Advice for CEOs

In my last article I introduced Rick, a business owner who has just started to think about the possibility of selling the business that he has built and run over many years.

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.