zhyan7109

pdf link added at the bottom of the page

Good call out! This book was definitely useful in terms of thinking about specialization before testing the market. There was even a sequel to it I believe.

However, the general audience for "Built to Sell" is for SMBs and does not cater towards the venture-backed technology startups here in the valley (who hope for a strategic acquisition instead of a ebidta multiple).

Congrats on your exit! Your note reminded me something Ezra Roizen wrote in Magic Box Paradigm. Paraphrasing here, he said that M&A outcomes often feel miraculous, but then again, babies are miracles too, and they happen every day :)

thanks for support!

thanks jason, really appreciate the perspective, will checkout your book!

Glad some chapters are helpful, thanks!

Good feedback, I’ll add one later tonight

haha sorry this info is under NDA

Depends on who you talk to, 3-5% of total deal size plus a retainer is the norm

Good feedback, thanks! Will include a version of the original stream of conscience and raw note in a day or two

OP here, thanks for this feedback, my workflow was to first have a draft and then feed it into a LLM to fix grammar and improve conciseness. Wished there was a tool (I think folks are already working on) that is similar to what a book editor does which suggests changes as opposed to changing the styling.

OP here, 83b didn’t apply in my case as I had only stick options, referenced in chapter 11

Thanks for that perspective, Einar.

I agree that good bankers are hard to come by and unfortunately most simply forward decks to a broad list, and they won’t get founders the outcome they deserve. My point was more about readiness for a sale. Having gone through it, I’ve come to believe there are certain prerequisites for even kicking off a process, primarily business fundamentals and pre-existing relationships.

In my experience, a banker can amplify an existing market, but they can’t create one from scratch (at least not easily).

For example, in our case we had roughly six serious inbound inquiries before engaging bankers. While our bankers (and they are great) ran a broad discovery process and put us in front of many potential acquirers, the eventual buyer was one that reached out to us unsolicitedly rather than being introduced through the process.