[seibelj]

Product - market fit was the root cause every time. Every situation is different but if there aren’t buyers it just won’t work.

Interesting enough that the successful exit was because of astute cap table management. The founder was very ruthless about managing the cap table and negotiating to maintain a huge amount of equity, which turned into a fairly good exit for the founders / execs / early engineers despite a relatively low acquisition price. And the reason the acquisition happened at all was for IP rather than customers, so I guess even without strong product / market fit a successful exit can still be accomplished if the founder is clever.

[thecleaner]

I mean essentially people pay for something of value. Customers will pay for your product if its great. Acquirers will pay for the assets like brand value or IP. Building a startup for acquisition is also just fine. Atleast you come out stronger in the end.