Exit
~2 m
Session 8 - Exit
What does it mean to sell a company?
Fundamentally some entity will provide a pile of money. Every shareholder gets a share of the pot (and HMRC will probably take more than you like - especially if a Capital Gain is made)
- sell to another company (Competitor | Customer | Industry Player) - you probably know the likely candidates
- management buyout - the people running the company buy it from the shareholders. Clever you hired some smart managers and ensured they could borrow enough money from the banks to make this happen
- sell to a finance company (Private Equity) - they will focus on growth and adding value for a more lucrative sale in 3-7 years from the transaction
- sell to a consortium - get the companies to form a holding company to buy yours
- IPO - Initial Public Offering - list yourselves on a stock market and have your shares publicly traded.
- Sell it to each other / family - essentially a private sale
- Liquidation/CLosure - Shut the business down - stop trading, turn the assets into liquid cash, have a massive party
- Go bust - fail to make a profit, sell everything, spend the next 10 years paying debts or going bankrupt
Review of previous session
From the last session, we will review:
- Did you grow? Were you too optimistic? Can you justify your assumptions for all the sales?
- You may be big now, but are you profitable? How did your costs scale with your sales?
- What story does your balance sheet tell? A happy one? A sad one?
Vendball review
How did you grow? Did you manage to retain your community feel while the money rolled in?
Vendball exit
The big question is who can run the business while you start your next, even more exciting, venture?
For next time… by email
To close off this exercise, I’d like to see:
- A 100-300 word summary of the journey your business took from pitch to exit
- A 100-300 word summary of how you, the directors, felt about the journey
- A 100-300 word summary of what you learned and what surprised you.
- Permission to share / not share items 1-4 and (if you’re willing to do so) a short review of the course that I can put on the linkedIn feed.