How to Sell Your Startup for Millions (#466)
Sam Parr walks through selling a startup, from deciding whether to sell to closing the deal. He breaks acquirers into four types, explains the "Dennis System" for structuring outreach, and stresses running multiple buyer processes at once to create leverage. His exits to Twitch and Milk Road show how it works in practice.
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Okay. Friends, family, people who like pink Pop-Tarts, welcome. This is another masterclass. My first masterclass was on raising money. It was about how to get, create a killer pitch deck. That's the start of your journey. If you're an entrepreneur, you're trying to go raise money from investors to, uh, to fund the company. This is now about the end of the company. How do you sell a company? And, um, Ben asked me to do a, a masterclass. He's like, hey, can you do a ma— can you record a masterclass today? Your boy's lazy. So I'm repurposing a presentation I gave, uh, 3, 4 years ago at HustleCon. I went on Google Drive, I found an old presentation. I actually didn't even look through it. Uh, I'm just gonna do it live here, uh, sort of improv style. But I remember, I remember being on stage and giving this talk about how to sell a company cuz I had just sold my first company. And I remember at the time being like, I wish there was some more content about this because if you wanna learn how to manage people, you're gonna, there's tons of books and you're gonna get practice every day. If you wanna learn how to grow revenue or sales, there's tons of books and you get practice every single day. When it comes to selling a company, there's very little content out there that's at, that I thought was any good. And you get very few reps. You might sell a company once every 4 years, 10 years. It's, it's not a common thing that you do. And so, um, We're not, you know, if you don't practice, you're not very good at anything. So I learned something, some things during the process of selling my companies, and I'm gonna share them with you today. Uh, so let's see what I was thinking 4 years ago. The only thing I did was I removed the HustleCon banner at the bottom and I put a new logo there because it said HustleCon 2019. I thought that would not look so great. So, uh, let's jump in and hit the first slide. Here we go. Okay. Hey, that's me. Um, look a little different nowadays. Not too different. Here we go. I still got the headphones. We still got the headphones that we can rock. Um, I've sold 2 companies now, one to a big company. So when we sold to Twitch, Twitch owned by Amazon. So selling a company to Amazon was one way. And then Milk Road, we sold to 2 private buyers, just like a, a, you know, 2 dudes who, uh, were independently wealthy from their previous businesses. And it was a, it was a totally different transaction. So I'm gonna share some lessons from each. When I made this presentation, I had only sold Bevo. So I added the Milk Road one just before I went live here. Um, but the rest of the presentation, I didn't add any lessons. So let's see if I've learned something the second time. I always start with this when it comes to selling a company. This is a, this is a picture of a foot and a dog, and it is the first picture ever posted on Instagram. Uh, Kevin Systrom, the founder of Instagram, he posted this, uh, right when Instagram went live and Um, you know, today it's this like iconic picture of like, you know, this is how it all started. And, uh, you know, here's the guy himself, Kevin Systrom, looks great. You know, power pose, got the white sneaks. And, um, if you're Kevin Systrom, you know, you got a dozen employees, you make a billion dollars, everybody loves you, right? Because you've built the hot thing and everybody comes knocking at your door, right? If you ask Kevin Systrom, how do you sell your company? He'd say, well, you gotta create, you know, sensational product and then people will just come and offer you $1 billion, right? Like that would be his experience. My experience was very different. We had built a good, not great business. We had built a good but early business and we were trying to sell. And so here's what we experienced. So if you're, if you're reading this or if you're watching this, you are not Instagram. And I think my talk will be maybe a little bit more applicable to you than, than what you might hear from the people that are on the Forbes list because they're they were in a totally different position of leverage and bargaining power than most people are when they go to sell their business. Um, this is you, you've tried, you've pivoted, you've hustled, it's not working, or it's kind of working, or it's working, but you're just tired. You're ready to move on. Um, and this is a very common thing entrepreneurs get to. And, um, when you're here, it's okay to think, uh, you know, where, where should I go? I've been there. I felt it myself. And this advice I heard all the time was, Great companies are bought, not sold. That sounds pretty cool. It's a nice little fortune cookie, but remember, you're not Instagram. And so great companies are bought, not sold. I think that's true, but most companies are sold, not bought. That's my contention at least. And that was my experience. We sold the companies more so than we just immediately got bought because we were just crushing it beyond belief. Like you would, like you see when, uh, you know, whatever, huge companies get acquired. Um, here's a headline from when we got bought. This number is incorrect, uh, which just shows you don't read, don't believe everything you read in the media. Um, I don't know where they got that exactly, but, uh, yeah, we, we sold, we sold for, you know, 8 figures, but not, uh, not like that. Uh, you know, once you, and, and sales, it's weird when people come up with these numbers too, cuz it's like you get cash up front, then we got these signing bonus, you get stock, then the stock price changes. You know, it's all, there's all kinds of ways to, to sort of like manipulate sales numbers. But when you get— let me, let me go back here. When you got started, you thought this is going to work and this will be big if it works. And I can do this and I want to do this more than anything else. That's typically the mindset of an entrepreneur when you start. And the reason I say this is because the first thing when it comes to selling your company is figure out, do you even want to sell? That's why I started here. Do you even want to sell? Because when you're in this state of mind, No way you would sell. Why would you sell? This is gonna work. It's gonna be huge. I could do this and I want to do this more than anything else. That's how you should feel when you start a company. And then you have to check in and say, all right, year 7, and try not to check in on your most frustrated day, but you wanna say, uh, do I still believe this is gonna work? Do I still believe this will be big if it works? Do I still believe I can do this? And do I still want to do this more than anything else? When we sold our first company, we had hit this, you know, All of them kind of are true except for this will be big if it works. I thought we might have a medium-sized exit the first time, and that's why I decided, well, let's sell now versus play this out for 4 years, uh, 4 more years and, um, hit a medium-sized exit. Yeah, it'll be multiples more than what we're at today, but, um, it still requires 4 more years and time is so precious. With Milk Road, it was more of the last one. I want to do this more than anything else. It was actually working and I thought it could be big, but Um, my brain was wandering to new ideas, new things, and I was loving doing the podcast so much. I just, is this the one thing I wanna wake up and do every day and focus on with laser focus? Yes or no? So these are the questions you gotta ask yourself. Say, are these more true today, less true today, or at the same as when I started? And that gives you this, takes you to this point, right? When should you sell? So if you get a great offer, cool, consider it. If you don't believe in the business anymore, Well, maybe sell the assets because if you don't believe, you're not going to really take massive action. You don't take massive action, you're not going to get any results. And then you'll just reinforce your belief like, see, I knew it, I knew it wouldn't work, right? So belief is really, really key. And lastly, the common case is you just don't want to run the business anymore. You prefer to exit versus hire an operator and you just— you're ready to move on and do other things. So 3 moments where you might sell. Who do you discuss with? I just want to put this up here for a second. So You talk about it with yourself and maybe some mentors, but then yourself and your partners, yourself and your co-founders. It's really a, a lot of conversations in your own head, which is why managing your own psychology during a sales process is the number one most important thing. It's what helps you be good in negotiation. It's what helps you, uh, get people across the line. It's what helps you, um, you know, stand up and operate every day while you're also trying to sell the company. It's very difficult to do that. So managing your own psychology is really important. And then there's a note about your investors and your team. There is a finesse you want to do with this. Some people believe don't tell anybody until the deals are done. Some people say, well, no, I want to be transparent with my team. Um, for me, I've always been on the be transparent with your team, but it does have drawbacks. People start to work a little bit differently when they realize, oh, we're going to try to sell this thing. What does that mean for me? Should I be looking for a job? Is this what happens if we don't sell? Will I be rich? What's going to happen? And so I think discussing it with your investors or your team is something to be very careful about. I probably erred too much on the transparency side. I, if I were gonna go play it back now, I would only discuss with my co-founders and I would not talk to the team until the deal is done. Um, and so you wanna create a little like communication table. Um, so your co-founders, you wanna tell them ASAP, uh, you know, hey, it's time to explore options. I'm gonna do X, you can help me by doing Y. Investors, you want to tell them and say, hey, we're going to explore a sale. Here's what I think would look like. Employees, you might say, hey, we've been approached, we're considering it, blah, blah, blah. Here's the good news. Here's what it means for you. I wrote, you know, you can put ASAP, you can say this, we're going to do this when the deal closes. You can say that we're going to do this when the deal's getting close to closing. You know, you want to decide your timelines and create your communication table. Okay, now to the fun parts. How do you actually sell the dang thing? So who's— who might buy you? You want to break it up into buckets of potential buyers because you're really going to run a sales process. No matter who you are, you become a salesman when it comes time, uh, to do this. So I would say there's 4 potential buyers. There's the unicorn. So, uh, high growth companies that might wanna buy you, um, to accelerate their growth. There's dying dinosaurs. So, you know, incumbents that might need to get fresh blood, fresh tech, fresh, um, you know, fresh energy, fresh cash flow, whatever it may be. Um, there's your adjacent companies, your adjacent alligators. Uh, this is like, uh, what's that game? Legend of the Hidden Temple. So yeah, you got the adjacent alligators. They're, they're next to you. Uh, they might be peers or, uh, competitors that you merge with. And the last one is talent farms. This is just go sell to Google and, uh, they just want talent. So they, they don't care about your company or your market, but they've, they just want engineers. Um, you have to also know the different roles. Who are you gonna be talking to? So when you get bought, um, the other side is gonna have an exec champion. So who's the one person that really wants this deal to happen? If you can't identify that person, ain't no deal gonna happen. You should always know who is the person that is pounding the table on that side saying, we gotta do this deal, or, hey, come on, let's figure out a solution to that problem, or, dude, just let's bridge the gap. Let's come up a little bit, right? You need to know who is the champion on the other side, identify them, and you're gonna nurture that relationship. You gotta know who's the company router, who's the person in the middle that can get you to the different people that need buy-in. Usually in big companies, it'll be Corp Dev. But in smaller companies, you might know who else it is. Maybe there's an admin person or assistant. Who are you going to be able to reliably get information from and to that's not necessarily the key decision maker? And then you got your deal doula. So this is using a childbirth metaphor. So if you're trying to birth this baby, you know, a doula who helps you, you know, remember to breathe, think about this, you know, let's move to this position. It's going to help. Hey, we need to get water here, you know? Your doula is the one helping you through this often, you know, painful but wonderful, you know, process. And so I like to find my deal doulas. These are 1 or 2 people who have done M&A before in my, you know, they're in my corner. I can trust them that they'll keep everything confidential and I'm going to bug the hell out of them. I'm going to, you know, these are people that I was texting and saying, hey, I'm going to say this back, you know, is that too desperate? No, no. Okay, let me, you know, wordsmithing it like I'm a 7th grade girl trying to figure out, do they like me? Do they not like me? How do I phrase this in a way that demonstrates strength without pushing too far? Your deal due list will help with that. Uh, for those who love one of the greatest shows on, on earth, this is the Dennis System. So I'm gonna take you through the Dennis System of how to, how to sell your company. So stage 1, the D, demonstrate values. So why do companies buy companies? There are financial reasons and then there are strategic reasons. So financial reason's obvious. You're crushing it, you're making tons of money. They want your EBITDA, they want your revenue. Uh, pretty straightforward if you have it. Many people don't. So who buys companies when there's strategic reasons? Well, here's 6 strategic reasons. Um, the CEO finds it interesting. That's the first one. That is surprising, uh, how far that goes. CEO's got a pet project. CEO, uh, has got an itch to scratch. Awesome. If you got, if you're so lucky to have that, fantastic. Number 2, there's a new executive or an executive gets a promotion and they need to demonstrate big moves as a signal. So they're, they're, Either they're on the way out or they're on the way in and they're looking for, for some kind of big move, some big, big thing to do as a signal. That's good for you when that happens. Number 3, they're trying to catch up to a surging competitor. You know, this is Adobe trying to catch up with, you know, using Figma to catch up. This is— there are many examples of this along the way. Synergy, 1 1 3. This is Uber merging with Didi in China so that they don't keep competing each other, driving costs up. They say, hey, why don't we merge into one entity? And then we own a monopoly, we can cut costs, actually we can raise prices. So 1 1 could equal 3 in this case. They're afraid of you. This is Facebook buying Instagram. You know, you do what they do but better. Instagram was better at sharing photos than Facebook, and okay, you're gonna get a strategic premium when that's the case. And the last one is you have unique talent. So you might have computer vision PhDs and they're having trouble finding that talent en masse, and it's actually cheaper to acquire you and get the talent as a bundle that's proven to work together versus going through a long, slow recruiting process. And so it's important to figure out for every potential buyer what, what might be the reasons that, that, that they will, they will buy you. Next step, E, engage physically. So who do you actually reach out to? What do you say? And what's the goal? You know, you can reach out to a number of folks, you can reach out to executives, just go meet somebody who's at the company. Corp Dev, their job is to meet companies that might be interesting to acquire. Investors might make introductions. You know, when we were selling, we went to a, I went to an investor who was an investor in Discord and I said, hey, we got this thing, Discord might wanna buy it. And he said, let me email the CEO. CEO gets an email from their biggest investor, they're gonna take it seriously. And then all of a sudden I'm, you know, next day I'm in a meeting with the CEO and I'm pitching why this, why 1 1 could equal 3. There's also advisors. I mean, what do you say? You know, You say, hey, I want to discuss a partnership on how we might be able to work together. Hint, hint, right? Like, that's— discuss a partnership is the best way to kind of open the door. The more aggressive way, which I've done also, is, hey, we got an offer, you know, we're considering our next steps. Maybe we're going to raise money or we have an acquisition offer. We'd love to talk to you before we just go and make a decision. And they say, oh yeah, yeah, come talk to us first. Don't just, don't just do it without, you know, we want to, we want to take a peek under the hood. We want to know our options before we get in. Your goal here is just to get an in-person meeting. And so, you know, use these two frames in order to get an in-person meeting. Now, what do you do if you don't know them? Well, you got to reach out. You got to reach out cold. Ideally, you've been building a relationship over time. This is the smart way to do it, is you meet people in the company, you keep them posted with light updates. They see you, they know you, they see you at an industry event so that when the time comes, you could do this. You're not an absolute stranger approaching them, but I've done it as a stranger too. Usually when I'm a stranger, Corp Dev is the easiest way to go. I can't find this client info. Have you heard of HubSpot? HubSpot is a CRM platform, so it shares its data across every application. Every team can stay aligned. No out-of-sync spreadsheets or dueling databases. HubSpot. Grow better. Next, N, nurture dependence. I'm covering some of the words here, but you want lust, not love. Lust is going to get— is a high burst, immediate, like, oh, I see. It's like greed. It's like like, oh, I want something out of this. Your goal is to tap into emotions. And when I say this, it's about clarity, not trickery. You're not gonna manipulate anybody into buying your company. What you can do is frame what you're doing in a way that is maximally appealing to them, something that taps into their desires, their dreams, their emotions, their pain points. And you need to trim the fat of your story so that you are the answer, to that problem. Um, I'll give you an example. When we sold to Twitch, I had met, uh, in, in terms of engaged physically, I'd, I'd gone, I'd gone through Corp Dev. Corp Dev had got me a meeting with the CEO the next day and I said, all right, well I don't know what to, I don't know how to frame what we're doing to the CEO. But I had met a guy on a boat in Australia of all places who worked at Twitch. He was an exec. I said, I gotta hit that guy up. So I hit him up and I said, hey, can I get a beer with you? Today? He said, oh yeah, yeah, sure, let's do it. I said, I got a meeting with the CEO tomorrow. I don't know how to navigate it. You know the guy. Can I just get a beer with you just to, to get your download? So I go get a beer with him and I say, uh, you know, here's, um, you know, what's he like? What's he, you know, what, what should I expect? Blah, blah, blah. And then I said, tell me, what are the top like 3, when you're in these exec meetings, you're, you know, you're, you're at the highest level, right? I'm stroking the ego. You're, you're, I know you're in the room when they're making the big decisions, so What are the top 3 priorities? Like, what do y'all really care about? Is it profitability? Is it revenue? Is it growth? Where, what are the top 3 priorities? And then he'll say them. I said, okay. I said, which one of those is like stuck? Which one of those needs a solution? Because like sometimes you already have a solution in mind. You love that solution. You don't want to interrupt it, but which one is still, we don't really love our plan here, feels the weakest and needs some bolstering. And then he told me, hey, we have this thing. And actually everybody's pretty bullish on it, but we don't have the right team and we don't have the tech to do it. And the guy we have, he's not good with tech, so it's gonna be a problem. I said, oh, say less. So then when I go into the meeting the next day, I say, we're great at doing this one thing and I'm a great leader and I know tech and we have the team that, we have the tech already built and I have the team that, that can, that built it. And so now I package my story as how I am the solution to their problem versus what most people do is they come in as a startup and say, Here's what we do. Here's why we're great. You know, here's this other feature we have. Here's this feature we have. And oh, this guy says this. They're all over the place. And it's like, all right, good for you. But that doesn't tell me why I want you. So it's a sales pitch. You gotta package yourself as the solution to their problem. Um, another way to say this, you need to find their pain, offer a cure. Um, you know, other questions that might be helpful. What initiative has the most juice or momentum or buy-in right now? You want to buy in is like the best word with corporations. What has all the exact buy-in right now? Oh, they're all bought into this idea. Uh, what are the fires that need putting out? Who's on the chopping block? Um, what company are you guys most afraid of? Um, if I only had 20 minutes in front of your CEO, what part of what we're doing do you think he'd be most interested in talking about? Um, And then you also wanna suss out who's the decision maker. So, hey, right now we're talking to this guy. Is he the decision maker or who should we be talking to? And oh no, no, no, his boss's boss is the guy. Um, then you wanna talk down, talk to, this is a little pro tip, talk to founders who have been acquired by the same company before. So go to them, say, hey, you acquired 3 years ago, 4 years ago, whatever. What was it like? How did the process go? Were the timelines that they told you real or fake? Was the, When they said this is the most we could do, was that real or fake? Um, did they try to retrade the deal later or not? Um, what, what was your experience with the CEO? Was he really into it? Was he, is he more reserved? What did, what did that mean? You're trying to get a bunch of intel and hey, this is founder to founder from somebody who, uh, you know, has done it before, ideally who's left the company now. Uh, I got a ton of great intel on this. Okay, here's another. This is just a, Classic move when we did it. You wanna do the work for them. So what a lot of people do is they say, here's a, here's what we do. Then they sit there and they pray. I hope they understand it. I hope they get it. I hope they like it. No, screw that. You take matters into your own hands. So you basically say, hey, I wrote up a one-pager that explains where I think this makes a lot of sense strategically for you guys. Cuz if we're gonna do this, then, um, you know, I wanna make sure, you know, I thought about this from your perspective and what, what this would look like once we join. Um, you know, I did some crazy things. So basically on the technical side, I had our team write a technical one-pager. Here's all the stuff we built, how long it would take for anybody to build it, what's our special sauce. Um, so that they could just see, man, buying this is gonna save us so much time. Look at all these assets they already have. Uh, here's the talent. Here's my, I, I made our team a present, like into a presentation of like, here's all the talent we have. What they've done before, make it really easy for them. It's a dating profile. Do I want to swipe right or left on these people? Um, and then I, I did this thing, I wrote a letter from the CEO. I said, I said, um, I think this deal makes a lot of sense and I wanted to write that out into a memo. I know you guys have this memo writing culture, like, uh, Amazon has this thing, like you write 6-page memos for all your strategies. So I took a stab, I wrote one. Um, you know, I obviously, I don't know some of the internal things, so I, you know, I, I took guesses. They're, they're in blue. You can see the guesses. But, um, yeah, I wanted to put my logic on paper because I don't want to do this if this doesn't make sense, right? You're not saying, please, please, please buy me. You're saying, I'm trying to figure out, does this make sense for both of us? It's a two-way street. And so in order to do that, I wrote something to give myself clarity. I thought you'd like to see it. And so, um, I actually wrote for one of the acquisitions. I said, this is how I would announce this deal to the, to the company, to the team. To your exec team and the rest of the employees. And I just wrote a really persuasive argument of like, we bought this company, here's why, here's why this was a good idea. Here's how awesome this is gonna be. Here's the, how this solves one of our problems. Uh, I'm so excited about this acquisition. And like in doing so, again, I made it easy. Somebody told me this, one of my deal doulas, he goes, you need to turn your company into a giant buy button, like a, like Amazon one-click checkout. So that means make it easy to understand what you do. Make it easy for them to understand your team, your technicals, your, your strat, how you strategically align. And last thing, you get your, get all your financials in like very clean, proper, uh, you know, data room so that there's no friction in trying to buy your company. Last one, neglect emotionally, the Dennis Reynolds special. So you need to find another partner. You need to go cold, right? You don't want to be all in hot on one partner. That is not how you get the best deal. So you need to find multiple partners at the same time. You need to be negotiating these in parallel. You don't do one at a time. You, you start the process. You're now running, you know, you're starting conversations with 10 folks at once, 20 folks at once. You're narrowing it down. You're trying to get multiple offers in the same week so that you can tell them, hey, we got another offer. Um, sometimes you go cold a little bit, make them sweat. Uh, not too long. Don't push it. But, uh, it's not a bad thing. I also wrote leave breadcrumbs. I don't know if this made a difference or not, but I would like check in on my Instagram story, like, I'm in Seattle. Oh, cool. I've never been to the office, to this cool office before. And like, they know, they're like, oh, he's at Microsoft, he's at Facebook. He's like, where is he? He's talking to, he's talking to our competitors. Um, so, you know, I don't know if that shit works, but it amused me at the least. It made me feel like I was doing some, some James Bond shit. All right. Last one, inspire hope. This is where you go back to them and say, look, we got other options, but we want you. Can you make that happen? Can you get your deal? Can you get your offer a little stronger here, here, and here? And it's time sensitive. Look, like we have this other offer on the table. They're not gonna sit around and wait. Um, so if you can get us something, we can, we would like to work with you. We think you are the best fit, but obviously, uh, you know, bird in hand, this is a really good offer and you know, I don't wanna blow it for my team by, by sitting here hoping you guys come around. Um, you know, you need to, to use the, the leverage from one deal to get a, a better deal. And then you sell entirely. So you need to do the— you need to have your due diligence stuff ready. You need to make sure that the closing terms are clean. You need to get a good lawyer and a good accountant. Don't— and don't burn bridges because deals fall through and you may need to go back. So make sure you communicate properly even when you say no to people, um, and do everything with, with sort of integrity and grace because, uh, many times deals have fallen through. We need to go back. When we sold the Milk Road, it was a Somebody we had rejected last minute, but we didn't burn the bridge and they didn't burn the bridge. And we came back, you know, later and we said, hey, still interested? And they sure were. And there you go. The advice I got here was, uh, from my deal doula was, this is when you need to sprint the hardest. So normally an entrepreneur gets a term sheet, it's like they wanna relax. Finally, look at this, the big number. I'm gonna be rich. This is awesome. And they take a moment to relax. You can't relax here. This is where you sprint the hardest to close. You cancel everything else. You just spend all day following up with lawyers, data room, uh, your accountant, making sure that all your ducks are in a row, solving any problems, uh, along the way. And lastly, celebrate. Make sure you celebrate. Uh, very often the whole process is so stressful that the, the main feeling is just relief. I think that's common, but you wanna let that relief subside and then have the joy and the, the, the pride that you, uh, you did something kind of amazing. And so, uh, I, I don't know if I have any other slides left. Okay. Remember some, some tips here. The great advice I got: birds fly, fish swim, and deals fall through. That's what they do. Just remember, deals fall through. That is completely normal for them. Um, you can't get emotionally too high, too low. The second deal momentum is everything. If you have a conversation going, the, the speed with which you follow up and you get them the materials and you, you move forward is everything. Momentum is everything when it comes to deal making. And last thing, one choice is no choice. If you only have one person that could buy you, one company that's gonna buy you, you have essentially zero people that'll buy you. You have zero leverage. So you need to have multiple choices. One choice is no choice. All right, that's it. Um, that's the masterclass. Let me know what you thought about that one. Drop comments, um, on YouTube. So that's where I read 'em. So go to, go to YouTube, My First Million. Hit the thumbs up if you like this, subscribe to the channel. We're over 200,000 subscribers now. That's amazing. If you guys like these, I'll do more of these. They're not easy to do, these masterclasses, right? Like, it ain't easy to drop these kinds of bombs. But if you guys like it, I will make an effort and I will try to do more of these until I'm all out of knowledge. And then I'll stop and just go retire. So let me know if these are worth doing. And your compliments fuel me to do more. All right, I'm out of here.
