Walling: Selling a company is always painful without exception
“All exits are painful. There are no smooth times of selling your company.”
Growth deals stall on exit and control terms, not valuation
“It's the tough conversations happen a little bit late, and those tough conversations are about exit, and they're about control, and they're not often about valuation. Those conversations get solved really quickly, and folks think, oh, we're done. We've got our…”
Green: VC Fund Count Rose Despite Lengthening Exit Timelines
“It's actually shocking that like, that the number of venture funds over the last like five or seven years has actually increased given that the exits are getting longer, not shorter.”
Charles: Average distribution yield today would beat PE exit records by 25%
“If you just get an average yield on all of the accumulated NAV, this year would be the biggest exit year ever, and it would exceed the best year ever by about 20, 25% in dollar volume of exits.”
Dr. Sherry Walling: Financially successful exits often trigger emptiness in founders
“An exit is phenomenally successful. Someone walks away with a pile of money. Everybody's happy. That founder is often in the midst of a great deal of emptiness and lostness that is very, very difficult to voice. So anyway, exits are way more difficult than peo…”
An IPO is a financing event, not an exit for founders
“Some people view an IPO as an exit. We don't view it as an exit at all. It's just, it's a financing. It's a way to, you know, bring capital onto the balance sheet, have, create a more public platform and more exposure, and continue on this mission.”
Parr: Smaller initial exits give founders breathing room to build legacy companies
“In my opinion, entrepreneurs who basically had a smaller exit compared to what they eventually launched, But in doing that small thing, it gives you a lot of freedom and breathing room to kind of focus on what you can do to create legacy, to create something m…”
Schottenstein: Distressed startups seeking an exit should be openly transparent
“If you're in a Hail Mary situation where you're looking for a home or you need an exit for your business, it's better to be transparent and cast a wider net.”
Grinda Predicts Fewer Exits, Lower Valuations, and Lower VC IRRs
“It means we have fewer exits in the next few years. It means the valuations at which these X's happen are lower, which means that the IR we get are lower”
Anand: Selling a company takes three times the effort of fundraising
“Let me tell you that an exit is at least three times more work and effort than a fundraise, right? If you think a fundraise is, you know highly energetic and, you know, takes a lot, very demanding. And I mean, an exit is at least three times”
Sloan: Companies should purge the word 'exit' from their vocabulary
“Try and purge from everybody at your company's vocabulary the phrase exit, or the word exit. It's not an exit. It's the starting point. There might be some people who aren't in your company, some investors who need a liquidity event, or they need to leave. The…”
Hewitt: A $20M exit provides life freedom that $500k cash flow cannot
“I think that, you know, if you look at really kind of changing your life and putting you on a different trajectory, you know, selling a business for twenty million and taking home, you know, whatever, 10 changes your life versus a business that, that cash flow…”
Clarkson: Five-year startup exits are anomalies; 8 to 12 years is standard
“I mean, the companies that are getting invested in today, maybe they'll exit in five years, but that's an anomaly. I mean, really, they're in it for eight to 12.”
Singh: Waterbridge targets portfolio exits within three to five years
“We would ideally like to, you know, start looking at an exit probably three, four years after our first investment. But depending on the situation, because exits are also somewhat you know based on the opportunity that comes along and you know, so depending on…”
Indian startups are increasingly generating $20M to $200M mid-level ecosystem exits
“We are seeing a lot of exits happen, let's say in the 20 to a 100,000,200 million dollars sort of range. But maybe six, seven years back, it used to be either only IPO or nothing. Thankfully that is not the case. And there are some mid-level exits also possibl…”