[lmeyerov]

Thank you for sharing... 43 sounds super painful, and super tricky to safely share!

For others here: part of "companies are bought, not sold" is not just price difference, but whether the deal happens at all. Your startup needs to be solving something critical for an executive , eg, cuts red tape on internal politics, and enough so that they'll push the deal through because they need it. Good signal is inbound, but not only, and part of your job is to help figure that out or get that inbound.

The reverse is still possible, but now you both underprice and need to find a firm that is efficient here. As part of my surprise in seeing gitlab internal docs in the open.. they explicitly look for good but struggling product teams to scoop up for basically annual bonus levels, and it sounds like they can do that quickly... If that's what you want.

[huebomont]

"good signal is inbound" - mhm yep definitely english

[lmeyerov]

Hah sorry super busy, sorry. Inbound interest is a good initial signal that there's genuine interest on the other end. It's way better than reaching out. Somewhere between inbound & outbound is maintained relationships you push on.

From having legit inbound interest, you still need to find an executive champion on the acquirer's side who'll spend months pushing through the lawyers, politics, etc, and ideally, has done it before. Not easy. They may not be the person who reached out to you, but they are the one(s) you need to identify, make the bet on, convince, and iterate with as issues arise. If they're senior enough, they can make it Just Happen.

Maybe the perspective here is selling a business is the ultimate big & messy & relationship-heavy enterprise sales process. The process described in the post sounds like the numbers approach of SaaS (outbound reachouts to BD people -> a few conversations -> sell), but not with the messy human parts of enterprise. -- For example, it's unusual to bring in someone like KPMG due to deal size and risks around disintermediating the owner from the buyer during relationship building. (Individual advisors here are more normal for slightly bigger deals, and they'd have more skin in the game & involvement than a big firm.) -- As another, was DefCon time hanging out with the CEO or #2 of the company and the champions?

Not easy! The advice I got here is 90-99% of these convs fail, so it's useful to be wary & understand.

[huebomont]

I was commenting on the incredible level of jargon. This post is even more impressive!