How to Exit Your Startup When You're Not Going to Be the Next Billion-Dollar Unicorn

How to exit your startup?

When you’re not going to be the next billion dollar unicorn

Has your business startup not been doing so well? It can happen to anyone. Read more to learn how to exit your startup and move forward if this is the case.

How to exit your startup

Have you mentally checked out of your startup? Or maybe the business just isn’t working how you imagined it to be?

If you feel ready to exit your startup company, it may be time to bow out gracefully. However, there’s a right way to exit and a wrong way to do it too.

How you exit as a first-time startup business owner can define your career going forward, showing onlookers that you can deliver, or fail. If you’re not sure what the best practice is, we’re here to help. Here’s how to how to exit your startup the right way.

Keep Building Your Business

Even when you’ve decided to exit, it’s important to keep building the business. Why?

It’s a classic startup mishap. With a potential buyer looming, many startups start cutting costs to appear lean and efficient.

They allow money in the bank to dip dangerously low instead of sourcing more funding. They reduce user acquisition to save funds. They stop building the company to make ends meet, allowing revenue growth to diminish.

This doesn’t fool anyone though. While you may be making the bottom line appear well, your growth is suddenly at risk. Of course, this is bad for business and it places you in a vulnerable situation.

Investors may suggest an attractive offer, only to withdraw at the last moment once a startup has run out of money. Avoid such situations by continuing to grow your company, even when you’ve decided to sell. As a startup founder, you’ll have a better selection of offers and options if you can prove growth with plenty of money behind the business.

Seek Support

Many startup founders see themselves as lone wolves, but if you’re ready to exit your startup, the worst thing you can do is try to do it on your own.

You might want to learn more about the best exit strategies for your business.

Don’t retreat to your office and hammer out a contract alone. Seek support from people you trust, such as your angel investors who believed in you and the company from the very beginning. If you know any fellow entrepreneurs who have been through a similar situation, they’re a great option to speak to too.

These are the best people to reach out to who have you and your company’s interests at heart.

How to Exit Your Startup the Right Way

Voila, there’s how to exit your startup the right way. In the end, a successful startup exit comes down to achieving a good company as an entrepreneur. It’s all about connecting with investors that are in tune with your vision and fellow entrepreneurs that you can rely on.

Even then, exits aren’t simple, and success can never be guaranteed. If you’re still in doubt, then seeking professional help is a great way to gain perspective and to help you through the steps.

Here at BizNexus, we’re here to help. We help match business owners with the ideal business intermediaries, helping you sell your business for the best price, on optimal terms. For more information, click here.

BizNexus -Learn More From Our YouTube Playlist:

PREPARING TO EXIT YOUR COMPANY

Have you checked out our podcast?

THE BIZNEXUS ROUNDUP

Quick & dirty interviews, war stories & tips from the trenches of business acquisition, growth & sale. We aim for value, efficiency & fun, so you'll walk away with something useful to take with you along the journey of buying, growing & selling a business.

Embrace Your Entrepreneurial Spirit — Buy or Sell a Business in Boston

Buy or Sell a Business in Boston?

Embrace your entrepreneurial spirit

Entrepreneurship continues to expand in the post-Great Recession world. Businesses are being bought and sold at a rapid pace. And many entrepreneurs are using dedicated digital platforms to make it happen.

Getting Help with Your Goals

Specifically, entrepreneurs are working with organizations that not only have business listings for sale, but also, help them overcome their hesitancy about buying or selling. Although they have a great deal of confidence, some of these owners still have a nagging fear that things may not turn out as desired.

This can certainly be the case when selling a business. While you may want to move onto something else, you also want to get the best price possible for something in which you invested a significant amount of money and time.

The Science of Selling

While searching for a platform that offers business listings for sale in Boston, MA, you want assurances that the organization will maximize the list of potential buyers for your company. Today, much of this is done through advanced algorithms — the same ones that search engines use to produce the results you want. They use a mix of real data such as online reviews and historical transaction performance over the time you were running your business. Algorithms can also assess your unique website or blog hits as well as your interactions with customers.

Once all this data is compiled, it should result in a list of relevant brokers who can help you find the right business to buy or a buyer for the one you want to sell. This relieves a lot of pressure, so you can focus on the next stage of your life.

That’s what we do at BizNexus. Our goal is to connect you with the right people and maximize your potential to find your next profitable business or sell the one you have for a sizable profit. To learn more, visit us at Biznexus.com.

BizNexus -Learn More From Our YouTube Playlist:

PREPARING TO EXIT YOUR COMPANY

Have you checked out our podcast?

THE BIZNEXUS ROUNDUP

Quick & dirty interviews, war stories & tips from the trenches of business acquisition, growth & sale. We aim for value, efficiency & fun, so you'll walk away with something useful to take with you along the journey of buying, growing & selling a business.

What to Do before Selling Your SaaS Business

Are you thinking of selling your software as a service (SaaS) business? Remember, buyers most often buy SaaS businesses for financial or tactical reasons. Know what they want in an acquisition, and you will be in a better position to undergo the entire process without much difficulty.

Establish the Value of Your SaaS Business

It doesn’t matter if you are selling a SaaS business or a website; you need to find out the best price to sell your business. To know what you may receive in the market, you need to get a valuation of your SaaS business to be aware of what it’s worth. After that, start setting up your company’s prospectus, including the facts, figures, and numbers. Typically, this is done by computing the annual revenue generated by your SaaS business and doubling up that amount. Also, factor in the amount you’ll compensate the broker or marketplace you use to sell your SaaS business.

Put Your Books in Order

Recurring proceeds is one of the highest draws to a SaaS business. Nevertheless, in terms of increasing revenue generation, a growing business doesn’t guarantee that buyers will pounce on your deal.  Potential buyers are often not much intrigued by ‘what meets the eye’. Meaning, they would be more interested in finding out the fraction of your actually profitable earnings. For this reason, you need to compute costs, such as costs of acquiring customers, your rate of churn, your average growth rate, and more.

To put your books in order, you need to think about maximizing profits and minimizing expenses. Usually, it’s less costly to retain, serve, get existing clients to subscribe and renew than trying to attract new customers to swap the cash flow. Additionally, upgrade your systems time and again to help you lessen cancellations. One thoughtful way of minimizing costs is cutting down human assistance. Use tutorials, videos, and knowledge bases to reduce the need for interaction between humans.

Debug Your Source Code

It doesn’t matter your finances are in good shape. If your source code is disordered, jumbled up, or missing in documentation, potential buyers will be a bit skeptical about your business. In essence, your SaaS business source code ought to be clean, annotated, tested, and verified. It can be overwhelmingly difficult to sell your SaaS business if the source code doesn’t comply with the set standards and guidelines.

As well, a non-reliable, non-concise, overly complicated code can present you challenges as far as selling SaaS businesses is concerned. Being the business proprietor, you need to be familiar with all the entries and exits of your source code. For a reason, it will present fewer challenges to the buyer; in case they want to alter or upgrade the software. Aside from that, a well-documented source code lets the seller take over your business naturally.

Assess if You Need External Assistance to Sell Your SaaS Business

Note that, a reliable online business broker can help you get a valuation of your SaaS business. This is necessary so you are clear about what your business is worth. The good thing, you won’t need to meet your preferred business broker physically. Schedule time to chat with a reliable online business broker (website to advertise) to identify appropriate buyers. Of course, you need to have completed the valuation and prospectus before you start looking for buyers.

An extensively experienced online business broker can help you prepare and move you through the entire process of selling your SaaS company. More importantly, letting an expert online business broker negotiate the price with prospective customers on your behalf removes you from the equation. As a result, it eases the discomfort you might have when it comes to the actual transaction.

BizNexus -Learn More From Our YouTube Playlist:

Preparing To Exit Your Company

Have you checked out our podcast?

THE BIZNEXUS ROUNDUP

Quick & dirty interviews, war stories & tips from the trenches of business acquisition, growth & sale. We aim for value, efficiency & fun, so you'll walk away with something useful to take with you along the journey of buying, growing & selling a business.