founders

“We've seen a lot of situations where people are sort of forced to sell a business for one reason or another. And if you haven't at least thought about these things, haven't had a couple of conversations, haven't like documented the things you're going to docum…”

“We talk to these founders who have built this business that is in all senses, a great business. But when you overlay the venture capital trajectory that needs to happen for businesses to be doing actually great by the label of great in the modern world, then t…”

“As soon as you start making money, if founders or execs are not aligned on the same values, like maybe one person is not transparent, but the other person believes in supreme transparency, it never works out.”

“Everyone always says the same thing about why they're selling. Which is kind of like, you can see through it, like, oh, you know, I want to do something else. I'm bored of this, which I get, and it could be honest, but more times than not, it's for a specific …”

“I actually, you know, typically will advise founders. To work with experienced buyers, even if the price is lower, because the chance of the LOI closing is higher and it'll just make your life a lot easier”

“I think like when it comes to e-commerce, there's two types of founders, right? Those that have an idea and don't know much about e-commerce and those that know a lot about e-commerce, but you know, not necessarily have a product itself, or they're not, you kn…”

“When a startup runs out of cash, everybody kind of runs for the hills. The founders are like in a broken cap table where they have no upside, so like, hey, I'm out of here. The investor is like, well, hey, there's no one to run it, and there's no money, so we'…”

“One of the things that I coach founders on when they go through this is I say, hey, you know that you can go back and create a new deal for yourself within the company, right?”

“Usually the founders are like, well, I just raised that a twenty million dollar valuation. And I'm like, yeah, and if you stop working there, the value is now zero. Like, it works there, there's no value. And most founders don't get that.”

“And frankly, having met with thousands upon thousands of founders, I have hardly ever met a founder at the end of this that's just like, ah, I just, my feelings were hurt, so I had to leave. By the time I'm talking to folks, or even, you know, before then, the…”

“If you're unsure of, you know, where you want to invest it, Or whatever, maybe just let it sit in your bank account for six, six months and just change nothing about your lifestyle. Don't start, you know, angel investing and stuff like that. Just let it all ki…”

“The strategy that I always recommend, and my whole team recommends, and what we've seen work the best is, is counterintuitive, but price it below what you think it's going to sell for. Because what that does is it draws in a lot of buyers, so you have a lot of…”

“That's actually the most common reason for founders that I personally work with that are looking to sell. They are literally already working on something else, and so it makes sense.”