A Conversation with 3 Founders Who Sold Their Companies to Search Funds

The idea for today’s episode came to me after giving a presentation to a group of prospective acquisition entrepreneurs on my first month as the CEO of a newly acquired business. While we talked plenty about customer communication, getting to know employees, and 100-day plans, I was struck by the fact that the majority of our conversation revolved around managing the relationship with the seller.

In my opinion, properly managing the relationship with the outgoing seller is likely to be among your most important tasks within your first 6 months as the new CEO. I say this because a non-functional (or worse, a toxic) relationship between the incoming and outgoing owners has the potential to damage a company more than customers leaving, employees quitting, or competitors fear-mongering ever could.

To help us better understand the perspective of a selling founder, I was joined this week by three founders, all of whom chose to sell their companies to a Search Fund within the past few years. Joining me today is Alicia Browner (Founder of Prelude), David Marshall (Founder of Performio), and Robert Day (Founder of Integrity Advocate).

I hope you enjoy listening to today’s episode as much as I enjoyed putting it together for you. Link is below.

A Conversation with 3 Founders Who Sold Their Companies to Search Funds