Every founder knows the number they would sell for. Very few, the advisers say, know the terms — and terms are where legacies live or die. Price is a headline; earn-outs, retention pools, brand covenants, and board composition are the plot.
The pattern in unhappy exits is consistent. A founder optimises the multiple, signs quickly, and discovers the things she assumed were understood — that the workshop stays open, that the old supplier keeps the contract, that the name doesn't move to a holding company in a tax-efficient jurisdiction — were never written down. Buyers are not villains. They are optimisers, and anything not in the document is available to be optimised.
The unglamorous checklist
Founders who exited well describe the same homework: start two years early, so the company runs without you and buyers pay for a machine rather than a person. Decide what is non-negotiable — people, place, name — and trade price for it explicitly, because you will get nothing you did not price. Vet the buyer's last three acquisitions the way they vet your last three years. And put the legacy terms in the purchase agreement, not the press release.
The best line of the week came from an adviser who has seen forty of these: "A good exit is one where, five years later, you can walk into the building. A great one is where they're glad to see you."
