This week, we dive deeply into the realities of selling your company to a private equity firm, and explore some of the less understood and underappreciated nuances of doing so. To help me explore this topic, I was joined by Derek Bullard, who has founded and sold three separate private companies: Two of those exits were to private equity firms, and one was to a strategic acquiror. Among other things, in our discussion today, we cover: - How to differentiate between possible PE buyers in a competitive sales process - How to navigate potential points of disagreement with a private equity parent after closing - How PE firms think about target companies that have no history of inorganic growth - The characteristics that make a business particularly attractive to private equity, beyond obvious considerations like growth, profitability, and market size - The similarities and differences between selling to PE versus selling to a strategic acquiror - The personal considerations that the selling CEO needs to weigh when deciding which type of buyer to engage with - How to manage confidentiality concerns when selling to a strategic acquiror, especially if they’re a competitor - How to reconcile the risk of a strategic acquiror terminating some of the people who built the business to the point where it became an attractive acquisition candidate in the first place - …and much, much more Episode Link: redacted