This last weekend, I gave a talk at the Unpluggd Conference in Bangalore titled “Selling Your Business.”
It appears that the internet and world at large is filled with information on creating business plans, getting co-founders not to mention loads of advice on fund raising. Yet there is mostly silence or a lot of speculation on selling your business. Sure you hear about “OMG! Did you see Little Eye Labs got acquired by Facebook!” So when you read about RedBus being acquired or an acqui-hire (BuyNBrag) happening or product buy-out (Mango) – what is it that actually goes on? More importantly what is it you want? Are there lessons to be learned from entrepreneurs who’ve sold their businesses with various levels of (un)preparedness and differing degrees of (dis) satisfaction?
The talk was intended to serve as a brief How-to ranging from, “Should you sell?” “Where do you start?”, Who should be involved? What do investment bankers or other consultants do? all the way to the mechanics and esoterica of valuations, deal structuring etc. and the lessons learned from other Indian tech and non-tech firms going through a merger and acquisition (M&A).
Thanks to my friend Ramani, who originally inspired me to put this together.
It was a wonderful opportunity to listen to you sir. So much to learn from you. You were the youngest man in the hall.