don't pitch your company to strangers who might buy it

thursday i taped with a founder who has sat on both sides of the deal.

he built security companies, sold them, and now invests. by his fund's count, six acquisitions and one ipo. one of those sales put him inside the acquirer as cto within five months.

so i asked him the question every founder thinking about an exit wants answered. what was true about the deals that closed?

his answer had three parts. technology that solves a critical need and is proven at scale. a market growing fast. and an acquirer who can see clear revenue upside from owning you.

that third one is where most founders lose.

here's what he described. a founder decides it's time to sell. they hire someone or they start reaching out themselves. they pitch to big companies that might buy them. and on the other side of that table, a vp or a gm is being asked a question that's almost impossible to answer...

if we buy this company, what revenue will you commit to deliver with it in house next year?

think about how hard that is for someone who met you last week. they don't know your product. they don't know how it fits their stack or their sales motion. they'd have to do months of internal analysis before they could say a number out loud. most of them won't. not because you're not good. because you're new.

the problem with i'm going out and selling myself is that you have people out there that could benefit greatly from buying the company but just don't understand it, and it will take them too much time to understand it.

and yet, in his words, most founders go that route.

his fix is simple and slow. as you build the company, build partnerships with the people who can help you sell the product.

every one of the partnerships that you work with ultimately become a potential acquirer.

by the time you're thinking about selling, those partners already know your company. they know where you fit. they know what revenue you bring because they've watched it land. all the hard analysis is done before anyone says the word acquisition.

and then the part i loved. at some point one of those partners says to the ceo, if you're ever thinking about selling, let me know first. the day you're ready, you go back to that one and say, let's explore. the moment they say yes, you go to a second partner and ask if they want to explore too. then a third.

now you have competition on price and terms, and you didn't pitch a single stranger.

he said that's how every one of the companies we talked about was sold.

it's the same thing i keep seeing in fundraising. the founders who raise easy didn't start the relationship when they needed money. they started it years before, with no ask attached. a sale is just a bigger version of a raise. the buyer wants to know you before they bet on you.

i also asked him what being acquired taught him about who to take money from. his answer was about the bad months. a company doesn't go up in a straight line. it goes up and down and up and down. and in the down, the last thing a ceo needs is an investor criticizing instead of helping.

it's not just money.

he wants investors who contribute, who stay positive when it's ugly, and who help the team climb out of the hole before they review what went wrong.

that fits the same pattern. the people around your table, investors, partners, future buyers... the time to pick them is long before you need them.

so what does this mean for you this year? if an exit is anywhere in your five year picture, your partnership list is your acquirer list. treat it that way. pick partners who could one day own you, and make them successful with you now.

if you're working through that kind of thinking at the board level, that's what board and strategy advisory is for.

so look at your partner list... which of them already knows what you'd be worth to them?