Early Exits are a fit for Rising Acquisitions

Great to see you go through the math on this and paint it in black & white numbers.

Basil Peters has written a book on Early Exits. There is strong alignment between this path and local angel investors.

One of the challenges I have with broadly giving this advice is that I find it contributes to founders “aiming low”. That is, that they are building smaller businesses, which then don’t become something that anyone wants to acquire. This is subtle, since it assumes a lot of experience, and can be hard to explain to more junior founders. If you’re not careful, what ends up being heard is “go big” again in an unrealistic sense – eg I’m going to build the next Facebook.

I believe that more acquisitions are coming as “tech” pervades all industries. Another thing to consider is the industry you are targeting. Without disruption happening already, there will be less impetus to purchase a startup to compete. So is your industry segment used to acquisition as a growth strategy, or will your startup need to teach the industry that as well?

Final point: this might be an interesting path for foundries to follow. Making connections within an industry and then serving up purpose-built solutions made for acquisition.