1/ 线程：如何出售你的公司 公司（几乎总是）被“买走”的，而不是被“卖掉”的。这意味着，必须有人真正想买你的公司。 理想情况下，这一切会自然发生。但作为创始人或 CEO，当你清楚地知道公司正在撞墙时，你该如何加速这一过程？ 2/ “种下一颗想法” 《盗梦空间》是史上最伟大的电影之一（去看那段片段）。整部电影的核心，就是在别人脑中植入一个想法——想法的起始。 “如果你要进行‘植入’，你需要想象力。” 3/ 收购大概有三种类型： A. 人才收购（Acquihire）：要的是团队，而不是业务或产品 B. 产品/交易型收购（Trade Sale）：要产品或重新利用产品，收购方拥有分发渠道 C. 业务保留型收购：让原有业务保持独立，只是给予更多资源以更快增长 4/ 尤其是对于人才收购和产品型收购，你必须在还不需要卖公司之前很久，就去认识潜在的“买家”。这里存在两个相互独立的变量： 他们什么时候能/想买，与你什么时候想卖——这两者几乎从不对齐。 5/ 买家不是公司，而是公司里的人，通常是对 P&L（损益）负责的人。 往往是某个正在往上爬、想做出大动作的人，急于推出一个内部进展太慢的项目；或者是一个刚上任、急需团队的新 VP。 6/ 几乎每家大型公司都有企业发展（Corp Dev）团队。他们的工作是撮合交易，而不是构思产品。 一旦你被“买下”，你并不是为 Corp Dev VP 工作，而是为真正想要你产品的那个部门和那个人工作。重点应该放在 GM、PM 和 VP 身上。 7/ 在产品/交易型收购中，关键在于找出 1+1=3 的地方，或你的产品如何嵌入对方组织。 在 TrialPay，我们在交易流程中展示广告——如果 PayPal 能把我们的广告放进每一张购买收据，会怎样？这能产生超过 10 亿美元的收入……这就是我们的 pitch。 8/ 目标不是对某家公司或某个人说“请买我”——这不是融资，这样做极其适得其反。 正确方式是提出一个商业合作（BD）方案，而这个方案即使你是独立公司也本该作为常规操作存在——最好不论是否被收购都会发生。 9/ 你推不动一根绳子。这是我付出巨大代价才学到的教训。 不要咄咄逼人；这不像一个被超额认购的融资轮。 要清晰表达你的产品如何嵌入、如何双赢，并尽量先促成测试、集成或合同。 10/ 真正对高价值产品型收购而言的“植入时刻”，是当对方说： “哇，我们不能只把这当成 BD 合作……我们必须拥有它。”只有在这一刻，你才有可能把公司卖出高价。 11/ 即便如此，大多数公司都有一种文化：“任何人都可以说不，但没人能说是。” 你需要横向销售，面对那些感到威胁的人（“我们自己也能做！”），并意识到你会被“以现在的状态”来评判。 12/ “被以当下评判”是一件极其重要的事——你必须把局面引导到你的产品（或其变体）将会变成的样子。 做一个真正打磨过的 Demo，投入真实的工作。你“现有的”产品、团队或技术，可能会被反过来当作不利因素。 13/ 这就是为什么“想象力”如此关键——你的产品现在做的是 X，但可能有 5 家巨头，只需对它做些调整（X’），就能完成它们的重大目标……而你对每一家公司的讲法，可能都需要略有不同。 14/ 我无法强调关系的重要性。你不能等到只剩 3 个月现金才开始做这件事。 即便你打算征服世界，也应该提前思考这些——去认识每一个潜在收购方的关键决策者和 GM，因为……你永远不知道。 15/ 再说一次，我的方式从来不是“我想让他们买我”。 而是真心地认为：“我想要和这家公司做这个商业合作，因为它会对我的业务产生变革性影响。”而这完全是真的。 16/ 现实中也存在这样的问题：有时你当前的“业务规模”，反而让你的“产品”没那么诱人（如果对方想重新利用产品，那这些人和流程怎么办？）。 这是最难的部分：你是否要改变业务本身，让它更容易被接受？ 17/ 通常，答案是否定的。大多数并购都会失败。 而且，你想卖的时间，通常与他们想买的时间并不一致。但如果你真的必须卖，那就有必要认真思考：有哪些“锚”在拖住你。 18/ 如果你卖的是团队或产品，尤其是产品需要被重新定位，“跑一个出售流程”往往行不通。 只有当你已经被多方积极追逐时（在我看来），才适合“逛价”——“狼来了”效应是真实存在的。 19/ 因为再强调一次，“他们什么时候想买”是真实存在的变量—— 也许他们刚买了一家巨头，没预算也没精力再买；也许他们上一季度业绩不及预期。不要推绳子——这只会在他们真正准备好时，伤害你的成功率。 20/ 有时你可以加速进程：一旦你已经建立关系，并且最好已经有产品集成，你可以开始融资，并问他们是否愿意投资（这可能会让未来的收购更贵——也许他们应该现在就买）。 21/ 但在没有竞争者的情况下，要加速一个正在进行中的并购谈判是非常困难的。而且它会吞噬你大部分时间和精力，并分散所有参与成员的注意力。务必限制知情范围——这一点至关重要。 22/ 融资的常见建议是“在你不需要钱时融资”。 对于并购，我强烈建议大家：在你不需要卖的时候，就开始建立关系、思考这些问题。因为总有一天……你可能会想卖，或不得不卖。 23/ 再强调一次，这并不意味着 CEO 应该把大部分时间花在这上面。 理想状态是 5%–10% 的时间，用于资本与关系（包括潜在并购），作为一个后台进程。 24/ 最后，如果你想要一个好价格——当增长停滞时，概率会大大降低。 我见过最好的（也是最幸运的？）交易，往往发生在 CEO 提前意识到即将遇到减速带时，主动加速兴趣——当“想卖”和“想买”这两个变量相遇时 🙂 1/ Thread: How to sell your company Companies are (almost always) bought, not sold. This means somebody needs to want to buy your company. Ideally this happens organically. But how do you, as a founder/CEO, expedite this…particularly when you KNOW you’re hitting a wall? 2/ “Planting an idea” Inception is one of the greatest movies of all time (watch the clip). The whole premise is about implanting an idea in somebody’s mind…the inception of an idea. “If you’re going to perform inception, you need imagination” 3/ There are probably three types of acquisitions: A. Acquihire (want team, not business or product) B. Product/“Trade Sale” (want product or to repurpose product, acquirer has distribution) C. Business “left-alone” (give existing business more resources to grow faster) 4/ Especially for Acquihires and Product-oriented sales, you need to get to know your prospective “buyers” far in advance of “needing” or wanting to sell your company. Two independent variables exist: when they can/want to buy, and when you want to sell…rarely do they align! 5/ Buyers aren’t companies, they’re people at companies, and generally people with P&L responsibility. Often somebody climbing the corporate ladder who wants to make a big splash and is anxious to ship something taking way too long internally. Or a new VP who needs a team ASAP. 6/ Almost every large company has a corporate development person/team. Their job is to close deals, not to ideate — once you are “bought” you’re not working for the VP of Corp Dev. You’re working for whatever division and whatever person wanted your product. Focus on GMs/PMs/VPs. 7/ Focusing on product/trade-sales: the key thing is to figure out where 1+1=3, or how your product might fit within the org. At TrialPay we showed ads around transactions — what if PayPal could stick our ads in every purchase receipt? Would generate >$1B…that was our pitch. 8/ The goal is not to approach the company (or person) with “please buy me” — it’s not like a fundraise. That’s massively counterproductive. It’s to propose a BD deal that is just standard operating procedure for your independent company. Which hopefully happens regardless! 9/ You CANNOT PUSH A STRING. This was a lesson I learned very painfully. Do not be aggressive; this isn’t like closing an oversubscribed funding round. Articulate a vision for how your product fits and is a win-win for both, try to get a test/integration/contract in place. 10/ The true “inception” for the more valuable product-oriented acquisitions is “wow, we shouldn’t let this be a BD-deal…we NEED to own this.” That is when you can (possibly) sell your company for a lot of money. 11/ Even so — most companies have a culture of “anyone can say no, nobody can say yes” — you need to sell horizontally, deal with people who are threatened (“we can build it ourselves!”), and recognize you’ll be judged “on the present”. 12/ “Being Judged on the Present” is a very big deal (see blog post) — you need to steer things to what your product, or a variant of it, WILL look like. Make a real polished demo. Put real work into it. Your “existing” product or team or tech might be used against you. 13/ This is why “imagination” is so key — your product currently does X, but there are probably 5 giant companies where a few tweaks/changes to it — X’ — could accomplish a major objective for them…how you pitch each might be a little different. 14/ I can’t overstate the fact that relationships matter. You can’t start this process with 3 months of cash. You should be thinking about this even if you plan to conquer the world — get to know key decision makers/GMs at every potential acquirer because…you never know. 15/ And again, my approach wasn’t “I want them to buy me.” It genuinely was “I want this commercial deal with this company, because it will be transformative for MY business.” Which was 100% true. 16/ There’s also the reality that sometimes your current “business” scale makes your “product” less appetizing (what does the acquirer do with all the people/processes if they want to repurpose?). This is the hardest part: do you change your business to make it more palatable? 17/ GENERALLY, the answer is NO. Most M&A fails. Again, when you want to sell usually does not align with when they want to buy. But if you really NEED to sell, it’s useful to think through the “anchors” holding you back: 18/ “Running a process” to sell a company rarely works if selling team or product, especially when product needs to be repurposed…but if you are already being hotly pursued, then and only then (IMHO) does it make sense to “shop” — “Boy who cried wolf” syndrome is real. 19/ Because again, “when they want to buy” is a real thing — maybe they just bought a giant company and don’t have the budget/fortitude to buy another one. Maybe they whiffed their last quarter’s earnings. Don’t push a string. Hurts your chances when they’re ready to buy. 20/ Sometimes you can help expedite, though: once you already have the relationships, and ideally some product integration in place, you can, say, start a fundraise and ask if they’d like to invest (might make acquisition more expensive down the road, maybe they should buy now!). 21/ In the absence of competition, though, it’s very hard to speed up an in-flight M&A conversation/process. And it WILL suck up most of your time and energy…and distract every member of the team working on it. Limit the circle of knowledge on this — it’s crucial. 22/ “Raise money when you don’t need it” is the normal advice for fundraising. For M&A, I would strongly encourage everyone: “Build relationships and think about this…when you don’t need to sell.” Because one day…you might want to or need to. 23/ And again, this doesn’t mean CEOs should spend most of their time on this. I think ideally it’s 5–10% just focused on capital raising/relationships (inclusive of prospective M&A) as a background process. 24/ Lastly, if you want a good price — much less likely when your growth has stalled. The best (luckiest?) deals I’ve seen done are when the CEO (recognizing an upcoming speedbump) basically “expedites” interest…and when the “wants to sell” and “wants to buy” variables meet :)