emulating us and 3 have now sent the "are you for sale?" emails.
We've replied to all of them saying now isn't the right timing, but 2 of the companies have hinted that they can offer our desired exit price or more.
How do we best protect ourselves if we decide to move forward with talks? Especially, considering that our potential acquirers are already our competitors.