Chapter 19Checklist Before Engaging with Potential Buyers
The below list is ordered based on importance, please only proceed to engage with potential buyers until ideally they are all checked off.
1. Actionable inbound inquiries from companies for deep partnerships or M&A
2. Existing partnerships or relationships with companies that can be potential buyers
3. Cash runway for at least one year
4. Backup plans for when you get no acceptable offers
5. Alignment on expectations with your cofounders and the board
6. Mitigations of all known issues with your companies that could derail the M&A or affect valuations (below are some common ones)
a. Let go all disgruntled or high-flight risk employees
b. Clean up your cap table of stakeholders that could potentially be adversarial
c. Relocate remote employees to headquarters
d. Drop periphery products and only focus a one or two key areas
7. List of potential buyers
8. Law firm that does M&A
9. Data room