Planning Your Exit Strategy — Be Proactive!

December 15, 2011

In a recent post for the OpenView Blog site. Venture Partner Firas Raouf shares a VC’s perspective on what tech companies can do to reach their desired exits.

He stresses the need for expansion stage companies to be proactive when architecting their exits, listing several reasons why it’s so important. For example:

Companies with great exits are bought, not sold

“You need to find a way to get a strategic buyer to notice your company, to see the opportunity in acquiring it, to want your company bad enough, and to make a great offer,” writes Firas, adding that it takes a lot of work before an acquirer reaches this point.

He stresses the importance of building relationships with multiple potential acquirers rather than focusing all of your attention on just one. He also notes that relationships like these take time to build (12-18 months), so it’s important to be patient.

Ensure that investors are aligned with the desired exit

“The more investors you have around the table, the harder it is to get them all to agree on the timing and size of the desired exit,” Firas writes. He says company leaders should take into account the factors that drive an investor’s desired exit before even closing a deal for funding.

For more details and the rest of the reasons why companies should proactively architect their exits, check out the full blog post at the OpenView Blog site.

The Chief Executive Officer

Firas was previously a venture capitalist at Openview. He has returned to his operational roots and now works as The Chief Executive Officer of Everteam and is also the Founder of <a href="http://nsquaredadvisory.com/">nsquared advisory</a>. Previously, he helped launch a VC fund, start and grow a successful software company and also served time as an obscenely expensive consultant, where he helped multi-billion-dollar companies get their operations back on track.