Hi, I've been away from board meetings of the biz for a while due to split with founder / partner. We're amicable now and keen to rejoin as entitled.

Unless you have a decent traffic or hugely demanded items larger comps might no be interested. Access to market is what leads companies to buy one another. I rencently bought a commercial cleaning company and merged it with my residential one to create an improved service with my people but leveraging the other company's subscriptions. I would not buy based on services, but buy either access to data, people or market. So your approach can be based on that rather than pitching a retailer with zero margins. Finding companies to pitch to is harder than it sounds and it literally simply comes down to you picking up the phone as much as you can. Good luck!

YES! You certainly can sell a services business; and, if it is positioned and prepared properly, for pretty great returns too. There are a number of different exit strategies available to you, not ALL of them acquisition. For instance; we have helped service business owners transition (exit) from their business without selling the business, but instead by retaining a minority interest and receiving large (7 figure) royalty checks for years after their departure. That said, IF acquisition is what you want each of the dozens of strategies available to you really begin with identifying prospective buyers, understanding their motivation for acquisition and pivoting your company into alignment with those motivations. I explain the process in more detail here: http://www.zerolimitsventures.com/cadredc Hope this helps! Good luck. Steve

Hire an independent valuator. In the case of US companies, a 409A valuation has to occur at every priced financing round, so if you've had one done, that would serve as guide. But you might not even have the right to sell your shares. Your shares should be subjected to vesting and your voluntary resignation would likely cancel all remaining unvested shares. Even should you have shares to sell, if you have Preferred shareholders, it's likely that there are terms that might make selling your shares to a 3rd party difficult. Happy to talk in more detail about the specifics of your situation.

I can give you the standard answer, brand, audience, marketing and half a dozen other things. You can spend thousands on any or all of those three things but if you don't grind, get better all the time and learn. You've wasted your money and time. 1. Grinding. The reality is just grinding away every day. 14-15 hours a day 6-7 days a week, not for a month, a year, 2 years... whatever it takes. Never say die attitude. Whilst our competitors are on holidays or just slacking off. We're still working stealing their customers. If you don't keep grinding away you'll never succeed. Of course just grinding away isn't enough. 2. Continuous improvement Never settling, learning from mistakes, recovering from it and just keep grinding away. Just focus on just getting better all the time. What has made us successful, (4x) was just getting better. Better at knowing our customers, better at producing the product. Better at communicating with our audience. Better at customer service, better at everything that matters to our industry, our market. 3. Finally, it's self-education. Being open minded to new knowledge. Learning from others, learning from customers, learning from competitors. Learning from successful entrepreneurs in other industries. Constantly learning new skills and learning to be a better entrepreneur. If you really want to succeed. Grind, work on getting better and keep learning. Everything else may be helpful but if you don't do these three things you are relying on luck.

I think the best place to start is your startup's net worth which includes all assets, the salaries of your staff, and total sales. Say for instance, your business' net worth is $300,000. That's a good middle ground starting point, but your price to this other company can rise or drop from there. The next step would be to study your competitors and see if you can estimate their approximate net worth. If you can research about 3 to 5 companies in your competition and space, take the average, so the average could be $450,000 for instance. Next, have several meetings with this company and see how bad they really want you and how far they are willing to go to acquire you. When I say several meetings, you need to really see what they are willing to pay and compare it to your net worth and average net worth of your competitors. You may be able to go higher from there and let this company negotiate your price down. Be prepared to show them the average net worth of your competition and yours, but only show them the higher figure so they can negotiate your price down. Have an absolute lowest price that you are willing to go to sell. Good luck. Bruce