{"id":625,"date":"2026-03-13T07:09:04","date_gmt":"2026-03-13T07:09:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/xn--mnchen-3ya.xyz\/index.php\/2026\/03\/13\/matt-selling-your-company\/"},"modified":"2026-03-13T07:09:04","modified_gmt":"2026-03-13T07:09:04","slug":"matt-selling-your-company","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/xn--mnchen-3ya.xyz\/index.php\/2026\/03\/13\/matt-selling-your-company\/","title":{"rendered":"Matt: Selling Your Company"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I would like to offer some free business advice to people who are considering selling something they\u2019ve created.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">First, if the buyer insists you don\u2019t talk to any other bidders, you are being screwed. They only do this because they don\u2019t want you to find the market-clearing price.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Do you think when Microsoft called LinkedIn and said, \u201cWe want to buy you for $26B,\u201d and they replied, \u201cSure! That sounds good.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">If you\u2019re very lucky, you get to work with a bank like <a href=\"https:\/\/qatalyst.com\/\">Qatalyst<\/a>, which says, \u201cThat\u2019s a lovely offer, let\u2019s see who else would be interested.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Ask yourself why someone wants to buy you? Who else might have the same motivations? That begins a process in which a wide array of parties review the deal.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">If you don\u2019t have the connections or a bank to help you, just email the CEOs of other companies that might be interested. Say: \u201cXYZ wants to buy me for $Y dollars. Is that something you\u2019d also be interested in?\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Now you\u2019re creating a market.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Remember that you\u2019re doing this for the first time, and on the other side of the table, they\u2019ve done dozens of deals.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It <em>really<\/em> pains me to see WordPress-adjacent companies get taken advantage of by sophisticated financial and corpdev players who strong-arm them into not shopping their deal.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A confident buyer doesn\u2019t care if you talk to others because they know they can offer you the best deal, which usually combines money with what happens to the business after it\u2019s sold. This is the magic of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.berkshirehathaway.com\/\">Berkshire Hathaway<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Warren Buffett doesn\u2019t care if you talk to other bidders; in fact, he wants you to, so you see why he\u2019s the better outcome for your business if you want to sell it.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It\u2019s tempting to want to celebrate every time a creator sells something. Say it\u2019s good for the community. But if they didn\u2019t sell it through a fair process, it\u2019s more likely they were taken advantage of, and that saddens me. <\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">For public companies, failing to follow the process I describe above can constitute a breach of your fiduciary duty to shareholders and expose you to legal action. But there aren\u2019t any such rules for private entities, which is why they get rolled over so often.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I would like to offer some free business advice to people who are considering selling something they\u2019ve created. First, if the buyer insists you don\u2019t talk to any other bidders, you are being screwed. They only do this because they don\u2019t want you to find the market-clearing price. Do you think when Microsoft called LinkedIn [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-625","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/xn--mnchen-3ya.xyz\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/625","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/xn--mnchen-3ya.xyz\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/xn--mnchen-3ya.xyz\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xn--mnchen-3ya.xyz\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xn--mnchen-3ya.xyz\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=625"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/xn--mnchen-3ya.xyz\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/625\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/xn--mnchen-3ya.xyz\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=625"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xn--mnchen-3ya.xyz\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=625"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xn--mnchen-3ya.xyz\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=625"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}