Thinking about an exit strategy early on seems to be a common theme amongst serial entrepreneurs. To know who might be interested in buying your business is powerful on two levels: The first you want to put yourself on their radar, so look at who might be interested in your business early on and reach out to them.The second once you have identified potential buyers for your business, start to think in terms of that purchase, this may guide how you build your business, its features and possibly future decisions about its direction. The power of alliances and partnerships are equally important in the early stage of your business – this was the story of Stuart Mcleod and Paycycle who was acquired by Xero.
Even before Paycycle started to write lines of code it reached out to Xero (cloud based accounting software) and told them of their plans. They wanted to build a complimentary business that would be a nice little addition to Xero’s accounting software and that product was geared around Payroll. 4 years later realizing the asset that Paycycle had become to their business they purchased Paycycle for $1.5 million.
Listen to Stuart walk you through his business learning, and tell you first hand about the power of partnership.