Exit Path How To Win The Startup End Game

An exit strategy, if implemented early, is the surprising secret to ultimate startup success. Find out why—and how to develop one—in this comprehensive, practical guide from veteran Silicon Valley dealmaker Touraj Parang. In 2008, Touraj Parang's award-winning startup, Jaxtr, had 10 million users, raised nearly $20 million from top-tier Silicon Valley investors, and seemed poised to sail straight through the Great Recession. But, by January of 2009, Jaxtr’s only hope for survival was to find a buyer—sadly, it was too late for that. In Exit Path, Touraj draws on the lessons learned from that chaotic experience and the extraordinary successes that followed once he (and the entrepreneurs he advises) made creating and executing an exit strategy a top priority. For too long entrepreneurs have been failing to establish the requisite relationships and properly prepare for the most important milestone in their life cycle: a sale to an acquirer. But in today’s hyper competitive and interconnected business world, that is no longer an option. In this first-of-its-kind, comprehensive guide, you'll discover the surprising reasons few startups succeed while many fail—and you’ll learn that implementing an exit strategy early will empower you to take charge of your startup’s ultimate fate, maximizing its potential for success while mitigating the risks of failure. Arranged in four sequential parts, Exit Path walks you through actionable steps to devise and execute an effective exit strategy, starting with a fresh new perspective on the critical importance of creating a viable sale option for your startup. You'll learn why creating your exit strategy is necessary well before you're contemplating an exit, regardless of the stage of your startup. You’ll also discover how to create your own exit plan, how to make your plan a reality through personal and business relationships, and how to approach and negotiate with acquirers for an outcome best aligned with your values and ambitions should the need arise. Whether you are an entrepreneur, investor, or advisor, the expert advice and insights in Exit Path will inspire you to take charge of your startup’s destiny and unlock its strategic potential and options over time.

Finance your company's growth without losing your stake in it Too often, thanks to multiple rounds of equity investment, company founders wind up with only a small fraction of the businesses they start. But this situation isn't inevitable. The intelligent use of a variety of financing options—including debt financing—can help to maintain, or even grow, a founder's stake. In All Money Is Not Created Equal: The Entrepreneur's Guide to Finding the Right Funding for Your Business, renowned Silicon Valley veteran David Spreng delivers an expert guide for entrepreneurs and founders seeking to maintain as much ownership stake as possible in the companies they create as they move through the various stages of the financing process. The book draws on the author's decades of experience as a venture capitalist, venture debt lender, and CEO of a publicly traded company in Silicon Valley, as well as interviews with entrepreneurs, board members, investors, and bankers. Readers will also find: A well-rounded and insightful perspective on the financing process informed by industry veterans An informal and accessible exploration of a complex topic that remains critical to the success of entrepreneurs and founders Discussions of alternatives to equity financing, including debt financing, in the growth phase of startups An essential handbook for startup founders, entrepreneurs, and managers, All Money Is Not Created Equal also deserves a place in the hands of company board members, venture capitalists, investors, and investment bankers interested in the company financing process.

Tech entrepreneurs, make your startup dreams come true by utilizing this invaluable, founder-to-founder guide to successfully navigating all phases of the tech startup journey. With the advent of the internet, mobile computing, and now AI/Machine learning and cloud computing, the number of new startups has accelerated over the last decade across tech centers in Silicon Valley, Israel, India, and China. From Startup to Exit shares the knowledge that pioneering, serial entrepreneur Shirish Nadkarni has gained from over two decades of success, detailing the practical aspects of startup formation from founding, funding, management, and finding an exit. With successful tech entrepreneurs interviewed and featured throughout, From Startup to Exit will help you: Understand exactly what tech startups must do to succeed in all phases, from idea stage to IPO. Gain invaluable insights from the journeys of other successful tech founders that can be applied to your own situation. Learn how to raise millions of dollars of funding from angels and VCs to give your company the fuel it needs to take off and succeed.

"The EXITpreneur's Playbook is the ultimate guide to selling an online business. We all need to transition our businesses someday, and those that learn from this book will have a smoother experience, an improved deal structure, and a stronger bank account." -Walker Deibel, bestselling author of Buy Then Build Most people start an online business for the freedom, autonomy, and money that come with entrepreneurship-but what they often find instead is the feeling that they're running on a hamster wheel and can't jump off. If you were looking to exit your business, would you know how? Do you know what your business is truly worth? This book will shift your mindset from entrepreneur to EXITpreneur. After all, the majority of all the money you'll ever make from your business comes on the day you sell-so it's important to get the exit right. In The EXITpreneur's Playbook, Joe Valley shares his experience in all facets of exiting an online business through direct experiences and real-life examples, with clear math and logic. You'll learn to: ● Assess the value of your business and reverse engineer a path to an incredible exit ● Avoid the "ignorance discount" when selling a business on your own ● Negotiate favorable deal terms and conditions ● Calculate the all-important seller's discretionary earnings ● Create rock-solid pillars every buyer wants The EXITpreneur's Playbook is the definitive guide to achieving your own incredible exit, at the right time and value, and with the best deal structure that allows you to move on to your next adventure-with not just money in the bank, but satisfaction and peace of mind.

WHAT VALUABLE COMPANY IS NOBODY BUILDING? The next Bill Gates will not build an operating system. The next Larry Page or Sergey Brin won’t make a search engine. If you are copying these guys, you aren’t learning from them. It’s easier to copy a model than to make something new: doing what we already know how to do takes the world from 1 to n, adding more of something familiar. Every new creation goes from 0 to 1. This book is about how to get there. ‘Peter Thiel has built multiple breakthrough companies, and Zero to One shows how.’ ELON MUSK, CEO of SpaceX and Tesla ‘This book delivers completely new and refreshing ideas on how to create value in the world.’ MARK ZUCKERBERG, CEO of Facebook ‘When a risk taker writes a book, read it. In the case of Peter Thiel, read it twice. Or, to be safe, three times. This is a classic.’ NASSIM NICHOLAS TALEB, author of The Black Swan

A young entrepreneur and sociologist shows readers how to reach personal fulfillment using the same strategies that power Silicon Valley's greatest startups. As an entrepreneur, Anna Akbari learned that one of the best things about startups is their ability to “pivot” quickly—basically a euphemism for failing and starting over. And she quickly found that personal success is no different. It’s not just about developing and following the right process but also having a good idea. And that demands rigor and daily maintenance—far beyond a few positive affirmations. Like any Silicon Valley startup, the business of life is not as glamorous as its Instagram account would make it seem. What do you do when planning is not an option? When control is out of your reach? You isolate the small stuff, experiment constantly, and use the results to lay a more sustainable foundation for the future. You validate your idealized vision by testing it out in bite-sized increments. You see what sticks, integrate, and move forward. And inevitably, you experience a series of failures along the way, but those failures are key to your next success. Living a start up life is about maximizing flexibility and measuring on-going results, not avoiding failure or reaching one particular end goal. It's about embracing defeat, analyzing it, and failing up. In Startup Your Life, Akbari shows that after all, it's often the stumbles that pave the way for real happiness.

How to succeed in an era of ecosystem-based disruption: strategies and tools for offense, defense, timing, and leadership in a changing competitive landscape. The basis of competition is changing. Are you prepared? Rivalry is shifting from well-defined industries to broader ecosystems: automobiles to mobility platforms; banking to fintech; television broadcasting to video streaming. Your competitors are coming from new directions and pursuing different goals from those of your familiar rivals. In this world, succeeding with the old rules can mean losing the new game. Winning the Right Game introduces the concepts, tools, and frameworks necessary to confront the threat of ecosystem disruption and to develop the strategies that will let your organization play ecosystem offense. To succeed in this world, you need to change your perspective on competition, growth, and leadership. In this book, strategy expert Ron Adner offers a new way of thinking, illustrating breakthrough ideas with compelling cases. How did a strategy of ecosystem defense save Wayfair and Spotify from being crushed by giants Amazon and Apple? How did Oprah Winfrey redraw industry boundaries to transition from television host to multimedia mogul? How did a shift to an alignment mindset enable Microsoft's cloud-based revival? Each was rooted in a new approach to competitors, partners, and timing that you can apply to your own organization. For today's leaders the difference between success and failure is no longer simply winning, but rather being sure that you are winning the right game.

Entrepreneurs have a problem: startups. Almost all startups either fail or never truly reach a sustainable size. Despite the popularity of entrepreneurship, we haven't engineered a better way to start...until now. What if you could skip the startup phase and generate profitable revenue on day one? In BUY THEN BUILD, acquisition entrepreneur Walker Deibel shows you how to begin with a sustainable, profitable company and grow from there. You'll learn how to: Buy an existing company rather than starting from scratch Use ownership as a path to financial independence Spend a fraction of the time raising capital Find great brokers, generate your own "deal flow," and see new listings early Uncover the best opportunities and biggest risks of any company Navigate the acquisition process Become a successful acquisition entrepreneur And more BUY THEN BUILD is your guide to outsmart the startup game, live the entrepreneurial lifestyle, and reap the financial rewards of ownership now.

Develop faster with DevOps DevOps embraces a culture of unifying the creation and distribution of technology in a way that allows for faster release cycles and more resource-efficient product updating. DevOps For Dummies provides a guidebook for those on the development or operations side in need of a primer on this way of working. Inside, DevOps evangelist Emily Freeman provides a roadmap for adopting the management and technology tools, as well as the culture changes, needed to dive head-first into DevOps. Identify your organization’s needs Create a DevOps framework Change your organizational structure Manage projects in the DevOps world DevOps For Dummies is essential reading for developers and operations professionals in the early stages of DevOps adoption.