Advice for CEOs

Part 1 addressed the need for companies to focus from the very start on their exit strategy and the valuation that will realize when they exit.

It is not uncommon for a CEO/business owner to say, when asked about the exit strategy for his company, that he doesn’t really have one. At least, not one that is coherent and the result of thoughtful, thorough diligence. Some CEO’s say their exclusive goal is simply “to build a great company” and any thoughts beyond that are merely distractions to their work-in-process. Thoughts of “optimizing value for an exit” in a developing company don’t compute with many emerging growth company CEO’s. The prevailing paradigm is “I’ll worry about an exit when the time comes”. Bill Gates and Steve Jobs certainly would be in that group, at least early in their companies’ development.