How do you sell a business without looking 'desperate'?

First of all BE VERY CAREFUL about exiting investors while bringing new ones on. You cannot give investors money back out of proceeds raised from new investors. It's illegal (called Ponzi). This is a VERY tough scenario since you are dealing with two substantial issues - 1) building (or rebuilding) a business; and 2) retiring investors. If the business is in fact "ruined" then you need to first decide if bringing new investors into that situation is a wise decision. You could be opening yourself up to legal problems. Investors invest in projects when they can 1) make money; 2) connect with the business; 3) add value; 4) believe in management. Unfortunately, having "previous investors" (especially bad ones) is like coming into a relationship with baggage. Most savvy investors will not want to participate. Advice: try to retire the investors BEFORE talking to new investors. Rebuild the business model and wait a few months before going after new investment. Showing that type of resilience and passion for the business could play in your favor and show new investors that you are someone who can overcome adversity to achieve success. So how do you "retire" investors? Convert the investment to debt if possible. If not, offer to sell the business to one of the investors. Do not sign a non-compete and start a new business. Also, depending on your stock purchase agreement and any anti-dilution clauses you could issue new stock and dilute everyone's shares to where the old investors shares are minimal (could have legal repercussions though so be careful).

Hello, you have a very interesting product in an interesting and growing industry. Anything with automated HR solutions is probably a good venture right now. There is a client of ours actually, www.BetaBulls.com who has specialized in automated Human Resources software (SaaS) as a CTO for other companies. I have learned a lot from working with them and based on that experience and the few startups I have launched myself including an online job posting platform and a game, I would say that generally speaking a good time to go for outside investment is when you have a validated concept, all legal documents in place and any type of demand from either partners or clients. Think of it as a business loan - you should only get one when you don't really need it, but for strategic leveraging is better to leverage borrowed money than your own. An investor should be the same, you get an investor if you need to buy yourself more time to improve on your technology or for market reach such as production or marketing. Not to prove the concept. It sounds like you are already there, so my recommendation would be to proceed with caution not giving any major control in any one area of your company or product.

Naturally 1001 variables play into this that I'm blind to but here are some assumption laced thinking points: You're profitable, upwards trending, business, in a very competitive vertical. Yes? You guaranteed have a Buyer, unless: 1. Your asking price is outrageous. Not likely as we've closed strategic sales that were 12x revenues. It doesn't get much more aggressive than that. 2. There aren't enough strategic or institutional buyers. Nope. The buyer market is wide with creative outreach. We've rarely tapped let's say 20% of our pool before successfully securing multiple qualified offers. (And we hold a 100% close rate). 3. You're so big ($1B+) that only a few have an opportunity to buy you AND they don't like you or your brand. Unlikely? More likely... 4. The outreach effort is nominal. Most brokers and M&A intermediaries boast a sub 40% closing ratio and far too many of them are "listing agents" -- whereby they list a property, announce it to a pool of buyers in their database and then "wait". We've seen deals that we normally turn around in 60-days with all-cash offers, take 18-months for "payment plan" deals closed by other firms. The results based on the experience and model employed is indeed apples to oranges. 5. How your business is presented (packaged) is not producing conversions. This too would then be a fault on your banker's side. We "spy on" the competition - it's business as usual on our end - and the typical prospectus and marketing collateral and followup materials are, well, embarassingly slim from, well, everybody. I've never encountered a problem with "the market" (the strategic buyers) and we've sold very niche and distressed properties. We have declined taking on deals where the asking price was a number picked out of la-la-land (in which case we offer complimentary guidance, feedback and let them pursue other avenues for closing the deal - which basically never happens at that asking price)... but that's a sensible discussion and likely one that was already had. If your exit is sub-$100M, your asking price is reasonable (even if aggressive), your business is indeed strong on its metrics, growth and brand value -- then any lack of offers sits with your banker. You're likely looking to play professional basketball but you brought in a kid from a high-school team. Skills mismatch. Upgrade your "player" and you'll move towards a win quite rapidly.

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The less you need to sell, the more leverage you have. The fact that they approached you says that they want it. If 15k was their first offer, you can simply say no thanks. If you can do that with a straight face and resist the temptation to make the move, they are likely to come back with a better offer. The other way to move the price up is to say 15k is an asset sale "as is." You could offer a short consulting contract to provide assistance in integrating the acquisition and probably find an extra 10-15k that way. Happy to talk in more detail in a quick call.