Chapter 49A Note on Exits
When I started Return Path in the froth of the Internet boom in 1999, someone told me I should hire a writer to follow me around and record everything that happened in the formative weeks and months of the business. The person actually said to me, “You can publish a book about how quickly you built and sold the business – it will be called Ready, Set, Exit.”
One of the most unfortunate stereotypes about startup CEOs is that we're only in it for the exit: the business equivalent of real estate investors who flip a dozen properties a year. That may describe some startup CEOs but it shouldn't describe you.
There is no such thing as an exit strategy for a great company. There are only growth strategies, customer development strategies, and global expansion strategies. There is a difference between being bought and being sold, which I will discuss in one of the later chapters in this section, but great startups are always ones where the management team focuses on building the business to the best of their abilities, without specific regard or aim for an outcome.
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