Three Ways To Set Up Your Startups Exit Strategy

There are only a few ways your business can actually win, and you probably aren’t focusing on them.

DALL·E 2023–02–11 15.34.36 — many houses wearing ties with bird legs that have open doors with sharp teeth, digital art + additional prompts

There are only three outcomes that mean your business has truly achieved success. 1. Exit. 2. Profitability. 3. Shutting Down (yes, really).

1. Exit For Success

Exiting is the most obvious way for you to achieve success with your business or startup.

There are so many ways to exit but the most straightforward is to sell to another company. You may still have some percentage ownership and have sold off only a majority stake, but if someone else is responsible for it now, you can take it as a win.

Selling your company isn’t the only way to prove that what you accomplished was legitimate.

Going public via an IPO, or IPO-like mechanism (such as direct listing or even an SPAC), shows that what you created is something people want to participate with in the market. When your public shares are owned and traded regularly, for better or worse, you have made a company that people see as real.

This feeling of validation, the feeling of real, that is reinforced by the actions of the larger market via a purchase or day trading shows that what you…