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In the previous article, we talked about the most important factor in determining your ability to sell your company on the private market: has it been built to depend upon you? Hopefully the answer is ‘no.’ If you don’t solve that problem, doing the things below won’t matter. But assuming you have built your business to not need you, or you’re in the process of making that transition, then there are a number of other things you’ll want to do in order to maximize your company’s saleability. A buyer wants to know what they’re getting into. It’s impossible to convey

After a recent project, I’ve been thinking a lot about the subject of preparing a smaller company for a successful founder’s exit. In larger firms there is a robust process and standard options for how this typically goes down (IPO or mainline M&A activity), complete with an entire multitrillion-dollar industry — investment banking — largely dedicated to it. But what about smaller founder-run companies (say, under $10MM in revenue), particularly those with with decades of tenure? Boomers are squarely in the standard retirement range right now, but sadly most Boomer-owned companies probably won’t sell. What will happen to them? If

This material is excerpted from the introduction to my new book, Bots in Suits: Using Generative AI to Revolutionize Your Business, a practical demonstration of how to converse with a generative AI chatbot (like ChatGPT) for business use. The ebook is on sale now at various retailers (with print coming soon), but for the time being, subscribers to Customers, Costs, and Cash Flow can get it for free! Because generative AI operating at the level of ChatGPT is so new, you need to tread lightly. It would be a dire mistake to read this book and go, “Wow, now I don’t need to pay all