This keynote from an Angel Capital Association regional meeting describes three successful exits that were also what I call “Accidental Exits.” By that I mean exits that were the result of an unplanned approach from a buyer. In this very active M&A market, sellers are often being surprised by buyers changing the conversation and offering to buy the company.
Highlights from Accidental Exits:
- We don’t have hard data to help us make exit strategy decisions
- And even if we had data, the world is changing so quickly it might not be helpful
- So we have to rely on anecdotal observation
- Three examples of BC technology company exits
- The common element is that these were all happy exits – but also unplanned exits
- From my own observations, I think about half of exits are “accidental”
- Which makes me wonder how many exit opportunities we miss
- We’d have more happy exits if more companies had exit strategies and plans
The PowerPoint from this talk is online here.
