Exit Strategy 101: When Is The Right Time To Sell Your Startup?

It’s a tough decision to make:  to sell or not to sell?

In the case of Tom Smith, who is now the vice president of business development and Strategy at CloudEntr, he thought the timing and circumstances were right to sell his company (a developer of cloud security) to Gemalto .

So what were some the lessons learned? Well, here’s a look:

Tom Taulli: You built up IronStratus to be eventually acquired by Gemalto – how did you know when the time was right to sell?

Tom Smith: For me, I think IronStratus was at an inflection point. We either needed to raise a substantial amount of additional venture capital to compete – to invest in the people, build the infrastructure and evolve the product – or it needed to get acquired by a company that had the resources in place to reach the market and evolve the product. Competitors in the space were raising significant amounts of money and they were further along in their customer acquisition and revenue stream development, which made for a very challenging environment.

In general, it all comes down to your assessment of market conditions and the opportunities before you. The common misconception is that you can plan your company to the Nth degree, but the true fact is that all good entrepreneurs always have a number of exit strategies and opportunities in front of them at any given time. When Gemalto came along, it was good timing for them and a natural fit for me. After the acquisition IronStratus became CloudEntr and it accomplished exactly what I wanted.

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Exit Strategy 101: When Is The Right Time To Sell Your Startup?:

For additional information regarding Florida business sales, acquisitions and valuations, please contact Eric J. Gall at info@buysellflbiz.com or 239.738.6227. Also, visit our Florida Business Exchange website at www.fbxbrokers.com and my personal website at www.buysellflbiz.com.