Before you sell your company, even the odds.
While a successful entrepreneur may exit a handful of companies in their lifetime, large buyers close deals all the time. Without decades of experience in mergers and acquisitions, founders don't have the tools they need to get the best results for themselves, their teams, or the new parent company.
Through dozens of interviews with M&A leaders at the biggest Silicon Valley acquirers-as well as attorneys, bankers, and founders who have been through the trenches-Exit Right delivers the hard-earned lessons that lead to successful exits. From negotiation to valuation to breaking down a term sheet, managing legal costs, and handling emotional turbulence-this unparalleled guide covers every critical aspect of a technology startup sale.
Learn where deals get into trouble, how to create alignment between negotiating parties, and what terms you should care about most. Above all, learn how to win in both the short and the long term, maximizing your price while positioning your company for a legacy you can be proud of.
About the Author :
An early employee of Apple and Head of Innovation at Redbox, Mark Achler has been creating and investing in tech startups since 1986. Today, he is a founding partner of MATH Venture Partners, a technology venture capital fund, and an adjunct professor at the Northwestern Kellogg School of Management.Mert Iseri is the founder of SwipeSense, a healthtech company acquired by SC Johnson in 2020. He also co-founded Design for America-using design thinking for social impact-which won the National Design Award in 2018.Together, they wrote Exit Right to be the definitive guide on exits, delivering the best possible results for you and your company. An early employee of Apple and Head of Innovation at Redbox, Mark Achler has been creating and investing in tech startups since 1986. Today, he is a founding partner of MATH Venture Partners, a technology venture capital fund, and an adjunct professor at the Northwestern Kellogg School of Management.Mert Iseri is the founder of SwipeSense, a healthtech company acquired by SC Johnson in 2020. He also co-founded Design for America-using design thinking for social impact-which won the National Design Award in 2018.Together, they wrote Exit Right to be the definitive guide on exits, delivering the best possible results for you and your company.
Review :
"Whether you are early and want to build an ecosystem of buyers, or you are a later stage founder gearing up for an exit, I encourage founders to dig deep in the concepts here."
- Brad Feld, co-author of Venture Deals and Managing Director at Foundry Group
"Startup M&A is the R&D lifeblood of Silicon Valley. We wouldn't be here without it. And we need it to stay competitive in the future. This is a vital book for the industry and I'm telling all my PMs to read it."
- Gary Johnson, Head of Strategy, Corporate Development, and Business Development at Pinterest (former Engineering Manager at Apple)
"Both the buyers and the sellers in a startup M&A transaction want the best possible outcome for all parties involved. This book makes that abundantly clear, and the lessons and stories shared from both sides will provide enormous value for the tech industry."
- Dave Sobota, Vice President of Corporate Development at Instacart (former Director of Corporate Development at Google)
"There is an acute need for this book! It addresses so many misconceptions that founders have about the process and includes a lot of best practice M&A lessons that need to get out there more broadly."
- Hilary Shirazi, Head of Corporate Development at Pinterest (former Sr. Manager of Corporate Development at LinkedIn)
"There is no such thing as a perfect M&A process. The trick is to build the trust and absorb the inevitable shocks along the way-and this book superbly lays out how to do just that."
- Sarah Hughes, Director of Corporate Development at Atlassian
"How does one exit right? This book is a guide that provides illumination through this journey in a way that is straightforward, actionable, and infused with the distilled experience and wisdom from those who have gone before."
- Rishad Tobaccowala, author, advisor, and former Chief Strategist at Publicis Groupe
